Dawn Fairmane is a female Scottish-born, Catholic equine, don't call them horses, who through brains, courage, and sheer stubborness has made herself General of the Army of Andur. No small task. She has a gifted mind for strategy and logistics and has started on a system of remodeling the army into a somewhat New Model system. Also having learn to read modern english she has had a chance to study many books on military history, strategy and has learned how adapted many modern ideas to the Andurian Army
That said she is still at heart a Scottish woman from medieval europe and is not above using blunt force and violence to get her point across. Here we see a local merc who made the bad choice of challenging her to a duel just because she was a woman, and he wanted to embarrass her in front of her own troops during drills . Note. The stick she is holding in her hand is a piece of African ironwood she carries around instead of grapevine staff like the Roman Centurions. She finds it put bigger dents in helmets!