Battle for Tristaine

by Cate Culpepper

  Patana barked in surprise and flew backward to land on her back on the catwalk. Brenna sprawled on top of her and held on, and, so far, she was letter-perfect.

  But Whoever was advising her should have taken into consideration that Patana was the second-best wrestler in Tristaine.

  Grunting, Patana flipped Brenna off her with a sharp jerk of her hips and used the momentum to wrench her to one side. Brenna scrambled in terror, already feeling the abyss of the canyon that yawned below.

  Patana kneed Brenna in the stomach and kicked her over the side.

  Brenna finally stopped falling off the catwalk when she was caught short by a vicious jerk around her waist. The blue shawl Dorothea had given her had snagged on one of the catwalk’s cleats. She dangled by it, the edge of the catwalk a good two feet over her head.

  Stop kicking, young dolt! The voice roared, but Brenna’s primal mind ignored the brilliant advisor who had gotten her into this. She flailed in helpless terror, expecting any second to hear the sickening rip of fabric tearing, then her own scream as she plummeted.

  Stop kicking, the voice suggested calmly, and Brenna forced herself to hold still. She could hear the dry creaking of her makeshift sling. She stared down at her boots, rocking back and forth above the dizzying drop.

  “This is not how to get me over a fear of heights!” she screamed to no one.

  Brenna heard footsteps come to the edge of the catwalk, and Patana’s breath rasped above her. She couldn’t see her, so she didn’t know if the Amazon had reloaded the crossbow. She assumed she had.

  “We’ll all die in a few minutes, bruja.” Patana was breathing hard. “I’m just sending you and, more important, your smug bitch of a wife into the arms of our Grandmothers a bit early. I’ll give you a moment. Tell your gods you’re coming, Brenna.”

  Jess’s face flashed through Brenna’s mind, and then Shann, Kyla, Camryn, Sammy. But Brenna had no more time for preparation or anything else. She heard the distant twang of a bowstring and tightened spasmodically as she heard the arrow strike home.

  She didn’t know it was an arrow instead of a crossbow bolt until she heard Patana’s guttural cry. She toppled off the catwalk and fell past Brenna, the feathered shaft of an arrow protruding from her neck.

  Brenna instinctively lunged to try to catch Patana before she vanished forever, and the shawl securing her to the bracket ripped. She dropped a full three inches before very cold, wet fingers snatched her wrist.

  “Brenna.” Jess grunted with effort as she caught her full weight. Soaking wet, she was lying on top of the dam, one arm extended, her fingers locked like a vise around Brenna’s slender wrist.

  Jess is alive. The second bolt Patana fired didn’t kill her. She’s out of that freezing water. Brenna registered all of that first. She wondered, briefly, who had shot the arrow that killed Patana since Jess had no bow. But, mostly, she clung to Jess’s wrist and turned to brace herself as well as she could on the surface of the dam. There were virtually no footholds. She looked up and saw Jess’s white face.

  “I’ve got you, Bren.” Jess sounded insanely calm. “I won’t let go.”

  “Good,” Brenna gasped. She resisted a powerful urge to look over her shoulder at the canyon below. “C-can you? Hold on? But you can’t pull me up, Jess.”

  “Help’s coming,” Jess said. Myrine’s ashen face appeared beside her.

  Myrine lowered herself to the catwalk beside Jess and reached down to grasp Brenna’s arm. “All right, Jesstin, pull!”

  Together, the two warriors pulled Brenna up, by inches. Gasping and struggling, Brenna made it over the top of the catwalk and sprawled on its cold plywood surface beside them.

  Brenna groped for Jess and found her, then folded her into her arms.

  Myrine got to her feet and looked down at them silently, her eyes filled with tears. Then she stepped to the edge of the catwalk and gazed down into the canyon below. For a horrible moment, Brenna thought she would jump.

  “I knew why she was coming here when I saw her ride out of the village,” Myrine said quietly. “I followed her as soon as I could find a horse.”

  Brenna looked past Myrine and saw two other horses cropping grass beside Hakan’s Valkyrie.

  “Myrine,” Jess said. “Adanin—”

  “Patana loved Tristaine, Jesstin, in her way.” The scar on Myrine’s face was livid against her pallor. “She loved me, in her way.”

  “Myrine,” Brenna murmured, “I’m so—”

  “We have fifteen minutes tops!” Jess yelled.

  Myrine helped them up and they dashed for the three horses.

  By the time they rode back into Tristaine, Brenna figured they had less than five minutes before the blast. She was plastered against Jess again, and no doubt her arms squeezed far too tightly, but Valkyrie’s speed coming back down the mountain had been almost as frightening as dangling off the catwalk.

  No. Untrue. Nowhere near.

  Rifle fire still rose from the village, but the volleys were becoming more isolated. Brenna saw people running. Too many people. Some were Amazons, and her stomach did a sickening flip. Most of Tristaine’s horses had gone with the migration. It was too late to get out of the valley on foot.

  The flood would kill more than animals and trees.

  The three horses clattered into the stadium, Myrine leading Patana’s mount. The arena was all but deserted, but it wasn’t empty. Brenna saw Theryn just as Jess veered Valkyrie toward her. She knelt in the dirt of the fighting field beneath the empty review stand. Grythe lay before her, covered to the chin with a beautiful blanket, her limbs peacefully arranged.

  “Theryn, come on!” Jess pulled Valkyrie to a dancing stop. “Patana is dead. Take her horse!”

  “Caster’s alive, Jesstin.” Theryn looked up at them. “She’s probably in the main lodge, directing her mercenaries from there. Some of her soldiers left, but some stayed. Some of my Amazons stayed, too, to fight them. And some of yours.”

  “Theryn,” Jess was obviously struggling to match her calm tone, “we have no time! Get on your horse.”

  “If by some miracle Caster makes it out of here, you know she won’t give up, Jess.” Theryn rose and gazed down at Grythe’s wild, beautiful face, peaceful at last in death. “We can’t risk her survival. Caster would come for Shann, no matter how deep in the mountains she builds our new Tristaine. I’m staying to see Caster dead.”

  “Oh, Theryn, please don’t be an idiot!” Brenna realized she was being less than diplomatic. “You’d be throwing your life away!”

  “My life is over.” Theryn looked down at Grythe. “I won’t find a new one, not in Shann’s Tristaine, where I’d be reviled as a traitor.”

  A flat, ugly percussive sound reached them. It was faint, but it shook Brenna to her core.

  “Jesstin…” she whispered, and Jess’s cold hand covered her own.

  The dam was crumbling. Ziwa was free.

  Brenna saw it happen, in her mind’s eye.

  The impact of the explosion shattered the main support beam and blew a substantial hole through the dam. The massive lake began surging through the breach in the wall that had held it back for generations. The crushing velocity of the water widened the hole, then shattered most of the dam, surging into the canyon below.

  While the blast of the dynamite was faint, the death of the dam, and the release of Ziwa herself, were not. The riotous clamor of that initial first wave faded at first, but it did not disappear. It would grow deafening soon, as the flood reached Tristaine.

  Behind Brenna, Myrine barked, “Jesstin, get out of here!” She slipped off her horse. “Seeing Caster dead is worth drowning for.”

  Brenna felt Jess’s shoulders slump in pain. “Myrine—”

  “Remember what I said, please, young Brenna.” Theryn smiled grimly at Myrine as she joined her and took her hand. “If you ever write about the death of this village, little sister, be sure you record the truth. Shann and Jesstin and their followers were not the
only Amazons who loved and honored their clan.”

  Brenna’s eyes were filling, so it was hard to see them, but she nodded.

  Jess still couldn’t move, and finally Myrine sighed harshly. “Give my adanin my love, Jesstin. Now get your adonai out of here. Go!” She slapped Valkyrie’s rump, hard.

  Brenna felt the warhorse lunge for the exit, and Jess didn’t stop her. The crashing of the flood grew closer. She gave her physical survival entirely over to Jess and did what she could not to throw off their balance.

  Terme Cay was still calm as they clattered back over the footbridge, but Brenna’s worst nightmares told her this was just the prelude. She heard cries of terror rising behind them, and more gunfire.

  Jess wove the horse through the private lodges of the Amazons at a quick trot. “We’re almost out of rifle range, Brenna. It’s time to run. Can you hold on?”

  Brenna rested her face against Jess’s dark, wet hair. “Absolutely.”

  She remembered enough of that wild ride to record a chilling account in her next journal, and she didn’t have to exaggerate a word.

  Brenna and Jess rode the warhorse out of the darkening valley at a dead run, chased by impending doom in the form of a ravenous wall of water. Valkyrie leaped over a shallow but wide ravine, and Brenna almost lost her seat. Jess snaked one arm back to brace her, and she steadied herself. She buried her face again in Jess’s hair and squeezed her eyes shut. That ravine marked the boundary of the valley.

  They were out of danger now, but she could still see it happening. And not just see it…

  Brenna smelled it first. A flood through a mountainous forest washed a gust of air before it, a cold wind filled with the stench of the dying. She smelled that wind first, and then she felt it, a foul buffet of air in her face.

  She was standing on the arched footbridge that spanned the village’s river. She’d heard the flood for several minutes now, and at any moment, the first crashing waves would course down Tristaine’s peaceful stretch of Terme Cay. Brenna couldn’t believe the growing roar could grow louder before the flood finally appeared, but it did.

  Terme Cay was a river, and then she was a rushing wall of water, forty feet high. Anyone standing on Tristaine’s footbridge would see a shadow, and then they’d see their death coming. The screams were everywhere by then, and Brenna heard them.

  She shut down. Really, she prayed, please, that’s all I can take. And to her vast relief, the images and sounds and smells all stopped. Brenna didn’t have to watch the village drown.

  They met Shann and the other survivors of Tristaine in the southern glade before the moon rose.

  Chapter Ten

  Dana sat cross-legged on a blanket in the grass, close to one of the campfires. Several such small blazes dotted the glade around her, in areas cleared for that purpose. She had been fed and left alone for the most part, which is what she fervently wanted at this point.

  She thought about thirty Amazons had escaped the flood, counting Jesstin and Brenna. Those two had ridden in an hour ago, on the biggest animal she had ever seen. A circle of Amazons had surrounded them at once. They appeared to be all right, thank god.

  So far, no one seemed inclined to take Dana on for tasering Jesstin. Dana remembered watching Brenna tend Jess after it happened. She remembered thinking no one had ever touched her with such love.

  She was the only City soldier among the Amazons. She wasn’t the only mercenary to escape the flood, but all the others had insisted on their own stubborn course, down into the foothills. She had almost gone with them.

  Shann, the Amazon queen, and dozens of her followers, had run past Dana on their way out of Tristaine. Shann stopped and called to her. Dana had hesitated, and in the kind of split-second decision that changes lives, she ran to her.

  She still wasn’t sure why.

  Soft laughter filtered through the circle of women around Jesstin and Brenna; then they began to get up and drift back toward their blankets. Dana could see the queen kneeling beside Jess, her palm on her breast to monitor her heartbeat. Shann straightened and smiled at Jess, then looked straight at Dana, as if her gaze called to her.

  “Dana, come join us, please.”

  Shit fire. She felt a jolt of unease, certain the Amazons had decided to kick her out. She put on a neutral expression and shuffled over to the group.

  Dana recognized the two big Amazon warriors, Vicar and Hakan. They both looked like war goddesses this close up, one black and one white. They sat protectively on either side of young Kyla, and Dana noticed neither of them looked at her as she joined them. She settled stiffly beside Jesstin and avoided her appraising eyes.

  “I’m glad to see you.” Brenna leaned across her reclined lover to touch Dana’s knee. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay.” Dana cleared her throat and finally met Brenna’s friendly eyes. “How about you two?”

  “I wish we had some bloody proof, Jesstin,” Vicar broke in. She had her long arms coiled around one raised knee. “None of us will sleep a full night until we see that witch’s corpse.”

  “Vicar? Courtesy, please.” Shann nodded at Dana. “Yes, little sister. Given rest and warmth and decent food, Brenna and Jesstin will both heal and be well.”

  Little sister? Dana’s brows rose.

  “I know you have to be exhausted, Dana. We all are, so I won’t keep you long.” Shann curled her legs gracefully beneath her before continuing. “We’re assuming Caster is dead and her vendetta is over. The silver the City wanted is gone. We feel the Military won’t bother to pursue our clan if we establish our new holdings deeper in the mountains. Do you agree?”

  “Me?” Dana was puzzled. “I’m not in on any Military plans, Shann. I’m not a Government soldier. Uh, I mean Queen Shann.”

  Hakan and Vicar and Jess all snickered, and Shann raised an eyebrow at them.

  “Shann will suffice. I know you can’t give us inside information, Dana. We’re just asking your opinion. You’ve lived in the City more recently than any of us, so you know the atmosphere down there even better than Brenna.”

  “Oh.” Dana wished mightily that everyone would find something to look at besides her face. “Well, let me think. The City paper did mention the closing of Caster’s program at the Clinic this last summer. But it sure didn’t mention any escaped prisoners or Amazons. Tristaine is hot gossip, but that’s nothing new. So there won’t be any public pressure, or even public knowledge, that you guys still exist. I guess I really don’t see any big advantage for the Military in coming after you.”

  “After us,” Shann corrected. “Good, Dana, thank you. Those are our thoughts, too.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  “How high, exactly, into the mountains will we be going?” Dana asked.

  She saw Shann smile at Brenna, for some reason, the lines around her eyes crinkling.

  “Our first stop will be the southern meadows, where we’ll join the sisters who migrated a few days ago from our mountain village. We’ll pass the winter there, then begin the search for our new home in the spring.”

  A low, chanting music filtered through the chilly air, and Dana peered over her shoulder into the glade. She saw the other Amazons gather into a circle around the largest of the campfires. They were humming something, a melodic, lonely sound.

  “Sisters, join the storyfire,” Shann urged them. “Give me a moment, please, with Kyla, Jesstin, and Brenna.”

  “Lady.” Hakan got smoothly to her feet. She clamped one broad hand on Dana’s shoulder and pulled her up, too. “Come on, youngster, and stop looking like a skittish hare. Vic and I will keep the others from spitting you on a mesquite branch and roasting you for dinner.”

  Dana smiled weakly and stumbled after Hakan toward the storyfire.

  “So…” Vicar unwound to her full height and put her hands on her hips. She nudged Jesstin’s foot with her own. “You need anything, Stumpy?”

  “Shorter, more humble cousins,” Jess g
rumbled. She was nestled against Brenna. “Nice work tonight, mate.”

  “You too. Both of you.” Vicar winked at Brenna and followed Hakan and Dana.

  “Kyla?” Shann held out a hand, and Kyla obediently shifted closer to her. Shann put an arm around her shoulders and looked down at Jess. “I think you’ll be fine to travel in the morning, Jesstin, if we make it a light day. Are you in much pain?”

  “Yes,” Jess growled. “My back hurts, my belly hurts. Also my left shoulder, and my entire right arm. Also my left knee.”

  “I’ve been talking to Jess a lot about being a little less stoic about her injuries,” Brenna explained. She ruffled Jess’s hair. “Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s exaggerating.”

  “A plant called talwin grows between here and the southern meadows.” Shann pursed her lips. “We may need to dose all our warriors with it. Your women fought well, Jesstin, and you all have the bruises to prove it. Why would I want to be careful, Blades, with a tea boiled with talwin leaves?”

  “Because talwin has a mild narcotic effect, so it can be addictive,” Brenna answered, and then she and Jess both blinked. “How did I know that?”

  “How did you know Patana would try to assassinate Jesstin yesterday?” Shann asked. “Or that Caster’s soldiers had ambushed Tristaine? Or all the sacred promises made in a Queen’s Blessing? Really, honey, how much more proof of your sight do you think you’re going to require?”

  “You did tell me about the Blessing yourself, Shann.” Brenna had also known when Camryn began to die, but she couldn’t say it aloud.

  And my voices…Brenna was afraid she was starting to sound psychotic, even in her own mind. The voices didn’t warn me before Elodia snapped or before Patana got off that first shot on the dam.

  “Bren…” Jess ventured, watching her. “You in there?”

  “I’m right here.” Brenna smiled and brushed Jess’s tumbling hair off her brow.

  “And what about you, little sister?” Shann’s arm was light around Kyla’s slender shoulders. “How are you?”