But goddamn it, the steering was as slippery as it ever was. Right from the second when I blammed into a big old tree, I knew I'd missed Mars again. And Mars is like a big place, right? You'd think it'd be easy enough to hit. Well, let's see you try it. Get back to me on that.
Anyway, where I did end up, I was smushed against this tree. I couldn't tell you what kind of tree, except it had bark—it had bark in my mouth, jammed into my nose, cutting ,up my knees. I was thinking, "Maureen Birnbaum killed by tree. Details on the hour." The tree was like making no move to back off, so I did. I looked around and there were no witnesses, so I didn't feel like such a total wheeze.
There was a dusty dirt road behind me, winding through all the trees. I didn't know which way I ought to go, so I thought I'd just kind of sit down with my Bean bags and wait for someone to come along. So it figures, as soon as I sit down, my imagination starts to work—maybe I'm all alone on this planet with like a road.
Chill out, Maureen. In a few minutes I hear a lot of clanking and bumping and rattling. Traffic sounds. Not 1-95 traffic sounds, you know, but at least some creatures were hustling their buns toward me. I asked myself, I go, "Maureen, is that necessarily like a good thing?" So I take my bags and my sword and hide out behind this clump of underbrush. A few minutes later I see this little parade. There's a bunch of Schwarzenegger-types wearing hacked-up outfits, riding these big old horses that looked like a cross between a Clydesdale and a Peterbilt tractor. The men were all carrying swords and battleaxes and stuff.
They are fighting men. I have no problem with that. I got out from under the underbrush. "Hey," I go.
Three of these totally bluff guys leap on me—from their horses—and bring me up in front of their leader. They yammer at me in some language, it could have been Greek for all I knew.
Finally the leader, who's still up on his horse so I have to lean way back just to see his face—which was a cute face, in a sort of fierce and determined way, mature and all—this man leans down and gives me one of those amused little smiles. He goes, "May I ask your name, miss?"
I go, "You can call me Maureen, but I've bailed out of all those sexist mister-and-miss things."
He nodded pleasantly, but one of his young friends mutters something that sounded like "brahbehrnuh." Now, my God, Bitsy, you know I'm the last person in the world that would burn a bra. Without good underwired support, a fighting woman is just plain asking for trouble. Halfway through the action she'd be nearly helpless, what with the harmonic motion of her boobs interfering with her swordplay. I spun around real fast to see who'd made that little remark, but they looked at me all wide-eyed and innocent. Their leader goes, "Forgive them, they haven't met many twentieth-century women, and those they have met were without exception hostile."
"A typical generalization," I go. This is where I got all haughty. In the back of my mind, though, certain questions are just like crying out to be asked. "Where the hell am I?" seemed like a good start.
This man with the dark skin and the bright eyes goes, "You're a trifle north of the Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn, east on the road from the ducal seat of Tchaimbuhsburk."
"I meant what planet is this?" I go.
He shrugged. "Earth," he goes. "What did you expect?"
"Earth? Then something's wrong."
"What year do you think it is?"
I'm like easy to get along with, so I told him. He says it was now more than eight hundred years since civilization had been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. I looked at his weapons and his men's armor and the whole knobby barbarian influence on this band of merry men. I didn't have any trouble believing him. I mean, it couldn't be that they were only making, you know, a daring fashion statement or something. Instead of traveling through space, I'd traveled through time. Prince Van and you, Bitsy, and my allowance were many hundreds of years in the past, dead and buried. I paused a moment for emotion.
"My name is Milo," goes the leader. He saw that I was sort of like all aufgeshaken, you know? He looked down from his horse and shook his head, evidently deciding what he was going to do with me.
"You don't have to do anything with me," I go. "I can take care of myself."
Milo nodded. "I was just curious about how you got here."
"I don't know."
"Well, you've walked into the middle of a war. We have to keep moving, I plan to catch up with my army in the next few days. Maybe I'd better detail one of my men to take you to a safe—"
"Hold on, Milo, old buddy," I go. I've never met anyone else named Milo. The only Milo I'd ever even heard of was the Venus de. "I don't need you to look out for me. You don't have to send one of your men—if that's, you know, the right word for them—to escort me anywhere."
"You appear to be very independent, Miss Birnbaum." He gave me another smile.
I went immediately from merely haughty to fully stoked. "Get off that goddamn elephant!" I yelled at him. I was stalking back to the bush to get 01' Betsy. We were going to see about this right now. I was so mad I didn't even like ask myself how he knew my last name.
I'm waving my trusty blade in his face and the three soldiers are just laughing their filthy, scungy heads off. Milo raised a hand and they stopped. He held a locked case in his other hand. "I haven't used one of these in centuries," he goes, taking a beautiful, gleaming saber from the case. Its baskethilt's not jewel encrusted like mine, but I can see it's a nifty piece of work. "Toledo," he goes. "That wouldn't mean anything to the troopers of my Confederation, but perhaps you'll appreciate it."
"Appreciate this," I go. I salute him, spend a twelfth of a second en garde, and then lunge, apparently for his chest. I really meant to cut his wrist on the inside, but he saw that coming. He parried Quarte, with his blade nearly vertical, and merely tilted his forearm from the elbow, knocking my blade aside. His riposte came so damn fast that he almost got me. Milo shot his fist straight toward my chest, making a quick, short slash. I was forced to parry Quinte, which God only knows I'm not good at. My sword hand was high, near eye-level. I caught his attack okay, turned my wrist over, and lunged at him. The two of us went back and forth like that for a few minutes. I knew right off that like maybe I'd made a mistake. This guy was no Martian monster, for sure, and I didn't have low gravity on my side. Milo could have diced me up any time he wanted. I'm just real, real glad he didn't want to. Really.
Still, I was holding my own, you know, if only just barely. I could pick up on a murmured conversation behind me, the three hairball soldiers making comments. I like to think they were sort of astonished by how well I was handling their commanding officer. I hoped they couldn't see that Milo was carrying me.
That is, like he carried me for a while until I made a dumb goof. He feinted at my wrist, then bent his elbow and brought his point up and cut at my left shoulder. I wasn't sure what to do, and I parried wrong. Before I could attack, he scored with a remise, putting his saber completely through my shoulder just above the armpit. "Goddamn it!" I yelled. "Goddamn son of a bitch!" I was hopping around in pain and swearing like a, well, trooper. I dropped 01' Betsy and clutched my shoulder. A little blood spurted out and stained my brand new shirtdress. I hadn't worn it more than a couple of hours. Milo was really sorry. He put his sword down and hurried to me.
"Are you all right?" he goes.
I just glared at him. "It hurts like homemade hell," I go.
"Let me see," he goes.
"Are you kidding me? Here, just take all my clothes off and examine my booboo. Fat chance, buster."
"I'm just—"
"I know, I know. It's all my fault, I'm just being unreasonable, I asked for it. That's what Daddy tells me all the time. Ouch."
His eyes narrowed a bit. "Take your hand away, at least."
I did. The wound had stopped bleeding already.
Milo gave me a long, thoughtful look. "Lift up the material and tell me what you see."
I did. "It's healed!" I go. I was amazed, if you want to know the truth.
&nbs
p; Milo rubbed his jaw with one hand. "I'd be grateful if you'd travel with me for a few days," he goes. "I'd like to talk with you about a few matters that are important to this world."
That was better. It showed he was a gentleman and not just some kind of gross, chauvinist Captain Future. "Will I get to see some of your war?" I go. "You won't be able to avoid it."
"Neat. Let me get my things." One of the soldiers helped stow my two bags on his huge horse. Milo lifted me up to his saddle, and I clung to him as we rode. His beautiful chestnut stallion was so big, I couldn't get my legs around it. I felt like I was doing splits on a gym floor, for Christ's sake.
Milo talked as we traveled. Apparently, some upstart had formed a pocket kingdom he called Kehnooryees Ahkeeyuh, or New Achaea. This bozo, who crowned himself King Pahleebohaitees I, worked for a while making allies and raising an army. He merged the city of Ritchmuhnd and several nearby villages, and called the result his capital, Kehnooryees Spahrtuh. His Union of Pure-Blooded Ehleenee let the Undying High Lord Milo know that it was dropping out of his Confederation. Not only that, but like it was making a beasty pain of itself by raiding the prosperous lands to the north and west. It was all the combined forces of the Confederation, the Kindred dragoons of the Middle Kingdoms, the Ahrmehnee troops, and the Moon Maiden archers could do to contain the rebellion. It still wasn't clear if they could defeat it. Milo expected me to know what the hell he was talking about, but like I was lost from Word One, I'm sure.
A few hours later we whammed into the tail-end of his army. The soldiers all cheered for Milo like he was Napoleon or What's-His-Name MacArthur or something. I could definitely handle inspiring that kind of reaction, but all my adventures have been one-on-one, you know, and like this was my first for-real war. Milo wanted to know which side I was going to be on, his or this bogue King Pahleebohaitees' Union. I go, "I know who you are, what's this Union?"
"Just renegade Ehleenee," he goes.
That like decided it for me. "Illini?" I go, with a suitable avant-barf expression. "Oh my God, that's like the Big Ten! Pammy, my stepmother, you know, she gave me three harsh rules about finding a husband: One, marry Yale first; if you can't get Yale, marry Princeton; if you can't get Yale or Princeton, devote yourself to a life of public service, like Mother Teresa. I'll never have a house in Newport if I hang around with Illini ag-school jocks. Urrr."
Milo just shook his head again. He said something in that other language to one of the soldiers, then he turned back to me. "Just go with Duhlainee, he'll take you to the armorer. You're very good with that saber, but it won't help you very much against the weapons you'll be seeing soon."
The armorer fixed me up with just what I wanted. I got a crushin' long-sword, lighter than what Milo carried. I could barely lift one of the big suckers off the ground, but I could swing the smaller sword with both hands. I figured like I'd be a hell of a lot quicker on the draw than those big zods. One of the guys takes a hack with his sword, he needs five minutes to recover for another swipe. Meanwhile, I could shred him with a combo of point and edge work. I also took this tasty dirk and a spear. I wanted a helmet, too—an open-faced helmet with the nose piece like the ancient Greeks wore, okay? With the spear and the helmet I'd look just so kill, like Athena, who was fully ruff and a legend in her own time.
"Nose piece," the armorer goes, in this fractured language they called Mehrikan. I could barely make out what he was like saying. "You got a big nose on you to protect."
I just gave him my Number Eight Smile—icy, totally aggro, Warning to Others: This is Dangerous Territory. "You want to like do your job? I don't need your constructive criticism."
He shrugged. "What about your shield?"
I hadn't planned to carry one, I was going to use both hands on the sword, right? I told him, and his eyes got wider. He muttered something under his breath: "Ahnaiyeestah." I found out it meant "without a shield," and that's what that bunch called me from then on: Mahreenah Ahnaiyeestah. My nom de guerre, can you believe it?
I also got this way rad draped white gown that I could wear with my crested helmet and spear and like really do the Athena number; and I was fitted with this outfit, the leathers and the chain mail, for battle. I was all set. Now we were hauling ass all over the countryside looking for the Union army.
So a couple of days later, still moving east, we get a frantic report: like the advance guards of Thoheeks Djaik Morguhn's Red Eagle warriors made contact with these hungry Pure-Blood Union foragers. "I didn't want to fight a battle here," goes Milo. "And, I'll wager, neither did Senior Strahteegos Lahmbrohs, our shrewd enemy. But look at the map; it is a coincidence, nothing more, forced on us by geography. This town is the junction of all the main roads for many miles around. I hoped that we would pass through it well ahead of the Union troops. I wanted to put my army between Lahmbrohs and his source of supply, far away in Karaleenos. There's nothing to be gained by wishing it was otherwise. I'll reinforce Djaik Morguhn and hope that Lahmbrohs chooses to disengage. There are more favorable places to come to grips." Milo looks at Prince Bili, Djaik's older brother, and Bill nods. I didn't offer any advice, 'cause like I didn't have any. In Milo's tent, it all looked like toy soldiers on a gameboard, but it was really weird on account of I knew men had already started to die for real.
Milo sent out his orders. Thoheeks Djaik was to hurry to bail out his advance unit and do what he could to slow down the withdrawal of Lahmbrohs and his Union rebels. Meanwhile, the Confederate units, scattered all across the damn countryside, would zoom up as fast as their mammoth-horses could carry them.
I was like just hot to get into my first battle, you know, but everybody I talked to kept saying, "Just wait, you'll see." Nobody would tell me what I'd see, and I thought maybe they didn't want to fight. That was dumb. I should have known better. They were all brave dudes—stark was their word—and they'd tussle every time they had to. It was only like they could think of other things they'd rather be doing. I know about that: I was very popular on Saturday nights. I mean, it was that Athena look that did it. And it was the Athena look plus the spear and the longsword that kept them from bipping my boobs, too. See, you don't feel up a warrior-woman. Not if you don't want people calling you "Lefty" for the rest of your life, I'm sure.
In the middle of the next morning, Milo got another report from Djaik Morguhn—he had sent a third of his infantry and cavalry to the town, under Strahteegos Kehrtuhs Hwiltuhn. Hwiltuhn was ordered to see what the Union Strahteegos planned to do, and to like head back toward our main body when he got that news. Things sort of didn't work out the way Milo and Djaik planned. Hwiltuhn did as he was told, but like when he got to the town, the battle was already boiling and he couldn't fall back. A whole horde of Ehleenee hodads were riding into town from the other direction, but most of the Union troops were like still quite a ways away. Old Hwiltuhn was famous for staying in fights when other leaders might decide to retreat. His men loved him for his guts and his totally hot-blooded but battle-wise experience. Hwiltuhn sent word that whether Milo wanted it or not, the fighting was going to happen around this sleepy town.
He said he'd like try to slow the enemy up as much as possible while Milo got the rest of the Confederation Army to the front lines. He was busily sheltering his men in a thin forest across a bare field from the Ehleenee, when a few arrows from the Union kahtahfrahktoee fell around them. One skanky arrow caught old Hwiltuhn in the throat, and he fell right to the ground, like totally dead. No others of his men were wounded. The battle was like begun, okay?
Milo let out this long, deep breath when he heard the news. "Kehrt was a good man," he goes, "one of the best." He shook his head a couple of times, and like that was it. He couldn't spare more time grieving for his old friend, there was warlording to do.
I had my own horse now, a small mare I called Mr. Ed. You're totally not going to believe why I called her Mr. Ed. Because I could talk to her. No, Bitsy, she wasn't a talking horse; she was like a telepathic horse. I heard h
er voice in my head, and she heard me. It like freaked me out at first; but we made friends fast, and she told me she'd been in battle before and I wouldn't have to like worry about leading her around, she'd know what I wanted and the best way to get there. We still had to catch up with the forward troops in the town, so Mr. Ed and I had a while to just kind of gossip, you know? Like you and I used to do. Turns out Milo with his tubular silver-streaked black hair was already married. I would have bet a million dollars that he was, but I had these hopes, okay?
Later that afternoon we came up to the town. Kehrtuhs Hwiltuhn's men had tried to hold their positions, but like there were just too many Ehleenee slimeballs pouring down on them. The bad guys seemed to have an ocean of reinforcements. Sooner or later the Confederation had to like back off, and they retreated at last right through the town. Now like you remember my Daddy, don't you, sweetie? The original Great Social Undertaking, dressed up like a WASP to get insight into the Goyische Experience. When he was told to put down his pencil and turn in his answer booklet, though, he figures out he's really hep to this way rad life. He had become an honest-and-true Them, I'm sure, okay? Like he traded his Abraham & Straus credit card for one that says Penney's, you should forgive the language. He got rid of the sexy Giorgio Armani aftershave I gave him for his birthday and started using Old Spice, like a grandfather, for God's sake. And he joined clubs, said it was good for business. He turned into—and I totally lost my lunches for two weeks when I heard this—one of those freaky guys who run around in toy uniforms carrying toy weapons and recreating historically heavyweight battles nobody hardly remembers anymore. Little puffs of white smoke and like dudes valiantly clutching their chests and going, "Oooh, I'm dead," then they got to lie around on the wet grass 'til everybody else is either dead, too, or historically captured or accepting somebody else's sword or something. Daddy clutched his chest a lot, 'cause dudes with more seniority got to be the hotshot conquerors. That didn't bother him any. A few more years he'd be General Sherman or George Washington, but he'd have to die his way into the good roles.
Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordperson Page 5
