“I thought Amazons preferred cremation.” Brenna studied the variety of glyphs etched in the markers and folded her arms against a chill breeze.
“Tristaine does, most of us.” Hakan’s hands were clasped behind her back, a respectful stance. “But several of these stones bear the language of my country and the dialect of its Eastern clans. Their customs are different. At any rate, sisters, it’s sacred ground.”
“With strange and sacred flowers,” Brenna murmured. She knelt and studied the small plants that adorned several of the surrounding graves. They held spiked leaves and glossy gold berries, and she’d seen nothing like them in Tristaine’s new village.
She almost reached out to pull one free of the hard-packed earth, wanting to see what Shann made of the species and whether they could test it for medicinal qualities. Brenna paused, then lowered her hand as she got to her feet. Tearing a plant’s roots from a burial mound felt wrong to her, a violation of the dead warrior’s rest.
“But what’s a graveyard doing out here, this far from the mesa?” Kyla glanced at one of the oval markers, half-submerged in the marshy earth, and shuddered. She took a sidling step and brushed her arm against Brenna, who lifted hers around Kyla’s shoulders with the ease of long practice. “These are the graves of the clan that built our village, right?”
“I guess they have to be,” Brenna agreed. “There couldn’t have been that many Amazon clans running around out here.” She felt Kyla shiver against her and strengthened her protective hold. Kyla had only begun turning to her for comfort again recently, and Brenna welcomed the contact.
There had been an easy warmth between them from the beginning. Unlike Brenna’s bond with Camryn, which had taken time to run deep, she had loved Dyan’s young blood sister almost at once. Of course, that wasn’t a fair comparison. Minutes after Camryn met Brenna, she had decked her with a roundhouse right.
Brenna smiled sadly at the gravestone and rubbed Kyla’s arm to warm them both. With the innate protective courtesy of Tristaine’s warriors, Hakan took Brenna’s and Kyla’s hands as they made their way carefully among the worn stones. Brenna noted that the placement of the graves was not random. They formed vaguely circular patterns, much like the rings of trees surrounding their mesa.
Almost every grave held an epitaph, but Brenna saw no numbers that might mean dates on any of them. Oddly, all of the stones seemed equally weathered, as if this desolate cemetery contained the dead of one dreadful mass burial, a hundred warriors all laid to rest the same long-ago day.
What kind of enemy could wipe out an entire Amazon army in one battle, Brenna wondered, leaving a paltry few to bury their sisters, before scattering to the winds themselves? She heard the distant twang of a bowstring as they stepped through the last rows of graves.
“A fine cleavin’ of yonder tree, Dana.” There was amusement in Jess’s voice, and Brenna turned to see her squinting at Dana’s arrow, which still vibrated in the trunk of an aspen twenty steps away. Vicar and Jess were conducting archery practice during this break, and Dana was always eager for training.
“You’re trying too hard to breathe through the release, adanin.” Jess stepped behind Dana to adjust her grip on the red-oak bow. “Relax and let the arrow leave its rest as naturally as the air leaves your lungs.”
Brenna loved Jess’s voice under any circumstances, but especially at times like this, when she was teaching. That low, friendly, patient tone had introduced her to a dozen new skills—and coaxed her awake from many a nightmare.
Dana was scowling, looking from the arrow in the aspen to the dead stump to its right, her intended target. She set another feathered shaft to her bowline as Jess went to retrieve the first.
“See to it we don’t have to memorialize that aspen there, youngster.” Vicar was chewing on a long piece of grass, and her tone held its usual ironic edge. “Amazons honor trees. Don’t go skewering that one again.”
“I’ve loved trees since I was a kid,” Dana grumbled. “Lots of people love trees in the City. We just don’t have many of them. You don’t have to be an Amazon to love trees.”
Brenna realized her palm was sticky with pinesap, and she scowled, wiping it on her jeans. “Sometimes it helps, though.”
“But an Amazon would never murder a tree, Dana,” Kyla called. “The sharp end of that thing points toward the stump now.”
Brenna would have given her younger sister a nudge to remind her of her manners, but suddenly her head was full of the terrible screaming of stallions in mortal combat. She clenched her hand, still sticky with sap.
“I know which end points toward the stump,” Dana sighed. “Come on, a little credit. I’ve had three years of military train—”
Dana’s breath was forcefully punched from her lungs as Vicar lunged and shoved her hard enough to knock her off her feet. Brenna heard the impact of Vicar’s palms on Dana’s shoulders, which was almost as loud as her crash to the rocky ground, the bow and its arrow falling harmlessly with her. Jess whirled.
“Vicar! Sweet Artemis!” Kyla cried as Vic swung one booted foot over Dana’s waist and straddled her, her hand on the dagger in her belt. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Never point a drawn bow at a woman, idiot, unless you intend to kill!” Vicar’s fair face was flushed with anger.
Dana blinked up at her, obviously trying to pull enough breath into her lungs to respond.
“Vicar, back off,” Jess barked, tossing the first arrow aside. “Her bow was at rest.”
Vic’s eyes flashed. “You determined to give her another crack at you, Jesstin?”
The battling stallions bugled fury in Brenna’s mind, sending a bolt of pain through her head.
“Hakan, wait,” Kyla yelled just as Hakan began a graceful running dive and plowed bodily into Vicar, knocking her off Dana.
What began badly quickly grew worse.
“I’m tired of your bullying, Vicar,” Hakan snarled. The soft mahogany of her eyes had gone muddy with malevolence. She and Vicar both jumped to their feet and began circling each other in a controlled but deadly dance.
Their expressions stunned Brenna, who still stood frozen, the screaming stallions an ongoing roar only she could hear. Kyla ran down the small rise to Dana and helped her up.
“Bloody pendejas!” Jess jumped between her two warriors, and Brenna unfroze and darted down the rise.
“No, adanin!” Luckily, Kyla was both alert and nimble. She caught Brenna’s arm as she ran by and held on to it. “It’s dangerous down there. Let Jess handle this!”
“You go too easy on your cousin, Jesstin. You always have,” Hakan spat. “Dyan would never abide this woman’s—”
“That’s enough, Hakan,” Jess snapped.
“Don’t invoke Dyan, Hakan. I knew her far better!” Vicar’s handsome features radiated hatred, her long fingers stiff and clawed. “Why do you defend this young City bitch, Jess? She almost killed you!”
Jess’s mouth opened, but then Hakan dived again, so Jess did too. She caught Hakan in midair and threw her back. The big warrior’s arms pinwheeled madly as she staggered on the rocky ground, her braids whipping around her head, but she kept her footing.
Jess turned and very nearly caught Vicar’s forearm in the throat as she bolted past her. One hand snuck out and caught a handful of blond hair, and Jess, snarling, hauled her taller cousin back.
It became a brutal dance. Hakan charged at Vicar, and Jess intercepted her and shoved her back. Then Vicar attacked Hakan, and Jess pivoted, caught her, and threw her in the other direction. Then Hakan charged again.
Brenna was about to do anything in her power to get Kyla to let go of her arm. She would regret it later if she bruised Kyla, she really would, but if she wasn’t allowed to get to Jess—
“Whoa, whoa!” Brenna lunged as Dana started past her, apparently having similar thoughts. She caught Dana around the waist and held on, yelling for Kyla. Introducing Dana to the combustible trio below now would be disastrous.
>
“Dana, you stay here!” Kyla’s voice could fill Tristaine’s village square, and now it rang quite clearly amid the restless dead around them. “What is it with you City women, Brenna? You have no common sense at first, zero, none!”
Now Vicar and Hakan were nose to nose, or would have been, were Jess not sandwiched between them, and Jess roared, “In Dyan’s name!”
Abruptly, finally, it all started to pass—the rage of the warriors and the screaming of horses in Brenna’s mind.
Hakan and Vicar stood motionless, still in defensive stance. No one had drawn any weapons, but that was no comfort to Brenna. All three Amazons were capable of killing with their hands.
“Stand down,” Jess panted, and they did. Vicar and Hakan both straightened and stared at each other. That frightening light had left their faces, leaving only the flush of exertion and cold.
Jess braced her hands on her knees, still watching her two warriors carefully, taking deep, even breaths, her breath pluming out in clouds of steam. “Someone tell me,” she growled, “what the bloody hell that was all about.”
“She raised her bow, Jesstin.” Vicar’s tone was subdued.
“She did not.” Jess straightened slowly. “Hear me, Vicar. Dana’s shaft was down. I saw it. Dana?” She turned toward Brenna and the others, who waited up the small rise. “Speak for yourself, girl.”
“Yeah, Jess.” Dana’s voice was strained, and she cleared her throat. “My arrow was down, and the bowstring was lax.”
Vic rested her hands on her hips and spat at the rocky ground, but her downcast eyes now looked more troubled than defiant.
“I’ve never seen you go off like that, Hakan.” Kyla’s voice was a bit unsteady. “This big blond bully with the brogue, I can understand, but you?” She went to Vicar and took her hand without fear, patting it in loving reproach.
Vicar sighed. Kyla was one of the protected few who never felt the bite of her temper. “Aye, little sister. You’re right. My blood runs too hot sometimes, and I make an ass of myself. I know it.” She regarded Dana evenly and extended her hand.
Dana accepted Vicar’s apology, clasping her corded wrist, but her eyes were still wary.
Some of the tension melted out of Brenna’s spine as she scratched a small circle between Jess’s shoulders.
Vicar caught Hakan’s eye, and Brenna saw a dozen communications fly silently between them.
“I forgot Dyan’s teaching,” Vic said at last. In Tristaine, there was no more eloquent admission of fault and human frailty.
Hakan nodded, and warmth crept back into her dark eyes.
Brenna swallowed and heard a dry click in her throat. That nerve-fraying sound of battling horses had faded but still lingered, a sibilant horror in her inner ear. Brenna moved into the circle, peering closely at Hakan, then Vicar. She took Vicar’s pulse at the wrist. “Do you feel anything strange, Vic?”
“Aye, my cousin’s adonai is coming on to me. That is strange,” Vicar droned.
Jess’s lip curled, which relieved some of the residual tension.
“Otherwise, nay, lass.”
“These cretins were too clumsy to do any real damage, Bren.” Jess clawed her wild hair out of her eyes, then checked the passage of the sun. “Let’s head back by way of the river. It’s a sunny ride. I’ve had more than enough grim shadows for the day.”
“I’m with you.” Dana sighed.
They gathered their weapons and headed for the stand of trees where their horses stood, ground-tied.
Brenna snuck her arm through Jess’s as they passed the last of the gravestones, the sparse pines overhead sighing in farewell. None of them looked back.
*
“This is humiliating, I’ve decided.” Brenna’s face was warm now against Jess’s denim-clad back. She rode behind her on Bracken. “Sticking to your back like lint on a sock. Teach me to ride, Jesstin.”
“You’re serious, querida?” Jess’s hair swept across Brenna’s face as she turned her head. “I’d be most pleased.”
“I have to learn to ride. Mountain Amazons ride horses.” Brenna stated the fact much as she would a medical reality, like “teeth decay.”
She loved horses, especially Bracken—and Valkyrie, that huge, beautiful beast of Hakan’s. But she also maintained that even Jess’s strong little mustang, the shrimp of the herd, was far too high off the ground.
She watched their shadow move like a two-headed centaur over the sunlit trunks of the trees they passed, followed by their four sisters on their own mounts. Now that the strange Amazon burial ground was well behind them, the weak sun stood a better chance of banishing the chill.
Brenna surveyed the passing scenery, glorious in late autumn, and remembered the journal entry she had made last night.
If the people of the City could see the real beauty of these mountains, Caster and her Governmental ilk would stand no chance of holding them behind electrified walls. No wonder art and poetry featuring nature are so regulated there. And travel has always been fiercely restricted in every City, along with most other freedoms that threaten Homeland Security.
The Amazons rode a natural path that flanked the eastern side of a broad river that ran west, about a quarter league from their mesa. Its roaring currents were stoked by a summer of melting glaciers higher in the hills. Their path back to the mesa followed it closely, but rose and dipped to fit the contours of the hillside. Jess was right. It made for a beautiful ride. They had never explored this far downstream.
Jess’s callused fingers warmed the back of Brenna’s hand. “You’re still cold, Bren.”
“I know.” Brenna tightened her hold on Jess’s waist. “The graves got to me, I think. All those lost warriors. Then Vicar jumping Dana—and, worse, Hakan going after Vic. Did you see their faces, Jesstin?”
“I did.” Jess glanced back up the trail to check their privacy. Their four sisters rode together several yards behind Bracken. “That’s twice Vicar’s gone odd on us since we found this mesa.”
“Vicar’s not alone,” Brenna pointed out.
“Aye, I’m not forgetting Sirius.”
“It’s hitting you too, Jesstin. Whatever it is. You really scared me the other night.”
Jess’s shoulders tensed. “Brenna, for the life of me, I don’t remember—”
“I’m hearing the stallions again, Jess.”
Jess turned her head sharply, and Bracken whickered at the sudden movement. “You heard them today?”
Brenna nodded and shivered. “Fighting to the death. It started just before Vicar went at Dana.”
She let Jess absorb this unwelcome news. In the past, visions of horses had warned Brenna of real dangers threatening Tristaine. As portents, they were grimly reliable, but maddeningly vague. After a moment, Jess let out a long breath.
“All right, Bren. We’ve got too many questions to answer alone. Gaia knows we have reason to abide by your instincts. Shann’s high council meets tonight. We’ll talk to our lady about these concerns before our sisters gather.”
Brenna kissed the back of Jess’s shoulder, then rested her head against her again and closed her eyes. Jess’s warmth was banishing the last of her chills, and she relaxed into Bracken’s steady, rocking gait. She heard Kyla’s light tone as the other riders caught up to them.
“Dana, you’re still mixing up your terms. You should have had all this down months ago.” Kyla clicked to her horse, and he caught up to Bracken. “Remember, Blades? The first day we met, I taught you the difference between adanin and adonai.”
“Yes, I seem to remember that.” Warmth rose in Brenna as she savored the memory.
“When was this, now?” Jess asked, speaking loudly as they rode near the river’s fast, noisy current.
“It was after the four of us escaped from the Clinic.” Brenna patted Jess’s stomach. “But before Shann found us in the foothills. You told Kyla and Camryn that I was your adanin, so they had to accept me, too.”
“It was a struggle,” Kyla ad
ded, “but we managed it.”
“You two were incorrigible,” Jess grumbled. “I’ve never seen such a capacity for talk. A flood o’ words! Camryn and I thought we were going to have to drug you both just to save our sanity.”
“Really? To save yer sanity, missy?” Kyla mocked Jess’s brogue in dead-on imitation. “And you’d drug us both, eh? You and Camryn and what army, Jesstin?”
Brenna felt a touch of relief. Kyla had spoken the name of her dead wife naturally, for the first time in recent memory. And the gradual return of her banter with Jess was encouraging as well. Shann said the bond Jesstin and Kyla shared could not be severed by anything short of a chainsaw, and Brenna believed it.
“Hold up.” Jess touched her mustang’s neck, and their column halted.
“Is that a bridge?” Dana lifted a hand to shade her eyes and pointed at the neat split-log structure spanning the wide river up ahead on their left. “Well. Duh. I know it’s a bridge, but who built it?”
“More to the point, who’s on it?” Jess murmured, and Brenna craned past her to look.
It took a moment to see what Jess’s sharp eyes had detected. A slender figure stood in the center of the bridge, arms resting on the waist-high railing, facing downriver, away from them. It clearly wasn’t one of their sisters. Gender was impossible to determine at this distance, and the figure stood so still it didn’t seem alive until a breeze generated by the churning waters lifted a scrap of light brown hair.
Brenna tried to quell her first instinct that was, as always, to scream to her sisters, “Run!” A stranger in their midst didn’t have to mean disaster, but whoever this person was, there were questions to answer.
“Vicar, Hakan.” Jess lifted one long leg over Bracken’s neck and dropped lightly to the ground. “I see no weapons. No need to scare him, or her. But let’s go make our introductions.”
“Aye, Jess.” Vicar and Hakan dismounted, and the three women took a moment to check their arms.
Tristaine Rises Page 4
