Diana’s years of training came into play. Fear did not cloud her judgment. Her mind merely went through the logical sequence of alternatives. She stepped back and drew her sword. It was a Zon longsword with a blade of hardened carbon steel, forged in the fifty-fold process from the old world. Its razor-sharp edge glinted in the dim light. In these few seconds, the man had moved to the center of the cave. She hefted her sword in a two-handed grip, her own eyes now cold and emotionless, undeterred by his hostile gaze. He released his staff, and it remained vertical, standing untouched as though it grew from the floor. He drew his own sword and faced her.
His sword was bright, and the metal gave off a bluish glow. As he hefted it, it grew brighter. The cave was large enough for them to circle each other warily. She maneuvered her blade, keeping it level for both thrust and parry. The coldness in his eyes was momentarily replaced by heat, and she saw his lust. An old Zon saw ran through her mind: “He is weak, like all men. His lust will be his undoing.”
She swung first, feinting. He met it, and their blades rang. She quickly made her main thrust, aiming to impale his sternum on her long blade, but he parried. Their battle was now joined, and they hacked and parried, fighting expertly, neither seeming to find an opening. She felt that her offensive was effective, for he retreated, a half step at a time. Diana was soon covered with sweat, and her uniform clung to her body. She wished she had unbuckled her weapons belt to increase her mobility. She fought on grimly, striving to create an opening, her focus and concentration complete.
Then her adversary seemed to grow in strength. He began to counterattack, and his blows began to knock her parries aside. Each one now sent sharp twinges of pain through her wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Her breath began to come in shuddering gasps. A sharp squeal was forced from her lungs with the huge effort of each parry. He began to increase the intensity of his attacks, and she was forced back toward the wall. Finally, the weight of his attack began to tell, and her parries grew weaker. She knew that she was open between parries—he could kill her now. But he did not. He seemed to delight in her weakness, toying with her as he brushed aside her defensive moves. Her entire body ached from the effort. And then, with a sharp blow that rang of finality, he struck a heavy blow very close to the hilt of her sword, and it fell from her nerveless fingers. It clattered on the floor, and he kicked it away, out of reach.
Her back was against the cave wall, but she took a defensive stance, breathing heavily. Beads of sweat coursed down her neck. Her uniform of armored lyntronex was designed to wick moisture, but her efforts had been so intense that it was soaking wet. But her gray, almost colorless eyes were still watchful and emotionless.
He sheathed his sword. Stepping up to her, he contemptuously brushed aside her blows and grasped her throat above her uniform choker with his left hand. With her throat between his thumb and middle finger, he began to throttle her. Diana knew herself to be extremely strong, but she could not believe his strength. Both her hands were on his wrist, attempting to dislodge his grip on her throat. Her powerful shoulder muscles and biceps bulged with the effort, but she could make no impression on him. Now the lust returned to his eyes, making them hot and bright. His intentions were crystal clear.
She continued to twist and struggle, to no avail. Diana had fought many fights, but she had never been so physically dominated in her life. She could not believe how helpless she was. Each time she twisted, he choked her harder, until she weakened from lack of air. Her struggles and even her gasping for air seemed to please him.
She struggled desperately now, marshaling every muscle in her exhausted body. His strangling grip was really hurting her. As she struggled to draw air into her lungs, her hoarse intakes of breath had a note of desperation. He was mocking her now, mauling her breasts through her uniform with his free right hand and smacking his lips. She thought she heard a gravelly whisper, “Such a sweet body, even sweeter than I expected…”
Diana would never give up, but she was beginning to feel the hopelessness of her predicament. Just then, she felt his grip on her throat suddenly weaken. She threw her remaining strength into breaking his chokehold. She was able to free herself from his grip, and he was forced back a step and then another step. Breathing heavily, she struck him viciously in the face with a Zon “thok” blow. He staggered back, and she scrambled over to pick up her sword. She raised the sword and went after him for the kill. He was retreating, but it did not appear to be of his own volition. He seemed to be dragged by some invisible force; his hands flailed the air behind him. Then suddenly, there was the same hum she had heard at the beginning, and he was gone.
Diana lowered her sword and leaned on it, breathing heavily. She turned around in a complete circle, sweeping the entire cave with her night vision. There was nothing to be seen but bare rock. At the far end of this second cave was another portal, leading deeper into the mountain. She tried to open a comm channel to Hebe in the airboat again. There was still nothing but static in response to her repeated calls.
She looked down at herself. Her throat was raw and painful from his choking. Activating her visor mirror, she could see an angry red welt forming parallel to her choker. Her uniform was soaked through with sweat. She felt light-headed, and the cave floor began to spin, faster, faster. She tried to steady herself on her sword, but the dizziness got worse. She staggered, lost her footing, and fell. The world went black.
She did not know how long she was out. She came to slowly, as though she were rising out of a deep pool. She sat up gingerly. The first thing she did was to open a comm channel to the airboat. This time it was clear.
“Seignora Diana here,” she said, taking care to keep her tone level and unemotional. “Hebe, could you join me in the beacon cave? I’ll leave the comm channel open so you can home in on me.”
“I hear and obey, Seignora Diana.” Diana was vastly relieved to hear Hebe’s familiar voice.
She stood up and found to her surprise that the dizziness was gone. She walked into the outer cave and tapped her wrist bracer to open the door. Snow swirled into the equipment cave from the raging blizzard outside, but Diana was comfortable in her temperature shield.
She felt her uniform with her fingers, her mind registering astonishment when she found the lyntronex dry. She raised her shoulder pad to bring it close to her nose. There was no smell of sweat—just a faint whiff of her lime-scented laundry fluid. Suspicious now, she drew her laser pistol. It was fully charged and had not been fired. She activated her visor mirror again and examined her throat closely, running her fingers over it and sliding her choker up and down. It bore no bruises or marks, and she felt no pain. “Goddess Ma,’ she muttered. ‘What brought on this hallucination?”
Hebe entered the cave out of the driving snow and stamped her thigh boots, jerking Diana out of her reverie.
“Anything wrong, Seignora?” she asked, snapping up her helmet visor.
“No, no. I just thought it would be good for you to know the location of the beacon.” She smiled. “And you can hump the pack with the old batteries back to the boat.”
As they trudged back to the airboat, Diana kept looking over her shoulder at the closed door to the cave. When they were airborne back to Atlantic City, she debated whether to record her hallucination in the mission log. They’ll think I’m crazy or overstressed and take me out of the field, she thought. She decided against it.
PART I
‘…imagine a world without men…no Y-chromosomes to enslave the feminine. The destructive spiral of greed and ambition fuelled by sexual selection diminishes and, as a direct result, the sickness of our planet eases. The world no longer reverberates with the sound of men’s clashing antlers and the grim repercussions of private and public warfare. The great sexual experiment, begun eons ago in our single-celled ancestors, is over. Mitochrondria and the female have finally triumphed over their ancient adversaries…and Gaia can resume her broken sleep.’
–Bryan Sykes
Adam’s c
urse: a future without men
W.W.Norton & Co., 2004.
ONE
CAITLIN D’ORR PUT up her right hand, and the column of Zon huntresses came to a halt at the edge of the drawbridge. They sat erect in their saddles, spurs jingling softly and their highly polished equipage glinting in the sun, their circle-cross Zon banner and the plumes on their ceremonial helmets waving in the warm breeze. They all wore the uniform of the elite Cohort of Palace Guardians. At the other end of the drawbridge, a receiving company of the Brigon Royal Black Regiment was arrayed in the shadow of the barbican that fronted Residency Gate. The captain of the receiving company clattered forward and stopped in front of her. His manner was formal rather than friendly.
“Welcome to Dreslin Center, Seignora Lady Caitlin,” he said, both hands firmly on his saddle horn. “We will escort you to the Royal Audience Hall.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Caitlin was equally formal. The receiving company wheeled and led the way back through the barbican and into the city. There was another half of the company inside the barbican, and they formed up behind Caitlin’s ten huntresses. It had been over a year now, but this ride through the city streets, outnumbered five to one by the Royal Blacks, still made her tense. Her right hand rested on the butt of her laser pistol, and through her darkened visor, her eyes restlessly scanned the crowds of people on the roadside, in windows, and on balconies. They were sullen and silent, but they invariably turned out in large numbers to watch the huntresses parade through the city. As always, the smells of Dreslin, equal parts garbage and human waste, assaulted her sensitive Zon nose. The stench of the barbarians, she thought.
The crowds were overwhelmingly male. The few Brigon women in evidence were covered from head to foot, in marked contrast to the huntresses. Caitlin always found this stark indicator of the barbarian patriarchy unsettling.
The street they rode on curved and curved again, winding its way around the high hill with the Great Stony Keep as its crown. They halted again in Castle Square, forming up in front of the Inner Barbican of the Great Stony Keep, in reality a huge citadel in its own right. The drawbridge was down, the portcullis was up, and a more sumptuously attired unit of the Royal Black Regiment awaited them here, led by the Lord Commandant of the Great Stony Keep, Cornel Baron Luttwick da Coel. They exchanged greetings and rode into the keep, surrounded now by more than a hundred troopers.
They clattered across the outer ward, through the inner gate into the bailey, and past a series of towers and halls till they halted again in the High Square, enveloped on two sides by the Royal Palace and on the third by the Royal Audience Hall. The fourth side was open to a commanding view of the city below. Beyond the city, on the other side of the mighty Amu-Shan River, was an equally high hill, crowned by the clean, white walls of the Zon Residency. There were no other structures on this hill—the Zon had razed everything when they built their embassy six hundred years before. Caitlin looked at the Residency and wished she were back there, safe within its clean, modern environs.
She broke out of her daydream to see Baron da Coel looking at her impatiently. She nodded to him and swung down from her saddle, her huntresses following suit. Grooms materialized and ran to take the big Zon horses. As her huntresses were escorted away to a subsidiary reception chamber, Caitlin walked with her aide and best friend, Seignora Megara Paurina, to the huge main doors of the Royal Audience Hall through a corridor formed by da Coel’s mounted troopers. Two giants of the Royal Life Guard regiment were by the doors. Life Guards were required to have a height of over two meters, so even though both Caitlin and Megara were very tall, they had to crane their necks to see their impassive faces. They soundlessly swung the doors inward. Caitlin and Megara took off their helmets, put them under their arms, and shook out their hair. Then, with a reassuring glance at each other, they entered the enormous throne room.
As they approached the herald, he consulted his list and called out in a carrying voice, “Seignora Lady Caitlin d’Orr, Third Officer of the Zon Residency, and her aide, Seignora Megara Paurina!”
There was an immediate silence in the throne room. Scores of gentry were crowded on the benches, and hundreds more of lesser folk were in the viewing galleries. Caitlin’s eyes widened in surprise—the Residency had received no intimation of anything unusual in today’s audience. They had expected a routine weekly Audience Day with the First Minister, old Baron Ratto va Haxos seated on the Throne, dispensing the king’s justice in small cases of money owed or sheep stolen. Instead, the king himself sat on the Aerie, as the Eagle Throne was called. Lady Selene Allerand, the Zon Resident and a civilian, should have been there. Caitlin knew that her presence would be taken as a slight and perhaps a provocation—she would be viewed as a junior functionary and worse, as a military officer. The Brigons were prickly and quick to take offense. The last thing the Zon needed right now was tension with the world’s largest and most powerful kingdom. But there was nothing to do now but go through with it.
She brushed an errant strand of her bright red hair out of her eyes, and they walked down the long aisle, ignoring the craning necks and the staring, mostly male multitudes in the galleries. Their thigh boots clattered on the flagstones as they passed the front rank of benches and crossed the large, open audience floor. They ascended two steps to the dais on which the king’s Privy Council was seated at two long, dark tables, one on each side of the throne. Baron va Haxos was seated at the table on the king’s right-hand side.
The Aerie itself was a further two steps higher, an enormous ten-meter-high conical structure of bronze, richly inlaid with carved twigs and leaves of silver and gold. At the top soared a giant gilded eagle, talons grasping the rim and wings fully extended as though the bird were poised for flight. At the base of the structure was the throne itself with two gold arms in the shape of eagles’ heads. Two members of the king’s Life Guard regiment in full dress uniform stood on each side of the throne itself, each grasping a long pike.
King Harald the Fifth was just thirty. He had been on the throne since infancy, and his House of Shelsor had ruled Briga since the Zon conquest. He had a full head of light brown hair and a characteristic Shelsor hooked nose. His blue eyes were usually merry but were now rather dull and bored. The formal Briga crown of gold eagle feathers was on his head. He fixed them both with his gaze, but he said nothing. His Royal Speaker, another giant in a much-medaled and beribboned uniform, stepped forward and descended the two steps to the huntresses, putting out his hand. Caitlin drew her credential parchment from her belt and handed it to him in silence. He unrolled it, scanned it briefly, and bowed to his king, who nodded.
He turned back to them and spoke in a carrying voice, “In the name of Harald the Fifth, the Law-Giver, the Merciful, Protector of the True Faith, and Lord of the Kingdom of Briga and its Dependencies, I welcome you to this audience. Do you have any words before you take your seats?”
Caitlin’s response was rehearsed. “O King, I bring the greetings and good wishes of the Queen Empress and all of the Zon Sisterhood for your health, long life, and prosperity.” Her Brigish was very good, but her singsong Zon accent was very strong. “And the same for the glorious kingdom of Briga.”
“Please take your seats,” the Speaker intoned. The king inclined his head, and both huntresses performed the traditional half bows, polite and respectful but consistent with equality of status. The Zon paid minimal and carefully metered respect to rulers of vassal states. However, they did back to the edge of the dais before turning for their seats.
The Zon seat on the king’s Privy Council was the last one on the king’s right. Caitlin went over and took her seat behind the dark table. Megara descended to the audience floor and took a seat in the front row of benches, a striking raven-haired figure who stood out from the richly dressed gentry around her.
The Royal Speaker cleared his throat, drew a parchment from his sleeve, unrolled it, and read, “The next item of business: Venaj of Chenak and his daughter, Nitya, both Y
engars, accused of heresy and of practicing sorcery and the dark arts, to face the king’s justice. Bring in the prisoners.”
There was an immediate buzz in the large audience. So this is why they are all here and why the king’s here as well, Caitlin thought. She had heard of these heresy trials but had never seen one. She did not have long to wait. Four troopers led the prisoners in from the entrance on the king’s right to the audience floor. Their wrists were manacled, and their ankles were in leg irons. Venaj was probably past fifty, which was old for a barbarian, tall, but slightly stooped. His head was shaved except for a long graying queue. He wore a white old-fashioned kilt, held up by a length of rope. His upper body was bare, and he wore three stripes of ash on his forehead, the mark of old-fashioned Yengar males. The daughter was a pretty child who seemed about eleven or twelve years old. She was tall for a barbarian girl, with jet-black hair that reached halfway down her back. Her eyes seemed too large for her face and were a luminous green dusted with flecks of gold, like the eyes of a cat.
Their chains clanked as they walked barefoot over the flagstones of the audience floor. When they stood facing the king, the troopers forced them both to their knees, holding their heads down till they touched the floor.
Alumus, the Red Khalif of Thermadan Mission and a member of the Privy Council of Briga, stood and turned around to face the king.
“Your highness, I will read the charges against the prisoners. The crime that brings them before the justice of your Highness is heresy, denying the One God and repudiating Lord Thermad, His prophet. Morever, they are accused of practicing sorcery and the dark arts.”
The Empire of the Zon Page 2
