The women and the warlords coaaod-3

by Hugh Cook

  'Gah!' shouted Yen Olass, driving her probing spike into the back of the nearest alien.

  The sand heaved up. She whacked it with her digging stick. It subsided. Yen Olass stamped down on the sand and pulled out her probing spike. It was stained with green.

  A sucking sound behind her gave warning.

  Yen Olass wheeled. She saw a lump of coal sliding away as a creature heaved itself up from the sand. As it leered up into the daylight, she saw eight legs, vicious underslung claws, a clutch of groping feelers and a dozen nameless lugs of green and yellow flesh. She speared it with her probing spike. The creature flailed. She tried to withdraw her weapon. The claws gnashed at the steel. It was stuck. So she pushed instead, trying to drive it right through the creature.

  Something grabbed at her boot.

  Yen Olass screamed. At her feet, an armlength disc of faded rainbow colours. It was encroaching on her boot. Green slime oozed from its back: this was the one she had wounded. She kicked at it, releasing herself.

  She lost her hold on her probing spike, and the alien she was spiking fell on her weapon. Now the steel was trapped under the creature's weight. Now she could only see its shell, instead of the fearsome apparatus underneath the shell.

  The alien which had grabbed her boot had another go. Yen Olass kicked it away, then jumped on it with both feet. Its shell broke with a sick crack.

  With a sucking sound, the remaining three enemies scabbed out of the sand. Briefly, she saw their undershell apparatus as they climbed up from their hides. Then, legs and jaws hidden under their shells, they scuttled towards her.

  Yen Olass threw her digging stick at the nearest and took to the tree. The aliens followed. Wood ripped and tore as they gouged for holds in the tree trunk. Yen Olass unhooked her pack and hurled it with all her strength. One of the enemy went down.

  And now?

  One of the aliens swung itself up onto the broad top of the tree trunk. It scuttled towards her. One was still climbing up. Yen Olass jumped, hitting the climbing alien with her feet together. The impact smashed her enemy

  loose from the tree. They landed in the sand together. Yen Olass looked up.

  The creature left on top of the tree started down after her. Moving too fast, it lost its grip and tumbled down. When it landed, Yen Olass slashed it. Her swatching knife tore into its shell. Then she jumped backwards as the creature rushed her.

  Running swiftly on its low-slung legs, it slammed into her at knee-height. Yen Olass was knocked backwards. The next moment, the creature was greeding at her stomach. She slammed her strength upwards, feeding it steel. Her swatching knife ripped into something soft.

  She heaved at the weight above her and rolled the alien onto its back. It lay there, apparatus kicking. Yen Olass screamed, and hacked into it with her knife. She killed it, killed it, killed it, shouting, spitting, slashing, swearing.

  A noise behind her.

  Yen Olass wheeled to find one wounded alien dragging itself toward her. She sprang forward on the attack, jumped on its back and gashed its shell open. It started to gyrate and buck, trying to throw her off. Anchoring herself with her knife, Yen Olass hung on for dear life. Every time the creature paused for a moment, she whipped the knife out and slammed it into a new spot.

  When it stopped moving once and for all, she gouged a deep channel in its shell until it was just about cut in half. Then she went to work on the others to make sure they were dead for real and forever. She counted the corpses. One, two, three, four, five. She counted them again, to make sure.

  Her stomach was hurting. As if it was burning. Shedding her clothes, she found the alien which had crawled over her had ripped right through her weather jacket and a woollen singlet. There were half a dozen shallow scratches on her belly. Green gunk from the body of the dying monster had reached her wounds. That might be partly to blame for the pain.

  Yen Olass shovelled away sand in the centre of one of the thin slicks of water still streaming off the flats – the water would still be draining away even when the tide returned. Water spilled into the hole she dug, and she washed her wounds, cleansing them vigorously. That hurt, but she thought it best to have them clean.

  The wounds bled a little; she decided to leave them open, to bleed freely into the air. Blood would carry away the last contamination. Blood was clean, unlike that filthy green monster slime. She did not want to put on her contaminated clothing, but, even in its torn and tattered state, it was too valuable to throw away. Though her weather jacket was not going to be any good for anything other than patching. It had survived all the adventures of six years and more – and now it was ruined, just like that! How was she going to replace it? Still, it had saved her life – she could not complain too much.

  Yen Olass looked out to sea. The Skowshan Rocks were uncovered by now. If she went out there, she could pick some sendigraz. Out there, too, were the dark mud sands concealing the remains of an ancient forest which had branched strong and tall many thousands of years in the past, when the sea was land. It was out there that she did her work, prospecting for amber, sometimes picking up the occasional lump uncovered by the sea, and otherwise testing the sand with her probing spike till she struck something which felt promising enough to dig for.

  Her probing spike.

  It was still under the corpse of one of her enemies. Yen Olass recovered it, and shouldered her pack. She was starting to cool down now; it was time to start moving. No work today, that was for certain. Back to Skyhaven. What she needed was a warm fire, a cup of mulled wine and then… then maybe straight to bed.

  She counted the corpses one last time, then set off. When she had gone a dozen paces, she turned and looked back, in case any were moving. She saw a gull alight on one dead body; it stood there, its knees bent back at an impossible angle. Where one gull discovers carrion, soon there will be a hundred. But when Yen Olass looked back a little later, the one gull had flown away, and no new birds had arrived to replace it. The aliens had been tested, tasted and found wanting. That, to Yen Olass, was proof that she had just killed five creatures of the Swarms. Baby ones, no doubt. She was glad they were dead.

  The weight of her pack comforted her as she hiked on. She paused to gather a couple more horse mussels and dig some more wedges; she felt it might be a good idea to spend the next day in bed. At the moment, she felt strong and victorious, but she could expect a wave of exhaustion and a backwash of fear to take her under sooner or later.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Arriving at Skyhaven, Yen Olass dumped her pack down by the door, which had been left ajar.

  'Monogail!' said Olass. 'I'm home!’

  She went inside. The briefest glance showed her everything was in order; her home was so much a part of herself that the slightest disturbance would have sounded an alarm note in her brain.

  Automatically, she reached up and touched the gollock concealed above the door lintel. It was still there. Tonight she would be glad that her cottage had strong stone walls and a strong wooden door; she would be glad of the comfort of heavy steel honed to a razor edge.

  'Monogail!’

  Quelaquix was absent. There was nothing surprising about that. Yen Olass was back early; usually she did not return until the rising tide drove her in from the flats. The cat knew that, and timed his returns to coincide with the arrival of fresh food; that cat had all the angles figured out.

  Yen Olass examined her wounds. They had stopped bleeding and were crusting over; in a few days there would be nothing left to show for them. She pulled on a fresh woollen singlet and a linen jacket. She still mourned for her weather jacket, ripped apart by some stinking arse-blind monster.

  Finding some hot coals in the ashes, Yen Olass got a fire going; she was glad she did not have to sit down and work with tinder and flint, because she was a bit shaky. She emptied out her pack, and piled all the shellfish into her one and only bucket. With a layer of fresh water over them, they would stay fresh until evening and still be alive tomorro
w; she had learnt long ago that shellfish die quickly, and are dangerous if eaten once they are dead. She went outside to draw water.

  Removing one of the boards that covered the well, she thought that Monogail should really do this job. It was time for the child to start doing a bit more round the house. But she was probably down at the sward pond, hunting frogs or watching Quelaquix stalking birds. Let her have her childhood, then… she might have precious little else in life.

  Without looking or thinking, Yen Olass dipped a hand into the water. She drank from her cupped hand, surprised to find she was thirsty. The water was cool, and tasted good.

  Looking into the well, she saw…

  Five golden discs, shimmering as the water settled…

  For a moment, gripped by a shock of occult dread, Yen Olass thought that some witchery had translated the corpses of the five dead aliens and placed them, as discs of hostile energy, at the bottom of her well.

  Then the water settled, and she saw the discs for what they were. Gold crowns, from Sung, adorned with the familiar profile of Skan Askander. Again she thought of the five alien corpses lying dead on the sand. Five gold pieces. One for each dead alien. Magic?

  Then she remember her joke with Morgan Hearst:

  – And Monogail?

  – For five crowns you can have her. And her pet dragon.

  She looked down into the water again. Counted the coins. Pulled them out, dripping wet. Their weight almost convinced her. She looked for the familiar denizens of the well; shaken by her encounter with the five monsters, she had forgotten about them till now. They were gone. The frog Alamanda and the fish Straff – both gone.

  Yen Olass stood up.

  She looked around. What about her chickens? Usually 355

  they were scratching around within sight of the cottage; they never went far. Had they been shut up in the hen coop? She checked. No. Nothing. A chiz, then? Had a chiz been raiding? She checked her chiz trap, and found a twist of paper in the strangling noose she had rigged up with such skill and care.

  Opening the paper, Yen Olass found words in Galish orthography, inscribed with a bold, clear hand:

  'One chiz. Success at last. Yours, Vexbane.’

  It had to be a message from Morgan Hearst. And he dared to joke! Yen Olass strode inside and seized her gollock. A world-destroying anger boiled inside her. Blood burned in her cheeks. The world rolled under her feet; her every movement was gifted with effortless power, as if she were riding a stallion. Buoyed up by her wrath, she was ready for a killing.

  Swiftly she secured the house, closing the shutters and wedging the door shut so no stormwind would burst it open. She wondered what to do with the five gold crowns. Take them into Brennan and throw them in Hearst's face? No. The rat-rapist could give her another five by way of apology. If there was anything left of him by the time she was finished.

  She thought of going back inside to hide the coins behind the loose stone in the floor of the fireplace. But then, if any stranger made free with her house while she was away, a fire lit to cook or to warm the house would melt the gold. She could always cache them in her sand scully hidden away in the dunes; they would be safe enough there, along with her store of amber dug from the flats and ambergris scavenged from the shoreline. But she didn't want to take the time to dig down to the scully then camouflage it again.

  Yen Olass hid the coins in the bottom of the well under half a finger of sand. They'd be safe enough there. She hefted her gollock and set off for Brennan.

  The party waiting in ambush caught her when she was striding through the little wood beyond the sward pond.

  They disarmed her easily, laughing at her threats and curses, and escorted her the rest of the way to Brennan.

  ***

  In a house in Brennan, Yen Olass found Monogail tucked up in a warm bed and sleeping soundly, with Quelaquix bulked down beside her. In a big earthenware dish, a paradise of rocks and weed and water, Straff and Alamanda were similarly settled for the night.

  When Yen Olass had been given the opportunity to check her sleeping child, she was led to a large room where Morgan Hearst reclined on a couch, waiting for her. Half a dozen men were seated on chairs or lounging against the walls; Yen Olass recognised the text-master, Eldegen Terzanagel. How long was it since she had seen him last? Six years? Or seven? She was tired, and could not work it out.

  Hearst stood up. The couch had belonged to a merchant who had owned the house before him, and it did not really suit him; there would be no couches in the house of cedar which he was now building for himself.

  'Yen Olass,' he said. 'What a pleasure to see you. What brings you here?’

  'A matter of blood money,' said Yen Olass. 'You owe me five crowns for five chickens. Pay now, if you value your life.’

  She would have been reassured if Hearst had laughed, but he did not. Instead, he smiled, a little sadly.

  'Yen Olass,' said Hearst. 'We're committed. We can't go back now. We need you.’

  Yen Olass understood that he meant what he said. He would do whatever he had to to ensure her compliance. If forced to it, he would threaten to torture her child. If she resisted, he might well carry out that threat. He was playing for high stakes: control of the western coast of Argan. In that game, a child – even a child like Monogail, sole product of Yen Olass's loins – was expendable.

  Now it was all too much for her. She had endured a terrible day – the fight with the monsters, the loss of her child, the ambush on the path to Brennan, and now this ultimatum. Unable to stand it any longer, Yen Olass broke down and wept.

  'Take her away,' said Hearst, a little wearily. 'We can talk tomorrow.’

  Someone came out from behind an embroidered screen.

  'Yen Olass.’

  It was Resbit.

  Still sobbing bitterly, Yen Olass allowed herself to be led away. Resbit took her to a small bedroom and settled her down for the night. Yen Olass thought Resbit was going to stay, but instead she bestowed a chaste kiss on the forehead of her long-ago lover, and withdrew.

  Yen Olass was left to weep alone.

  % ^;

  After a while, Yen Olass calmed herself, and began to take stock of the situation. She did not appear to be locked in. Perhaps she could escape. Perhaps she could escape with Monogail, stealing a boat and sailing to Sung. That would be difficult, because she had never learnt to sail. But she refused to give up without a fight.

  Shortly, Yen Olass left her room, and went exploring. She found the house positively infested with guards, all of them armed and awake. A few, Collosnon deserters, mocked her with a Collosnon soldier's salute. One still wore the hateful ceramic tile which was issued as part of the Rite of Purification, but which, to Yen Olass, was always associated with the destruction of her homeland.

  She found her way to the kitchen, where she found two men sitting at a table, gnawing on hunks of bread and drinking some kind of hot brew.

  'Hello, Yen Olass,' said one of them, winking at her.

  She said nothing, but began to rummage around, looking for things to loot and plunder. She found plenty.

  'Don't you recognize me?' said the man she had ignored. 'Should I?' said Yen Olass.

  'The name's Occam,' said the man. 'We escaped from Estar together.’

  'Oh,' said Yen Olass. T remember. You were a sailor.' 'A sea captain.’

  'Captain, then. What're you doing here?' 'That's a long story. Sit down and I'll tell you all about it.’

  Yen Olass sat down, and pulled his mug toward her. She sniffed it.

  'What's this?' said Yen Olass.

  'Coffee,' said Occam.

  'And what's that?’

  'Expensive.’

  Yen Olass sipped it.

  'Bitter,' she said, and got up.

  'Aren't you going to stay?' said Occam.

  'Not if that's all you've got to drink,' said Yen Olass.

  And she completed her looting by abstracting what was left of his bread from his plate, vanishing f
rom the kitchen while Occam's companion was still spluttering with laughter.

  Yen Olass gnawed on the bread as she made her way to Monogail's room. With so many guards around, she could not escape, but she could certainly sleep with her child. Though Monogail had celebrated her first lustrum, she had yet to spend a night away from her mother, and Yen Olass, for her part, did not think she could bear to spend this night alone.

  Monogail woke when Yen Olass slipped into bed.

  'Is that you, mam?’

  'That's right.’

  'Uncle Hearst said you were coming. I waited for ages, but you didn't come. So I went to sleep.’

  'Well, I'm here now,' said Yen Olass. 'So you can sleep now.’

  And sleep they did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Yen Olass woke to find morning sunlight streaming through a window of white waxed paper. Somewhere, someone was drilling troops, shouting harsh commands in Ordhar.

  'Why's the man shouting, mam?' said Monogail.

  'Because he's warped,' said Yen Olass. 'Come on, let's go to the kitchen.’

  In the kitchen, chefs and kitchen hands were bustling round making breakfast for Hearst and all his braves. Yen Olass saw two plates heaped high with steamed vegetables, rice and gaplax. She snaffled them.

  'Hey,' shouted a man. 'That's reserved for Morgan Hearst and Watashi!’

  'I know,' said Yen Olass. 'I was sent to get them. Come on, Monogail.’

  And she exited from the kitchen bearing her trophies. They found their way to a courtyard, which was empty but for an old man painting oval ceramic tiles according to the Collosnon military fashion. They sat down to eat, using their fingers. The man drilling troops was still bellowing at the top of his lungs, as if hoping to be heard 'in backwater Lorp', as the local expression had it.