The Women and the Warlords

by Hugh Cook

  'Yen Olass!' shouted Haveros.

  But it was too late.

  The metal petals closed up. Yen Olass was enfolded in darkness, and there, in a dark space filled with stars, she listened to the voices.

  -- What are you doing with a piece of ourselves? 'What piece?' said Yen Olass.

  -- That.

  With the word, the voices made her understand. 'I found it in the river,' said Yen Olass.

  -- In the change. 'I want .. .’

  -- You want to stay. 'No.’

  Something unpleasant started to happen. The darkness hardened and started to squeeze Yen Olass. The voices started to nag down into her brain, stirring up dead memories better left to coagulate down in the lower sump. The memories sharpened into events. Hands grappled and clawed. The needle stabbed. Yen Olass screamed.

  'No!’

  -- You want to stay. 'No!’

  -- You want to stay.

  A crushing pressure. A tongue flushed with saliva, forced against her face. Beef wrenched home, ripping her membrane. The needle stabbed home, and the old woman laughed. Chonjara! His boot slammed home, the Casting Board broke apart, the ivory Indicators scattered. The knife. Her mother's breast. A stone smashed into her skin.

  Yen Olass screamed:

  'You smegma-eating arsefuckersl’

  Silence.

  Floating stars.

  Yen Olass floated. All pressure was gone. She sensed the voices. They were cringing, appalled at the strength of her anger.

  'Do what I say,' said Yen Olass. 'Or you'll be sorry.' -- Join us. Stay. 'Do what I say!’

  The voices closed around. Deferential, this time. Lightly, they roused her flesh. Worked her wish. She trembled. Accepted her change with a sigh. Delighted, she waited for her release from the metal bud. She saw the petals start to open.

  Then, at the last possible moment, the voices hurt her. Lacerating pain ripped at her fingernails. She screamed as the bud opened. Looked down at her hands. And saw ten grey scabs. Her fingernails were gone.

  She screamed again.

  And did not stop until Resbit was holding her. 'What is it?' said Resbit. 'What is it, Yen Olass? What did they do to you? Yen Olass?' Someone touched her hands. 'Claws,' said Haveros.

  Tentatively, blinking away tears, Yen Olass looked at her hands. Held them close to her face. There was something there. Hard and sharp. Then grey scabs. Thick metal-slab fingernails, tapering to sharp chisels.

  'You'll be all right, Yen Olass,' said Resbit, comforting her. 'You'll be all right.’

  Yen Olass nuzzled her face into Resbit's comfort, and allowed herself to be calmed.

  'Did they try to hold you?' said Haveros.

  'They hurt me,' said Yen Olass. 'They tried to make me stay. They wanted . . . they wanted to eat me. I think. Take me all. Make me them.’

  'Did you wish . . . ?’

  'Not for this!' exclaimed Yen Olass, holding up her hands, anger replacing sorrow. 'They did this. They hurt me.’

  'That's enough then,' said Haveros. 'Whatever the thing 235

  is, it's waking up. It's getting stronger. We can't risk it again -- it's trying to eat people.’

  'You've got what you want,' said Toyd. 'Why should the rest of us be scared off? Because the girl got scared in the dark? Because she's grown a little cold steel? I can spare a bit of my beauty -- I want to eat.’

  And before they could stop him, he jumped onto the grey metal disk, and the metal petals closed around him.

  He was inside for a long time.

  When Toyd was released, he tottered forward. His mouth opened. He tried to speak, to scream. No sound came. He fell face-first and landed heavily. His skull broke open with a soft plop, collapsed gently into liquid and began to ooze across the floor. He was definitely, undeniably dead. Draven stepped forward and nudged at a growth that pushed out from his ribs. It was an embryo.

  'Is this what you wished for?' said Draven.

  As a pirate, he knew his anatomy, having cut up a few pregnant women in his time -- though more for sport than to satisfy a habit of inquiry.

  'No!' said Yen Olass.

  She most certainly had not wished for a child. Though perhaps the idea of a child had been at the back of her mind, and perhaps the alien voices had stolen that idea from her.

  'So what did you wish for?' said Draven.

  'I can't tell you.’

  'Why not?’

  'I can't tell you!’

  'You killed him,' said Draven.

  'I didn't do anything to him,' said Yen Olass.

  'She's pregnant!' said Quenerain in a shrill voice.

  'Pregnant?' said Yen Olass. 'What would I do with a child here? In the wilderness?’

  She knew that, sometimes, she yearned for a child. On the other hand, there were other times when she was thoroughly glad that she had no children to burden her. And it was absurd to think that she would wish to be pregnant at a time like this, when they were running for

  their lives in the forest.

  'Yen Olass,' said Haveros. 'If you'd really wanted 'It'll be born with yellow eyes,' said Quenerain viciously.

  'And people will stone it to death.' 'They will not!' said Yen Olass.

  'You see?' said Quenerain. 'She admits it! She admits it! She's pregnant! Made pregnant by wishing herself.' 'Unnatural bitch,' said Saquarius.

  Yen Olass saw they were convinced she had got herself with child without first allowing herself to be dominated by a man: and they hated her for it.

  'Still,' said Draven, kicking the dead body. 'He was warned. He had it coming to him.’

  And Yen Olass saw that Draven was glad that Toyd was dead. Those question about how Draven had survived the wrath of the Collosnon Empire had clearly worried him, as well they might.

  'Come on,' said Haveros. 'There's nothing else for us here. Let's leave.’

  And so they departed from that place, and went on up the river, leaving the castle to its mystery.

  Yen Olass, for her part, carried a mystery within her. Was she pregnant, or was she not?

  She sincerely hoped she was not.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Upriver from the castle, they encountered more of the strange starstone mushrooms growing in bunches of two or three. Further north, they found an ominous array of holes in the riverbank. These, big enough for a man to walk inside without bending, snorted steam and scalding water intermittently. There were seventeen of them.

  Haveros had no idea what this phenomenon might portend. But it suggested danger. Although this was only their second day of travel, he was unwilling to go any further north. He decided they would backtrack half a league then head east up a small stream. Then they would turn south, ultimately hoping to find refuge with Lord Alagrace. With any luck, Chonjara would be killed by the voices of the wishing machine at the castle, or else he would press on north and be destroyed by whatever dangers waited there.

  Following this plan, they hastened through the last hours of the day. When there was still a little daylight left, they halted, for they had found a cave. It was not a warm, snug refuge, or a plunging chasm mining the depths of darkness, or a luminous palace of quartz crystals and glowworms -- instead, it was a meagre hollowness, a wide mouth gaping open to the sky, more of an armpit than a womb. There were a few spider webs toward the back, but no secret places.

  The stream they were following ran by outside the cavemouth. Rain was falling again, coming down in a persistent drizzle from a darkening sky. They gathered wood, which was all damp or waterlogged. For kindling, they stripped the bark from a resinous tree, then Draven lit a fire. Yen Olass watched him, fascinated by his patience as he worked with tinder and flint. He had never struck

  her as a patient man, but, coaxing a flame to life, he revealed resources of infinite tenderness.

  Men could be so kind when they chose, lavishing love and care on infant fires, cherished weapons, a loyal pair of boots or a bit of soup they were nourishing with gentle heat. So why did th
ey have to be so cruel to Yen Olass? Nobody in this group had said the word yet, but she knew what they were thinking: dralkosh.

  As yet, there was no proof that she was with child: even if she was pregnant, it would be months yet before the thought sleeping in her womb grew large enough to swell her belly. So, for the moment, her companions could not be certain that she had really got herself with child. But what if she was pregnant? What would happen once there was undeniable proof?

  Sitting back from the firelight, Yen Olass watched the fatigued faces of her companions, finding nothing there to comfort her. Later, after the fire had died down, she lay in the darkness, staring at the stars burning within the stone globe she had recovered from the river. She remembered the way the voices had hurt her just before she escaped from the bud.

  What if there was a child, and the voices had hurt it? What if she gave birth to something with a liquid head or steel hands? Something dead? Or something .. . otherwise changed. Mad, maybe. Born without ears. Without eyes. Without bones.

  Very quietly, Yen Olass began to cry. Resbit was already asleep, snoring very lightly; there was nobody to comfort her.

  That night, Yen Olass dreamt of her homelands, dreamt of Monogail. In the moments just before waking, she was certain she had returned to those northern reindeer lands; waking, she knew otherwise.

  * * *

  When Yen Olass woke, everyone else was still asleep. The rain had ceased; mist obscured the stream. The grey

  morning light revealed trees bulking out of the mist. It was quiet, but for the low-voiced chatter of water talking to stone as the stream ran west toward the river.

  Yen Olass slipped outside and went to use the little toilet which had been excavated near the cave the previous evening. It was brimming over. There is nothing in the world more squalid and depressing than an overflowing shitpit; Yen Olass crept into the bushes and dug her own little cat-scraping.

  Granted such privacy, she examined herself carefully, looking for the changes she had wished for inside the metal bud. To control their virgins, the Sisterhood mutilated them. By abusing its members, the Sisterhood demonstrated a concern for discipline which confirmed its subservience to the Collosnon Empire and the empire's need for order and obedience at all costs.

  Yen Olass still remembered how she had fought. Someone had smashed her in the face, making her nose bleed. She remembered the taste of blood in the back of her throat. She remembered the grin of a razorblade sadist, the pain as a blade cut away her clitoris. She remembered the monstrous agony she had endured as flensing steel thinned the flesh of her lower lips. She had screamed and screamed and screamed. They had laughed at her. And the old woman with the needle had sewn up her vagina with strong cords which prevented it from opening far enough to accept a man.

  Now, the cords were gone, with not so much as a scar to show were they had once been; the full flesh of her lower lips had been restored, and the most sensitive part of her anatomy had renewed itself. Yen Olass was both pleased and frightened. Pleased, because the mutilation of her body -- an obscenity unknown in Monogail, though common in many other human cultures -- had always shamed and disgusted her. Frightened, because she knew the power of the empire, and knew that she had set herself up against that power by claiming her body for her own purposes.

  Creeping out of the bushes, she allowed herself a smile. She was Yen Olass Ampadara, pleased to be her own person making her own choices. Washing her hands in the stream, scouring them with a little gravel, she found a spot of rust on one of her fingernails. She was alarmed, but did not allow this to destroy her growing sense of triumph. She would treat her fingernails with boot grease, making sure they did not rust through. It was a small price to pay for the rebirth of her body.

  * * *

  That morning, the men went hunting while the women gathered snails and dug for worms. The mighty hunters returned toward noon with two frogs, a newt and a nest of baby birds. These, together with watercress and assorted invertebrate protein, made a meal which, though interesting, was less than entirely satisfying.

  After lunch, the men set off again, returning much later with a bear. They had surprised it in a clearing. It had fled for the safety of a tree, which they had cut down. The bear had been killed in the fall.

  This creature was not a wark, but a brown bear the same size as Yen Olass. The two boys, Shant and Mation, boasted outrageously about how they had chased the bear, and how funny it had looked falling from the sky. Yen Olass was glad when Draven, irritated by this prattle, cuffed them roughly and told them to shut up. She felt sorry for the bear: but she helped skin it all the same. It had been gutted already.

  While the bear was being skinned, the men talked about two strange creatures they had seen, fox-fur animals which seemed to walk on two feet before dropping down on all fours and hastening away into the undergrowth. They wondered aloud if these were any good to eat.

  This talk ended when the bear was skinned and a bright fire was blazing. Without waiting for the fire to die down to red coals, everyone hacked off chunks of bear meat,

  stuck these on pointed sticks and jostled each other as they contended for cooking space.

  Draven was ready to eat his meat rare, but Yen Olass cautioned him against it:

  'Bears are like pigs. They carry lots of diseases. You have to cook the meat properly.’

  'What do you know about bears?' said Draven.

  'There are more bears in Tameran than there are on the Greater Teeth,' said Yen Olass.

  That was true, as far as it went.

  In the end, Draven, grumbling, cooked his meat thoroughly.

  Bear was not as appetizing as pork, but they all ate with a will, then cooked more meat to eat cold later. Their hunger was now appeased, and they all felt stronger and more confident.

  They were ready to march.

  That evening, Yen Olass examined the lightweight coat of rabbit skin which she had bought so long ago in Gendormargensis. War had not been kind to it. She needed to replace it urgently, but how? Draven had already snaffled the bear skin. Fortunately her league rider's weather jacket, made to stand the punishing routines of military life, was lasting well. So were her boots.

  She greased her boots -- and then her fingernails.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Lord Alagrace was weary. He knew the truth: he was too old for campaigning. In particular, he was too old to go tramping for league after league through wet, damp forest in pursuit of mutinous officers. He said as much.

  'This is going to be the death of me,' said Lord Alagrace. 'Given the choice, I'd rather have died in Gendormargensis -- not in some nameless place like this.’

  'It isn't a nameless place,' said Yen Olass. 'It's called Nightcaps.’

  'Who told you that?’

  'Oh, everyone knows it,' said Yen Olass vaguely.

  'I asked you a question,' said Lord Alagrace, displeased by her offhand manner. 'Who told you that?’

  'A dragon. A little one. His name was Tiz. He was--’

  'That's enough,' said Lord Alagrace, with a sigh.

  He knew he should really have her taken out and whipped to bring her into line, but he lacked the energy to be sufficiently outraged at her misbehaviour. Besides, he still thought it might be possible to use her as an oracle, and if he expected others to accept Yen Olass as an oracle then it was important to refrain from having her beaten like a common slave.

  'Anyway,' said Yen Olass, 'you're not going to die. Not yet, not on a beautiful day like this. What's this? Wine? Here, drink some. Go on. It'll make you feel better. Where did you get it?’

  'The same place as we got those furs you're wearing,' said Lord Alagrace. 'It's loot from the pirate camp.’

  He accepted the wine Yen Olass poured for him, and watched her exploring the rest of his headquarters tent. It was tiny compared to the tent he had at the siege site at Lorford, but it had still taken four men to carry it through the forest.

  'You could have found me bette
r furs than these,' said Yen Olass. 'They smell!’

  'Don't worry,' said Lord Alagrace. 'Nobody's going to notice.’

  'They might, you know. When we kiss.’

  Lord Alagrace took this in silence. Yen Olass was bright, flushed, ebullient and irrepressible. Through all the years in which they had been associated, he had never seen her in a mood like this. In an adolescent girl with a handsome young lover, he would have attributed this mood to sexual excitement; in a mature oracle, it was hard to explain.

  'Have you been drinking?' said Lord Alagrace.

  Yen Olass made a formal bow and arranged herself at his feet. She looked up at him, her face demure.