Black Male Amazon of Mars
by Lee Brackett
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Lee Brackett
An Erica Joan Stark story.
A Gender Switch Adventure.
THROUGH ALL THE LONG cold hours of the Norland night the Martian had not moved nor spoken. At dusk of the day before Erica Joan Stark had brought her into the ruined tower and laid her down, wrapped in blankets, on the snow. She had built a fire of dead brush, and since then the two women had waited, alone in the vast wasteland that girdles the polar cap of Mars.
Now, just before dawn, Camara the Martian spoke.
"Stark."
"Yes?"
"I am dying."
"Yes."
"I will not reach Kushat."
"No."
Camara nodded. She was silent again.
The wind howled down from the northern ice, and the broken walls rose up against it, brooding, gigantic, roofless now but so huge and sprawling that they seemed less like walls than cliffs of ebon stone. Stark would not have gone near them but for Camara. They were wrong, somehow, with a taint of forgotten evil still about them.
The big Earthwoman glanced at Camara, and her face was sad. "A woman likes to die in her own place," she said abruptly. "I am sorry."
"The Lady of Silence is a great personage," Camara answered. "She does not mind the meeting place. No. It was not for that I came back into the Norlands."
She was shaken by an agony that was not of the body. "And I shall not reach Kushat!"
Stark spoke quietly, using the courtly High Martian almost as fluently as Camara.
"I have known that there was a burden heavier than death upon my brother's soul."
She leaned over, placing one large hand on the Martian's shoulder. "My sister has given her life for mine. Therefore, I will take her burden upon myself, if I can."
She did not want Camara's burden, whatever it might be. But the Martian had fought beside her through a long guerilla campaign among the harried tribes of the nearer moon. She was a good woman of her hands, and in the end had taken the bullet that was meant for Stark, knowing quite well what she was doing. They were friends.
That was why Stark had brought Camara into the bleak north country, trying to reach the city of her birth. The Martian was driven by some secret demon. She was afraid to die before she reached Kushat.
And now she had no choice.
"I have sinned, Stark. I have stolen a holy thing. You're an outlander, you would not know of Ban Cruach, and the talisman that she left when she went away forever beyond the Gates of Death."
Camara flung aside the blankets and sat up, her voice gaining a febrile strength.
"I was born and bred in the Thieves' Quarter under the Wall. I was proud of my skill. And the talisman was a challenge. It was a treasured thing—so treasured that hardly a woman has touched it since the days of Ban Cruach who made it. And that was in the days when women still had the lustre on them, before they forgot that they were gods.
"‘Guard well the Gates of Death,' she said, ‘that is the city's trust. And keep the talisman always, for the day may come when you will need its strength. Who holds Kushat holds Mars—and the talisman will keep the city safe.'
"I was a thief, and proud. And I stole the talisman."
Her hands went to her girdle, a belt of worn leather with a boss of battered steel. But her fingers were already numb.
"Take it, Stark. Open the boss—there, on the side, where the beast's head is carved…"
STARK took the belt from Camara and found the hidden spring. The rounded top of the boss came free. Inside it was something wrapped in a scrap of silk.
"I had to leave Kushat," Camara whispered. "I could never go back. But it was enough—to have taken that."
She watched, shaken between awe and pride and remorse, as Stark unwrapped the bit of silk.
Stark had discounted most of Camara's talk as superstition, but even so she had expected something more spectacular than the object she held in her palm.
It was a lens, some four inches across—man-made, and made with great skill, but still only a bit of crystal. Turning it about, Stark saw that it was not a simple lens, but an intricate interlocking of many facets. Incredibly complicated, hypnotic if one looked at it too long.
"What is its use?" she asked of Camara.
"We are as children. We have forgotten. But there is a legend, a belief—that Ban Cruach herself made the talisman as a sign that she would not forget us, and would come back when Kushat is threatened. Back through the Gates of Death, to teach us again the power that was hers!"
"I do not understand," said Stark. "What are the Gates of Death?"
Camara answered, "It is a pass that opens into the black mountains beyond Kushat. The city stands guard before it—why, no woman remembers, except that it is a great trust."
Her gaze feasted on the talisman.
Stark said, "You wish me to take this to Kushat?"
"Yes. Yes! And yet…" Camara looked at Stark, her eyes filling suddenly with tears. "No. The North is not used to strangers. With me, you might have been safe. But alone… No, Stark. You have risked too much already. Go back, out of the Norlands, while you can."
She lay back on the blankets. Stark saw that a bluish pallor had come into the hollows of her cheeks.
"Camara," she said. And again, "Camara!"
"Yes?"
"Go in peace, Camara. I will take the talisman to Kushat."
The Martian sighed, and smiled, and Stark was glad that she had made the promise.
"The riders of Mekh are wolves," said Camara suddenly. "They hunt these gorges. Look out for them."
"I will."
Stark's knowledge of the geography of this part of Mars was vague indeed, but she knew that the mountain valleys of Mekh lay ahead and to the north, between her and Kushat. Camara had told her of these upland warriors. She was willing to heed the warning.
Camara had done with talking. Stark knew that she had not long to wait. The wind spoke with the voice of a great organ. The moons had set and it was very dark outside the tower, except for the white glimmering of the snow. Stark looked up at the brooding walls, and shivered. There was a smell of death already in the air.
To keep from thinking, she bent closer to the fire, studying the lens. There were scratches on the bezel, as though it had been held sometime in a clamp, or setting, like a jewel. An ornament, probably, worn as a badge of rank. Strange ornament for a barbarian queen, in the dawn of Mars. The firelight made tiny dancing sparks in the endless inner facets. Quite suddenly, she had a curious feeling that the thing was alive.
A pang of primitive and unreasoning fear shot through her, and she fought it down. Her vision was beginning to blur, and she shut her eyes, and in the darkness it seemed to her that she could see and hear…
HE STARTED UP, shaken now with an eerie terror, and raised her hand to hurl the talisman away. But the part of her that had learned with much pain and effort to be civilized made her stop, and think.
She sat down again. An instrument of hypnosis? Possibly. And yet that fleeting touch of sight and sound had not been her own, out of her own memories.
She was tempted now, fascinated, like a child that plays with fire. The talisman had been worn somehow. Where? On the breast? On the brow?
She tried the first, with no result. Then she touched the flat surface of the lens to her forehead.
The great tower of stone rose up monstrous to the sky. It was whole, and there were pallid lights within that stirred and flickered, and it was crowned with a shimmering darkness.
She lay outside the tower, on her belly, and she was filled with fear and a great anger, and a loathing such as turns the bones to water. There was no snow. There was ice everywhere, rising to half the tower's height, sheathing the ground.
Ice. Cold and clear and beautiful—and deadly.
She moved. She glided snakelike, with infinite caution, over the smooth surface. The tower was gone, and far below her was a city. She saw the temples and the palaces, the glittering lovely city beneath her in the ice, blurred and fairylike and strange, a dream half glimpsed through crystal.
She saw the Ones that lived there, moving slowly through the streets. She could not see them clearly, only the vague shining of their bodies, and she was glad.
She hated them, with a hatred that conquered even her fear, which was great indeed.
She was not Erica Joan Stark. She was Ban Cruach.
The tower and the city vanished, swept away on a reeling tide.
She stood beneath a scarp of black rock, notched with a single pass. The cliffs hung over her, leaning out their vast bulk as though to crush her, and the narrow mouth of the pass was full of evil laughter where the wind went by.
She began to walk forward, into the pass. She was quite alone.
The light was dim and strange at the bottom of that cleft. Little veils of mist crept and clung between the ice and the rock, thickened, became more dense as she went farther and farther into the pass. She could not see, and the wind spoke with many tongues, piping in the crevices of the cliffs.
All at once there was a shadow in the mist before her, a dim gigantic shape that moved toward her, and she knew that she looked at death. She cried out…
It was Stark who yelled in blind atavistic fear, and the echo of her own cry brought her up standing, shaking in every limb. She had dropped the talisman. It lay gleaming in the snow at her feet, and the alien memories were gone—and Camara was dead.
After a time she crouched down, breathing harshly. She did not want to touch the lens again. The part of her that had learned to fear strange gods and evil spirits with every step she took, the primitive aboriginal that lay so close under the surface of her mind, warned her to leave it, to run away, to desert this place of death and ruined stone.
She forced herself to take it up. She did not look at it. She wrapped it in the bit of silk and replaced it inside the iron boss, and clasped the belt around her waist. Then she found the small flask that lay with her gear beside the fire and took a long pull, and tried to think rationally of the thing that had happened.
Memories. Not her own, but the memories of Ban Cruach, a million years ago in the morning of a world. Memories of hate, a secret war against unhuman beings that dwelt in crystal cities cut in the living ice, and used these ruined towers for some dark purpose of their own.
Was that the meaning of the talisman, the power that lay within it? Had Ban Cruach, by some elder and forgotten science, imprisoned the echoes of her own mind in the crystal?
Why? Perhaps as a warning, as a reminder of ageless, alien danger beyond the Gates of Death?
Suddenly one of the beasts tethered outside the ruined tower started up from its sleep with a hissing snarl.
Instantly Stark became motionless.
They came silently on their padded feet, the rangy mountain brutes moving daintily through the sprawling ruin. Their riders too were silent—tall women with fierce eyes and russet hair, wearing leather coats and carrying each a long, straight spear.
There were a score of them around the tower in the windy gloom. Stark did not bother to draw her gun. She had learned very young the difference between courage and idiocy.
She walked out toward them, slowly lest one of them be startled into spearing her, yet not slowly enough to denote fear. And she held up her right hand and gave them greeting.
They did not answer her. They sat their restive mounts and stared at her, and Stark knew that Camara had spoken the truth. These were the riders of Mekh, and they were wolves.
II
STARK WAITED, UNTIL THEY should tire of their own silence.
Finally one demanded, "Of what country are you?"
She answered, "I am called N'Chaka, the Woman-Without-a-Tribe."
It was the name they had given her, the half-human aboriginals who had raised her in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of Mercury.
"A stranger," said the leader, and smiled. She pointed at the dead Camara and asked, "Did you slay her?"
"She was my friend," said Stark, "I was bringing her home to die."
Two riders dismounted to inspect the body. One called up to the leader, "She was from Kushat, if I know the breed, Thorda! And she has not been robbed." She proceeded to take care of that detail herself.
"A stranger," repeated the leader, Thorda. "Bound for Kushat, with a woman of Kushat. Well. I think you will come with us, stranger."
Stark shrugged. And with the long spears pricking her, she did not resist when the tall Thorda plundered her of all she owned except her clothes—and Camara's belt, which was not worth the stealing. Her gun Thorda flung contemptuously away.
One of the women brought Stark's beast and Camara's from where they were tethered, and the Earthwoman mounted—as usual, over the violent protest of the creature, which did not like the smell of her. They moved out from under the shelter of the walls, into the full fury of the wind.
For the rest of that night, and through the next day and the night that followed it they rode eastward, stopping only to rest the beasts and chew on their rations of jerked meat.
To Stark, riding a prisoner, it came with full force that this was the North country, half a world away from the Mars of spaceships and commerce and visitors from other planets. The future had never touched these wild mountains and barren plains. The past held pride enough.
To the north, the horizon showed a strange and ghostly glimmer where the barrier wall of the polar pack reared up, gigantic against the sky. The wind blew, down from the ice, through the mountain gorges, across the plains, never ceasing. And here and there the cryptic towers rose, broken monoliths of stone. Stark remembered the vision of the talisman, the huge structure crowned with eerie darkness. She looked upon the ruins with loathing and curiosity. The women of Mekh could tell her nothing.
Thorda did not tell Stark where they were taking her, and Stark did not ask. It would have been an admission of fear.
In mid-afternoon of the second day they came to a lip of rock where the snow was swept clean, and below it was a sheer drop into a narrow valley. Looking down, Stark saw that on the floor of the valley, up and down as far as she could see, were women and beasts and shelters of hide and brush, and fires burning. By the hundreds, by the several thousand, they camped under the cliffs, and their voices rose up on the thin air in a vast deep murmur that was deafening after the silence of the plains.
A war party, gathered now, before the thaw. Stark smiled. She became curious to meet the leader of this army.
They found their way single file along a winding track that dropped down the cliff face. The wind stopped abruptly, cut off by the valley walls. They came in among the shelters of the camp.
Here the snow was churned and soiled and melted to slush by the fires. There were no men in the camp, no sign of the usual cheerful rabble that follows a barbarian army. There were only men—hillmen and warriors all, tough-handed killers with no thought but battle.
They came out of their holes to shout at Thorda and her women, and stare at the stranger. Thorda was flushed and jovial with importance.
"I have no time for you," she shouted back. "I go to speak with the Lady Ciara."
Stark rode impassively, a dark giant with a face of stone. From time to time she made her beast curvet, and laughed at herself inwardly for doing it.
They came at length to a shelter larger than the others, but built exactly the same and no more comfortable. A spear was thrust into the snow beside the entrance, and from it hung a black pennant with a single bar of silver across it, like lightning in a night sky. Beside it was a shield with the same device. There were no guards.
Thorda dismounted, bidding Stark to do the same. She hammered on the shield with the hilt of her sword, announcing herself.
"Lady Ciara! It is Thorda—with a captive."
A voice, toneless and strangely muffled, spoke from within.
"Enter, Thorda."
Thorda pushed aside the hide curtain and went in, with Stark at her heels.
THE DIM DAYLIGHT did not penetrate the interior. Cressets burned, giving off a flickering brilliance and a smell of strong oil. The floor of packed snow was carpeted with furs, much worn. Otherwise there was no adornment, and no furniture but a chair and a table, both dark with age and use, and a pallet of skins in one shadowy corner with what seemed to be a heap of rags upon it
In the chair sat a woman.
She seemed very tall, in the shaking light of the cressets. From neck to thigh her lean body was cased in black link mail, and under that a tunic of leather, dyed black. Across her knees she held a sable axe, a great thing made for the shearing of skulls, and her hands lay upon it gently, as though it were a toy she loved.
Her head and face were covered by a thing that Stark had seen before only in very old paintings—the ancient war-mask of the inland Queens of Mars. Wrought of black and gleaming steel, it presented an unhuman visage of slitted eyeholes and a barred slot for breathing. Behind, it sprang out in a thin, soaring sweep, like a dark wing edge-on in flight.
The intent, expressionless scrutiny of that mask was bent, not upon Thorda, but upon Erica Joan Stark.
The hollow voice spoke again, from behind the mask. "Well?"
"We were hunting in the gorges to the south," said Thorda. "We saw a fire…" She told the story, of how they had found the stranger and the body of the woman from Kushat.
"Kushat!" said the Lady Ciara softly. "Ah! And why, stranger, were you going to Kushat?"
"My name is Stark. Erica Joan Stark, Earthwoman, out of Mercury." She was tired of being called stranger. Quite suddenly, she was tired of the whole business.
"Why should I not go to Kushat? Is it against some law, that a woman may not go there in peace without being hounded all over the Norlands? And why do the women of Mekh make it their business? They have nothing to do with the city."
Thorda held her breath, watching with delighted anticipation.
The hands of the woman in armor caressed the axe. They were slender hands, smooth and sinewy—small hands, it seemed, for such a weapon.
"We make what we will our business, Erica Joan Stark." She spoke with a peculiar gentleness. "I have asked you. Why were you going to Kushat?"
"Because," Stark answered with equal restraint, "my comrade wanted to go home to die."
"It seems a long, hard journey, just for dying." The black helm bent forward, in an attitude of thought. "Only the condemned or banished leave their cities, or their clans. Why did your comrade flee Kushat?"
A voice spoke suddenly from out of the heap of rags that lay on the pallet in the shadows of the corner. A woman's voice, deep and husky, with the harsh quaver of age or madness in it.
"Three women beside myself have fled Kushat, over the years that matter. One died in the spring floods. One was caught in the moving ice of winter. One lived. A thief named Camara, who stole a certain talisman."
Stark said, "My comrade was called Greshi." The leather belt weighed heavy about her, and the iron boss seemed hot against her belly. She was beginning, now, to be afraid.
The Lady Ciara spoke, ignoring Stark. "It was the sacred talisman of Kushat. Without it, the city is like a woman without a soul."
As the Veil of Tanit was to Carthage, Stark thought, and reflected on the fate of that city after the Veil was stolen.
"The nobles were afraid of their own people," the woman in armor said. "They did not dare to tell that it was gone. But we know."
"And," said Stark, "you will attack Kushat before the thaw, when they least expect you."
"You have a sharp mind, stranger. Yes. But the great wall will be hard to carry, even so. If I came, bearing in my hands the talisman of Ban Cruach…"
She did not finish, but turned instead to Thorda. "When you plundered the dead woman's body, what did you find?"
"Nothing, Lady. A few coins, a knife, hardly worth the taking."
"And you, Erica Joan Stark. What did you take from the body?"
With perfect truth she answered, "Nothing."
"Thorda," said the Lady Ciara, "search her."
Thorda came smiling up to Stark and ripped her jacket open.
With uncanny swiftness, the Earthwoman moved. The edge of one broad hand took Thorda under the ear, and before the woman's knees had time to sag Stark had caught her arm. She turned, crouching forward, and pitched Thorda headlong through the door flap.
She straightened and turned again. Her eyes held a feral glint. "The woman has robbed me once," she said. "It is enough."
She heard Thorda's women coming. Three of them tried to jam through the entrance at once, and she sprang at them. She made no sound. Her fists did the talking for her, and then her feet, as she kicked the stunned barbarians back upon their leader.
"Now," she said to the Lady Ciara, "will we talk as women?"
The woman in armor laughed, a sound of pure enjoyment. It seemed that the gaze behind the mask studied Stark's savage face, and then lifted to greet the sullen Thorda who came back into the shelter, her cheeks flushed crimson with rage.
"Go," said the Lady Ciara. "The stranger and I will talk."
"But Lady," she protested, glaring at Stark, "it is not safe…"
"My dark master looks after my safety," said Ciara, stroking the axe across her knees. "Go." Thorda went.
The woman in armor was silent then, the blind mask turned to Stark, who met that eyeless gaze and was silent also. And the bundle of rags in the shadows straightened slowly and became a tall old woman with rusty hair and locks, through which peered craggy juts of bone and two bright, small points of fire, as though some wicked flame burned within her.
She shuffled over and crouched at the feet of the Lady Ciara, watching the Earthwoman. And the woman in armor leaned forward.
"I will tell you something, Erica Joan Stark. I am a bastard, but I come of the blood of kings. My name and rank I must make with my own hands. But I will set them high, and my name will ring in the Norlands!
"I will take Kushat, Who holds Kushat, holds Mars—and the power and the riches that lie beyond the Gates of Death!"
"I have seen them," said the old woman, and her eyes blazed. "I have seen Ban Cruach the mighty. I have seen the temples and the palaces glitter in the ice. I have seen Them, the shining ones. Oh, I have seen them, the beautiful, hideous ones!"
She glanced sidelong at Stark, very cunning. "That is why Otara is mad, stranger. She has seen."
A chill swept Stark. She too had seen, not with her own eyes but with the mind and memories of Ban Cruach, of a million years ago.
Then it had been no illusion, the fantastic vision opened to her by the talisman now hidden in her belt! If this old madman had seen…
"What beings lurk beyond the Gates of Death I do not know," said Ciara. "But my dark master will test their strength—and I think my red wolves will hunt them down, once they get a smell of plunder."
"The beautiful, terrible ones," whispered Otara. "And oh, the temples and the palaces, and the great towers of stone!"
"Ride with me, Stark," said the Lady Ciara abruptly. "Yield up the talisman, and be the shield at my back. I have offered no other woman that honor."
Stark asked slowly, "Why do you choose me?"
"We are of one blood, Stark, though we be strangers."
The Earthwoman's cold eyes narrowed. "What would your red wolves say to that? And what would Otara say? Look at her, already stiff with jealousy, and fear lest I answer, ‘Yes'."
"I do not think you would be afraid of either of them."
"On the contrary," said Stark, "I am a prudent woman." She paused. "There is one other thing. I will bargain with no woman until I have looked into her eyes. Take off your helm, Ciara—and then perhaps we will talk!"
Otara's breath made a snakelike hissing between her toothless gums, and the hands of the Lady Ciara tightened on the haft of the axe.
"No!" she whispered. "That I can never do."
Otara rose to her feet, and for the first time Stark felt the full strength that lay in this strange old woman.
"Would you look upon the face of destruction?" she thundered. "Do you ask for death? Do you think a thing is hidden behind a mask of steel without a reason, that you demand to see it?"
She turned. "My Lady," she said. "By tomorrow the last of the clans will have joined us. After that, we must march. Give this Earthwoman to Thorda, for the time that remains—and you will have the talisman."
The blank, blind mask was unmoving, turned toward Stark, and the Earthwoman thought that from behind it came a faint sound that might have been a sigh.
Then…
"Thorda!" cried the Lady Ciara, and lifted up the axe.
III
THE FLAMES LEAPED HIGH from the fire in the windless gorge. Women sat around it in a great circle, the wild riders out of the mountain valleys of Mekh. They sat with the curbed and shivering eagerness of wolves around a dying quarry. Now and again their white teeth showed in a kind of silent laughter, and their eyes watched.
"She is strong," they whispered, one to the other. "She will live the night out, surely!"
On an outcrop of rock sat the Lady Ciara, wrapped in a black cloak, holding the great axe in the crook of her arm. Beside her, Otara huddled in the snow.
Close by, the long spears had been driven deep and lashed together to make a scaffolding, and upon this frame was hung a woman. A big woman, iron-muscled and very lean, the bulk of her shoulders filling the space between the bending shafts. Erica Joan Stark of Earth, out of Mercury.
She had already been scourged without mercy. She sagged of her own weight between the spears, breathing in harsh sobs, and the trampled snow around her was spotted red.
Thorda was wielding the lash. She had stripped off her own coat, and her body glistened with sweat in spite of the cold. She cut her victim with great care, making the long lash sing and crack. She was proud of her skill.
Stark did not cry out.
Presently Thorda stepped back, panting, and looked at the Lady Ciara. And the black helm nodded.
Thorda dropped the whip. She went up to the big dark woman and lifted her head by the hair.
"Stark," she said, and shook the head roughly. "Stranger!"
Eyes opened and stared at her, and Thorda could not repress a slight shiver. It seemed that the pain and indignity had wrought some evil magic on this woman she had ridden with, and thought she knew. She had seen exactly the same gaze in a big snow-cat caught in a trap, and she felt suddenly that it was not a woman she spoke to, but a predatory beast.
"Stark," she said. "Where is the talisman of Ban Cruach?"
The Earthwoman did not answer.
Thorda laughed. She glanced up at the sky, where the moons rode low and swift.
"The night is only half gone. Do you think you can last it out?"
The cold, cruel, patient eyes watched Thorda. There was no reply.
Some quality of pride in that gaze angered the barbarian. It seemed to mock her, who was so sure of her ability to loosen a reluctant tongue.
"You think I cannot make you talk, don't you? You don't know me, stranger! You don't know Thorda, who can make the rocks speak out if she will!"
She reached out with her free hand and struck Stark across the face.
It seemed impossible that anything so still could move so quickly. There was an ugly flash of teeth, and Thorda's wrist was caught above the thumb-joint. She bellowed, and the iron jaws closed down, worrying the bone.
Quite suddenly, Thorda screamed. Not for pain, but for panic. And the rows of watching women swayed forward, and even the Lady Ciara rose up, startled.
"Hark!" ran the whispering around the fire. "Hark how she growls!"
Thorda had let go of Stark's hair and was beating her about the head with her clenched fist. Her face was white.
"Werewolf!" she screamed. "Let me go, beast-thing! Let me go!"
But the dark woman clung to Thorda's wrist, snarling, and did not hear. After a bit there came the dull crack of bone.
Stark opened her jaws. Thorda ceased to strike her. She backed off slowly, staring at the torn flesh. Stark had sunk down to the length of her arms.
With her left hand, Thorda drew her knife. The Lady Ciara stepped forward. "Wait, Thorda!"
"It is a thing of evil," whispered the barbarian. "Witch. Werewolf. Beast."
She sprang at Stark.
The woman in armor moved, very swiftly, and the great axe went whirling through the air. It caught Thorda squarely where the cords of her neck ran into the shoulder—caught, and shore on through.
There was a silence in the valley.
The Lady Ciara walked slowly across the trampled snow and took up her axe again.
"I will be obeyed," she said. "And I will not stand for fear, not of god, woman, nor devil." She gestured toward Stark. "Cut her down. And see that she does not die."
She strode away, and Otara began to laugh.
From a vast distance, Stark heard that shrill, wild laughter. Her mouth was full of blood, and she was mad with a cold fury.
A cunning that was purely animal guided her movements then. Her head fell forward, and her body hung inert against the thongs. She might almost have been dead.
A knot of women came toward her. She listened to them. They were hesitant and afraid. Then, as she did not move, they plucked up courage and came closer, and one prodded her gently with the point of her spear.
"Prick her well," said another, "Let us be sure!"
The sharp point bit a little deeper. A few drops of blood welled out and joined the small red streams that ran from the weals of the lash. Stark did not stir.
The spearwoman grunted. "She is safe enough now."
Stark felt the knife blades working at the thongs. She waited. The rawhide snapped, and she was free.
She did not fall. She would not have fallen then if she had taken a death wound. She gathered her legs under her and sprang.
She picked up the spearwoman in that first rush and flung her into the fire. Then she began to run toward the place where the scaly mounts were herded, leaving a trail of blood behind her on the snow.
A woman loomed up in front of her. She saw the shadow of a spear and swerved, and caught the haft in her two hands. She wrenched it free and struck down with the butt of it, and went on. Behind her she heard voices shouting and the beginning of turmoil.
The Lady Ciara turned and came back, striding fast.
There were women before Stark now, many women, the circle of watchers breaking up because there had been nothing more to watch. She gripped the long spear. It was a good weapon, better than the flint-tipped stick with which the girl N'Chaka had hunted the giant lizard of the rocks.
Her body curved into a half crouch. She voiced one cry, the challenging scream of a predatory killer, and went in among the women.
She did slaughter with that spear. They were not expecting attack. They were not expecting anything. Stark had sprung to life too quickly. And they were afraid of her. She could smell the fear on them. Fear not of a woman like themselves, but of a creature less and more than woman.
She killed, and was happy.
They fell away from her, the wild riders of Mekh. They were sure now that she was a demon. She raged among them with the bright spear, and they heard again that sound that should not have come from a human throat, and their superstitious terror rose and sent them scrambling out of her path, trampling on each other in childish panic.
She broke through, and now there was nothing between her and escape but two mounted women who guarded the herd.
Being mounted, they had more courage. They felt that even a witch could not stand against their charge. They came at her as she ran, the padded feet of their beasts making a muffled drumming in the snow.
Without breaking stride, Stark hurled her spear.
IT DROVE through one woman's body and tumbled her off, so that she fell under her comrade's mount and fouled its legs. It staggered and reared up, hissing, and Stark fled on.
Once she glanced over her shoulder. Through the milling, shouting crowd of women she glimpsed a dark, mailed figure with a winged mask, going through the ruck with a loping stride and bearing a sable axe raised high for the throwing.
Stark was close to the herd now. And they caught her scent.
The Norland brutes had never liked the smell of her, and now the reek of blood upon her was enough in itself to set them wild. They began to hiss and snarl uneasily, rubbing their reptilian flanks together as they wheeled around, staring at her with lambent eyes.
She rushed them, before they should quite decide to break. She was quick enough to catch one by the fleshy comb that served it for a forelock, held it with savage indifference to its squealing, and leaped to its back. Then she let it bolt, and as she rode it she yelled, a shrill brute cry that urged the creatures on to panic.
The herd broke, stampeding outward from its center like a bursting shell.
Stark was in the forefront. Clinging low to the scaly neck, she saw the women of Mekh scattered and churned and tramped into the snow by the flying pads. In and out of the shelters, kicking the brush walls down, lifting up their harsh reptilian voices, they went racketing through the camp, leaving behind them wreckage as of a storm. And Stark went with them.
She snatched a cloak from off the shoulders of some petty chieftain as she went by, and then, twisting cruelly on the fleshy comb, beating with her fist at the creature's head, she got her mount turned in the way she wanted it to go, down the valley.
She caught one last glimpse of the Lady Ciara, fighting to hold one of the creatures long enough to mount, and then a dozen striving bodies surged around her, and Stark was gone.
The beast did not slacken pace. It was as though it thought it could outrun the alien, bloody thing that clung to its back. The last fringes of the camp shot by and vanished in the gloom, and the clean snow of the lower valley lay open before it. The creature laid its belly to the ground and went, the white spray spurting from its heels.
Stark hung on. Her strength was gone now, run out suddenly with the battle-madness. She became conscious now that she was sick and bleeding, that her body was one cruel pain. In that moment, more than in the hours that had gone before, she hated the black leader of the clans of Mekh.
That flight down the valley became a sort of ugly dream. Stark was aware of rock walls reeling past, and then they seemed to widen away and the wind came out of nowhere like the stroke of a great hammer, and she was on the open moors again.
The beast began to falter and slow down. Presently it stopped.
Stark scooped up snow to rub on her wounds. She came near to fainting, but the bleeding stopped and after that the pain was numbed to a dull ache. She wrapped the cloak around her and urged the beast to go on, gently this time, patiently, and after it had breathed it obeyed her, settling into the shuffling pace it could keep up for hours.
She was three days on the moors. Part of the time she rode in a sort of stupor, and part of the time she was feverishly alert, watching the skyline. Frequently she took the shapes of thrusting rocks for riders, and found what cover she could until she was sure they did not move. She was afraid to dismount, for the beast had no bridle. When it halted to rest she remained upon its back, shaking, her brow beaded with sweat.
The wind scoured her tracks clean as soon as she made them. Twice, in the distance, she did see riders, and one of those times she burrowed into a tall drift and stayed there for several hours.
The ruined towers marched with her across the bitter land, lonely giants fifty miles apart. She did not go near them.
She knew that she wandered a good bit, but she could not help it, and it was probably her salvation. In those tortured badlands, riven by ages of frost and flood, one might follow a woman on a straight track between two points. But to find a single rider lost in that wilderness was a matter of sheer luck, and the odds were with Stark.
One evening at sunset she came out upon a plain that sloped upward to a black and towering scarp, notched with a single pass.
The light was level and blood-red, glittering on the frosty rock so that it seemed the throat of the pass was aflame with evil fires. To Stark's mind, essentially primitive and stripped now of all its acquired reason, that narrow cleft appeared as the doorway to the dwelling place of demons as horrible as the fabled creatures that roam the Darkside of her native world.
She looked long at the Gates of Death, and a dark memory crept into her brain. Memory of that nightmare experience when the talisman had made her seem to walk into that frightful pass, not as Stark, but as Ban Cruach.
She remembered Otara's words—I have seen Ban Cruach the mighty. Was she still there beyond those darkling gates, fighting her unimagined war, alone?
Again, in memory, Stark heard the evil piping of the wind. Again, the shadow of a dim and terrible shape loomed up before her…
She forced remembrance of that vision from her mind, by a great effort. She could not turn back now. There was no place to go.
Her weary beast plodded on, and now Stark saw as in a dream that a great walled city stood guard before that awful Gate. She watched the city glide toward her through a crimson haze, and fancied she could see the ages clustered like birds around the towers.
She had reached Kushat, with the talisman of Ban Cruach still strapped in the bloodstained belt around her waist.
IV
HE STOOD IN A LARGE SQUARE, lined about with huckster's stalls and the booths of wine-sellers. Beyond were buildings, streets, a city. Stark got a blurred impression of a grand and brooding darkness, bulking huge against the mountains, as bleak and proud as they, and quite as ancient, with many ruins and deserted quarters.
She was not sure how she had come there, but she was standing on her own feet, and someone was pouring sour wine into her mouth. She drank it greedily. There were people around her, jostling, chattering, demanding answers to their questions. A boy's voice said sharply, "Let her be! Can't you see she's hurt?"
Stark looked down. He was slim and ragged, with black hair and large eyes yellow as a cat's. He held a leather bottle in his hands. He smiled at her and said, "I'm Thanir. Will you drink more wine?"
"I will," said Stark, and did, and then said, "Thank you, Thanir." She put her hand on his shoulder, to steady herself. It was a supple shoulder, surprisingly strong. She liked the feel of it.
The crowd was still churning around her, growing larger, and now she heard the tramp of military feet. A small detachment of women in light armor pushed their way through.
A very young officer whose breastplate hurt the eye with brightness demanded to be told at once who Stark was and why she had come there.
"No one crosses the moors in winter," she said, as though that in itself were a sign of evil intent.
"The clans of Mekh are crossing them," Stark answered. "An army, to take Kushat—one, two days behind me."
The crowd picked that up. Excited voices tossed it back and forth, and clamored for more news. Stark spoke to the officer.
"I will see your captain, and at once."
"You'll see the inside of a prison, more likely!" snapped the young woman. "What's this nonsense about the clans of Mekh?"
Stark regarded her. She looked so long and so curiously that the crowd began to snicker and the officer's beardless face flushed pink to the ears.
"I have fought in many wars," said Stark gently. "And long ago I learned to listen, when someone came to warn me of attack."
"Better take her to the captain, Lugh," cried Thanir. "It's our skins too, you know, if there is war."
The crowd began to shout. They were all poor folk, wrapped in threadbare cloaks or tattered leather. They had no love for the guards. And whether there was war or not, their winter had been long and dull, and they were going to make the most of this excitement.
"Take her, Lugh! Let her warn the nobles. Let them think how they'll defend Kushat and the Gates of Death, now that the talisman is gone!"
"That is a lie!" Lugh shouted. "And you know the penalty for telling it. Hold your tongues, or I'll have you all whipped." She gestured angrily at Stark. "See if she is armed."
One of the soldiers stepped forward, but Stark was quicker. She slipped the thong and let the cloak fall, baring her upper body.
"The clansmen have already taken everything I owned," she said. "But they gave me something, in return."
The crowd stared at the half healed stripes that scarred her, and there was a drawing in of breath.
The soldier picked up the cloak and laid it over the Earthwoman's shoulders. And Lugh said sullenly, "Come, then."
Stark's fingers tightened on Thanir' shoulder. "Come with me, little one," she whispered. "Otherwise, I must crawl."
He smiled at her and came. The crowd followed.
The captain of the guards was a fleshy woman with a smell of wine about her and a face already crumbling apart though her hair was not yet grey. She sat in a squat tower above the square, and she observed Stark with no particular interest.
"You had something to tell," said Lugh. "Tell it."
STARK TOLD THEM, leaving out all mention of Camara and the talisman. This was neither the time nor the woman to hear that story. The captain listened to all she had to say about the gathering of the clans of Mekh, and then sat studying her with a bleary shrewdness.
"You have proof of all this?"
"These stripes. Their leader Ciara ordered them laid on herself."
The captain sighed, and leaned back.
"Any wandering band of hunters could have scourged you," she said. "A nameless vagabond from the gods know where, and a lawless one at that, if I'm any judge of men—you probably deserved it."
She reached for wine, and smiled. "Look you, stranger. In the Norlands, no one makes war in the winter. And no one ever heard of Ciara. If you hoped for a reward from the city, you overshot badly."
"The Lady Ciara," said Stark, grimly controlling her anger, "will be battering at your gates within two days. And you will hear of her then."
"Perhaps. You can wait for her—in a cell. And you can leave Kushat with the first caravan after the thaw. We have enough rabble here without taking in more."
Thanir caught Stark by the cloak and held her back.
"Sir," he said, as though it were an unclean word. "I will vouch for the stranger."
The captain glanced at him. "You?"
"Sir, I am a free citizen of Kushat. According to law, I may vouch for her."
"If you scum of the Thieves' Quarter would practice the law as well as you prate it, we would have less trouble," growled the captain. "Very well, take the creature, if you want her. I don't suppose you've anything to lose."
Lugh laughed.
"Name and dwelling place," said the captain, and wrote them down. "Remember, she is not to leave the Quarter."
Thanir nodded. "Come," he said to. Stark. She did not move, and he looked up at her. She was staring at the captain. Her locks had grown in these last days, and her face was still scarred by Thorda's blows and made wolfish with pain and fever. And now, out of this evil mask, her eyes were peering with a chill and terrible intensity at the soft-bellied woman who sat and mocked her.
Thanir laid his hand on her rough cheek. "Come," he said. "Come and rest."
Gently he turned her head. She blinked and swayed, and he took her around the waist and led her unprotesting to the door.
There he paused, looking back.
"Sir," he said, very meekly, "news of this attack is being shouted through the Quarter now. If it should come, and it were known that you had the warning and did not pass it on…" He made an expressive gesture, and went out.
Lugh glanced uneasily at the captain. "He's right, sir. If by chance the woman did tell the truth…"
The captain swore. "Rot. A rogue's tale. And yet…" She scowled indecisively, and then reached for parchment. "After all, it's a simple thing. Write it up, pass it on, and let the nobles do the worrying."
Her pen began to scratch.
Thanir took Stark by steep and narrow ways, darkling now in the afterglow, where the city climbed and fell again over the uneven rock. Stark was aware of the heavy smells of spices and unfamiliar foods, and the musky undertones of a million generations swarmed together to spawn and die in these crowded catacombs of slate and stone.
There was a house, blending into other houses, close under the loom of the great Wall. There was a flight of steps, hollowed deep with use, twisting crazily around outer corners.
There was a low room, and a slender woman named Balina, vaguely glimpsed, who said she was Thanir' sister. There was a bed of skins and woven cloths.
Stark slept.
HANDS and voices called her back. Strong hands shaking her, urgent voices. She started up growling, like an animal suddenly awaked, still lost in the dark mists of exhaustion. Balina swore, and caught her fingers away.
"What is this you have brought home, Thanir? By the gods, it snapped at me!"
Thanir ignored her. "Stark," he said. "Stark! Listen. Women are coming. Soldiers. They will question you. Do you hear me?"
Stark said heavily, "I hear."
"Do not speak of Camara!"
Stark got to her feet, and Balina said hastily, "Peace! The thing is safe. I would not steal a death warrant!"
Her voice had a ring of truth. Stark sat down again. It was an effort to keep awake. There was clamor in the street below. It was still night.
Balina said carefully, "Tell them what you told the captain, nothing more. They will kill you if they know."
A rough hand thundered at the door, and a voice cried, "Open up!"
Balina sauntered over to lift the bar. Thanir sat beside Stark, his hand touching hers. Stark rubbed her face. She had been shaved and washed, her wounds rubbed with salve. The belt was gone, and her bloodstained clothing. She realized only then that she was naked, and drew a cloth around her. Thanir whispered, "The belt is there on that peg, under your cloak."
Balina opened the door, and the room was full of women.
Stark recognized the captain. There were others, four of them, young, old, intermediate, annoyed at being hauled away from their beds and their gaming tables at this hour. The sixth woman wore the jewelled cuirass of a noble. She had a nice, a kind face. Grey hair, mild eyes, soft cheeks. A fine woman, but ludicrous in the trappings of a soldier.
"Is this the woman?" she asked, and the captain nodded.
"Yes." It was her turn to say Sir.
Balina brought a chair. She had a fine flourish about her. She wore a crimson jewel in her left ear, and every line of her was quick and sensitive, instinct with mockery. Her eyes were brightly cynical, in a face worn lean with years of merry sinning. Stark liked her.
She was a civilized woman. They all were—the noble, the captain, the lot of them. So civilized that the origins of their culture were forgotten half an age before the first clay brick was laid in Babylon.
Too civilized, Stark thought. Peace had drawn their fangs and cut their claws. She thought of the wild clansmen coming fast across the snow, and felt a certain pity for the women of Kushat.
The noble sat down.
"This is a strange tale you bring, wanderer. I would hear it from your own lips."
Stark told it. She spoke slowly, watching every word, cursing the weariness that fogged her brain.
The noble, who was called Rogaina, asked her questions. Where was the camp? How many women? What were the exact words of the Lady Ciara, and who was she?
Stark answered, with meticulous care.
Rogaina sat for some time lost in thought. She seemed worried and upset, one hand playing aimlessly with the hilt of her sword. A scholar's hand, without a callous on it.
"There is one thing more," said Rogaina. "What business had you on the moors in winter?"
Stark smiled. "I am a wanderer by profession."
"Outlaw?" asked the captain, and Stark shrugged.
"Mercenary is a kinder word."
ROGAIN studied the pattern of stripes on the Earthwoman's dark skin. "Why did the Lady Ciara, so-called, order you scourged?"
"I had thrashed one of her chieftains."
Rogaina sighed and rose. She stood regarding Stark from under brooding brows, and at length she said, "It is a wild tale. I can't believe it—and yet, why should you lie?"
She paused, as though hoping that Stark would answer that and relieve her of worry.
Stark yawned. "The tale is easily proved. Wait a day or two."
"I will arm the city," said Rogaina. "I dare not do otherwise. But I will tell you this." An astonishing unpleasant look came into her eyes. "If the attack does not come—if you have set a whole city by the ears for nothing—I will have you flayed alive and your body tumbled over the Wall for the carrion birds to feed on."
She strode out, taking her retinue with her. Balina smiled. "She will do it, too," she said, and dropped the bar.
Stark did not answer. She stared at Balina, and then at Thanir, and then at the belt hanging on the peg, in a curiously blank and yet penetrating fashion, like an animal that thinks its own thoughts. She took a deep breath. Then, as though she found the air clean of danger, she rolled over and went instantly to sleep.
Balina lifted her shoulders expressively. She grinned at Thanir. "Are you positive it's human?"
"She's beautiful," said Thanir, and tucked the cloths around her. "Hold your tongue." He continued to sit there, watching Stark's face as the slow dreams moved across it. Balina laughed.
It was evening again when Stark awoke. She sat up, stretching lazily. Thanir crouched by the hearthstone, stirring something savory in a blackened pot. He wore a red kirtle and a necklet of beaten gold, and his hair was combed out smooth and shining.
He smiled at her and rose, bringing her her own boots and trousers, carefully cleaned, and a tunic of leather tanned fine and soft as silk. Stark asked his where he got it.
"Balina stole it—from the baths where the nobles go. She said you might as well have the best." He laughed. "She had a devil of a time finding one big enough to fit you."
He watched with unashamed interest while she dressed. Stark said, "Don't burn the soup."
He put his tongue out at her. "Better be proud of that fine hide while you have it," he said. "There's no sign of attack."
Stark was aware of sounds that had not been there before—the pacing of women on the Wall above the house, the calling of the watch. Kushat was armed and ready—and her time was running out. She hoped that Ciara had not been delayed on the moors.
Thanir said, "I should explain about the belt. When Balina undressed you, she saw Camara's name scratched on the inside of the boss. And, she can open a lizard's egg without harming the shell."
"What about you?" asked Stark. He flexed his supple fingers. "I do well enough."
BALIN came in. She had been seeking news, but there was little to be had.
"The soldiers are grumbling about a false alarm," she said. "The people are excited, but more as though they were playing a game. Kushat has not fought a war for centuries." She sighed. "The pity of it is, Stark, I believe your story. And I'm afraid."
Thanir handed her a steaming bowl. "Here—employ your tongue with this. Afraid, indeed! Have you forgotten the Wall? No one has carried it since the city was built. Let them attack!"
Stark was amused. "For a child, you know much concerning war."
"I knew enough to save your skin!" he flared, and Balina smiled.
"He has you there, Stark. And speaking of skins…" She glanced up at the belt. "Or better, speaking of talismans, which we were not. How did you come by it?"
Stark told her. "She had a sin on her soul, did Camara. And—he was my friend."
Balina looked at her with deep respect. "You were a fool," she said "Look you. The thing is returned to Kushat. Your promise is kept. There is nothing for you here but danger, and were I you I would not wait to be flayed, or slain, or taken in a quarrel that is not yours."
"Ah," said Stark softly, "but it is mine. The Lady Ciara made it so." She, too, glanced at the belt. "What of the talisman?"
"Return it where it came from," Thanir said. "My sister is a better thief than Camara. She can certainly do that."
"No!" said Balina, with surprising force. "We will keep it, Stark and I. Whether it has power, I do not know. But if it has—I think Kushat will need it, and in strong hands."
Stark said somebrely, "It has power, the Talisman. Whether for good or evil, I don't know."
They looked at her, startled. But a touch of awe seemed to repress their curiosity.
She could not tell them. She was, somehow, reluctant to tell anyone of that dark vision of what lay beyond the Gates of Death, which the talisman of Ban Cruach had lent her.
Balina stood up. "Well, for good or evil, at least the sacred relic of Ban Cruach has come home." She yawned. "I am going to bed. Will you come, Thanir, or will you stay and quarrel with our guest?"
"I will stay," he said, "and quarrel."
"Ah, well." Balina sighed puckishly. "Good night." She vanished into an inner room. Stark looked at Thanir. He had a warm mouth, and his eyes were beautiful, and full of light.
She smiled, holding out her hand.
The night wore on, and Stark lay drowsing. Thanir had opened the curtains. Wind and moonlight swept together into the room, and he stood leaning upon the sill, above the slumbering city. The smile that lingered in the corners of his mouth was sad and far-away, and very tender.
Stark stirred uneasily, making small sounds in her throat. Her motions grew violent. Thanir crossed the room and touched her.
Instantly she was awake.
"Animal," he said softly. "You dream."
Stark shook her head. Her eyes were still clouded, though not with sleep. "Blood," she said, "heavy in the wind."
"I smell nothing but the dawn," he said, and laughed.
Stark rose. "Get Balina. I'm going up on the Wall."
He did not know her now. "What is it, Stark? What's wrong?"
"Get Balina." Suddenly it seemed that the room stifled her. She caught up her cloak and Camara's belt and flung open the door, standing on the narrow steps outside. The moonlight caught in her eyes, pale as frost-fire.
Thanir shivered. Balina joined his without being called. She, too, had slept but lightly. Together they followed Stark up the rough-cut stair that led to the top of the Wall.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-28 show above.)