Chapter 7
Of Seers and Swords
The Homestead affair
Joannie was suffering from a mysterious complaint and had to be half carried the last kilometre or so, and the gate to Homestead’s enclosure was shut behind the Docksiders by two troopers. The troop sergeant hailed Dorian.
“Been expecting you all day ladies, and Martha’s keen to see you pronto.”
“She’ll have to wait. Got a bit of trouble here. I think my guru needs some doctoring,” replied Dorian. The sergeant grabbed Dorian’s arm as she passed.
“Martha don’t wait on no one, so get to the bosses house now girl, and there won’t be any bother.” Dorian shrugged off the grasping hand.
“Don’t girlie me, fatso, I’ve been in more scraps than you can dream of and if you touch me again I’ll beat you so bad you’ll have to lay down for a month. Remember the Full Moon affair? That was me!”
The reddening sergeant stepped back, “Martha…”
But Dorian cut her words short, snarling, “sod Martha. We’re not due till tomorrow, so when Joan’s taken care of, then I’ll see your mad mistress, if I can be bothered. Move on gang.”
Sami slid the cosh back into her pocket and led the way to Constance Nesbitt’s place, where the old guru already had a cot prepared for Joannie to be laid on.
“Put her there, then you go to Frankie’s taverna. She’s prepared two rooms for you and there’ll be goat stew or something. I know what’s happened with Joannie, and can look after things here.” As they were leaving, she added, “there mustn’t be no trouble tonight. Doesn’t matter what them hellcat troopers get up to, you keep out of it. Sabe?”
With puzzled expressions, the girls agreed but asked why? “Can’t rightly say yet, but tomorrow is very important for Homestead. It’s not clear which way it will go,” and so saying, ushered the confused friends out into the darkening night.
Ma Nesbitt need not have worried so much, because the patrol was kept in check by Martha’s iron rule and sergeant Strake’s threats of vile reprisals. An uneasy calm descended on the village, and at the tables near the hearth in The Vine, the girls spent a quiet evening. They were surprised and delighted when Joannie Tulip joined them two hours later, but she offered no explanations for her short illness.
“Must have been a bad apple you gave me, Kes,” was all she said, then stopped abruptly when one of Frankie’s daughters brought more cider to the table.
“Aren’t you Kirsten? When did you get the call from Central then?”
“Never been further than the Gap, lady,” replied the now red faced girl, who scurried off into the kitchen. Joannie stared after her then raised her chin to sniff the air with half closed eyes.
“What is it, guru Joannie?” asked Lydia, at nineteen, the oldest recruit.
“I smell trouble girl, big trouble.” She lowered her voice and the others listened intently. “Looks like the old quarrel between Central and Homestead’s come to the boil at last. Central say that because Hood hasn’t returned, as all good Homesteaders say she will, then the villagers would be better off not wasting their time in the chapel. Old Nessie wouldn’t tell me any more. Said we’d got to make our own minds up about what we’re going to do. Seems like our beloved grandmother Violet has been paying too much attention to them crazy priestesses of hers, and has got ants in her head.”
“What will the Homers do tomorrow, Jo?” asked Dorian.
“Can’t see that clearly yet, but I don’t see too many worried villagers, do you? And there’s that Kirsty girl. Must see her again. Quiet like. That’s it, quiet like.”
When Frankie was asked where Kirsten was, she said that the girls had gone home to bed and she was shutting for the night, so why didn’t they all get off to their rooms as they must be tired after all that travelling.
Joan was up before dawn, and took a chair onto the flat roof of The Vine where she sat down and opened her mind to the feel of the waking village. She started to daydream about the possible events of the day, and all her inventions ended in the red mist of sorrow and death. Some of her visions were less red than others and offered a way forward, but some stopped suddenly with the black void of her own demise. She cleared her head of the myriad possible futures and reached out for the here and now. Ma Nesbitt was cooking something in a large kettle, Franki and her daughters were cleaning the taverna and getting breakfasts ready. Over in the old chapel, several girls were praying fervently, and Joannie could feel their emotions sweeping over her. They were… terrified? No, not terrified, but very anxious. She reached out further and felt the patrol troop over near the village hall where Beryl was still sleeping. A different set of emotions hovered just out of her reach in Tilly Vorden’s house where Tilly was being sick, but it wasn’t that that bothered Joannie. Soup for breakfast? She leapt from her chair and hurried down to the kitchen, where Frankie placed herself between the wild eyed guru and the frightened girls.
“Soup for breakfast, Frankie? You always do omelettes. Your customers developed strange tastes in their old age?”
Frankie didn’t flinch. “Shan’t lie to you, lady cos you used to be Homestead. There’s going to be some need for medical attention today so we’re boiling bandages. Now, you being ‘foreigners’ from Dockside, we don’t know which way you’ll jump when it comes time to let blood, so that’s all you get. Ma Nesbitt says that you can see better than most, so I reckon you’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
The guru’s senses were on overtime as she asked, “and what time do you expect it to start?” The tavern keeper hesitated and Joannie added, “you said it true Frankie Vine, and I’m still Homestead at heart.”
“Martha’s ordered everyone to be on the green at noonday,” Frankie said quietly.
Joannie spent another hour or so on the roof, sifting through the different messages the wind was bringing her. She gave up trying to make sense of it all and went down to meet the Docksiders for breakfast. Fried potatoes and some nameless sausages were shared out, then the weary guru and Dorian went walking through the village, and finished up in the chapel to talk through the possibilities. Although it worked better with two guru’s, Dorian started the ritual of ‘me and you’.
“Seems like Martha’s got a full squad here.”
“Plus the new lot from Gap.”
“Against Homesteads handful of hunters.”
“More than fifty against twenty.”
“The villagers are doomed before the start then?”
“No, there’s something else.”
“Will the dog clan join in?”
“Not until later.”
“If it comes to a battle?”
“A real battle? I see it now. It’s plain that they’re expecting it, and not just a bit of a brawl either.”
They were interrupted by Sasha. “Sami sent me to tell you that Beryl went to South Farm to bring in the yard hands, and she took Glen and Basher with
her. The sergeant’s fuming cos she should have gone alone, and hasn’t come back yet.”
“And…”
“Lydia was taking a pee behind the taverna and saw five girls wearing cloaks and hoods, come sneaking in through the fence.”
“And…”
“One of them is big! Maybe a forest giant?”
“Mmmm. Well done Sasha, now go back and tell the others to stay out of sight, and if they’re sent for by the patrol before we get back, then they’re to disappear into the old cottages. We still got some big thinking to do.”
Sasha left them with the new orders and hurried back to her friends.
“There’s strangers here Dorian, and I can’t see them clearly, or count them. If we’re not careful, we can all die here before the day is out. Decision time again.”
“Damnation! With what you’ve seen this morning, can you tell me our best way forward yet?”
“Not rightly sure what the best way means any more, but I think we have to take sides. We won’t be allowed to stay neutral in this muddy affair. Big things are afoot here today and we’ve walked right into the middle of it.”
They could come to no satisfactory conclusion, and they eventually returned to The Vine where they found their companions preparing for trouble. They were already dressed for trouble, loose clothing discarded, long hair plaited and pinned, and whetstones were being drawn down spear and knife blades as the girls tried to calm their ragged nerves.
At Joannie’s request, they all fell silent as she sat and closed her eyes then let her mind wander across the village again. Tilly was better now, Ma Nesbitt was with the ‘hooded’ girls who had sneaked through the fence, Martha’s aura was pulsing as she was still furious about Beryl taking her mates off, the sergeant was shouting at the new recruits from Gap, Kirsty was fetching water from the pump. There! Her aura had an odd echo to it? Now she had seen it, she could see others round the village. Kirsty, Tilly and at least five others were pregnant. The youngest girl she knew of was that Sarah Jugg’s child over Ibis way, and she was about ten years old. Now seven, all together?
“Yes, now it becomes clearer. They’re ready to fight for the greatest prize of all. The women here have been trained for today, and they’ll fight like demons.”
Her mind raced through the permutations of the day to come. The words came quietly, “Beryl and two more gone, fifty spears against Homestead…” The red mist swirled before her unseeing eyes.
“...Martha’s lot suffer but leave half the village dead.” She was whispering now and her fellow travellers strained to hear her words.
“Fifty spears and we make a flank attack on villagers… Easy victory, all villagers dead. Homestead in flames.” There was a pause and the girls waited expectantly.
“We all die before morning comes.” The girls gaped at her in horror, and Jenny Waverider was close to tears. They had never expected a death sentence to come from her mouth.
“Forty spears, and Strake leads the new recruits in that flank attack, we keep out of it… Messy victory, most villagers dead… Martha and me dead by morning.”
“Forty spears, and the flank attack stopped by us,” she shook her head. “No, by you”
Her eyes flew open and she looked round to address Dorian.
“This is Dockside’s decision, I don’t command in battle, only advise commanders, but until it’s over I’m Homestead again and I’ll be leaving you to take arms against Central. The future of our kind hangs in the balance today. There’s a man out there.”
The Docksiders gasped in astonishment.
“Don’t know where they found him but he’s not like the stringy fellow they had locked away in Central, and seven of the girls here are with child. This one's different.”
She paused a moment, and whispered, “Why can’t I see him properly?”
Then she gave a big sigh. “Make your choice carefully ladies. I’m asking you to fight for Homestead today, guarding my flank against the recruits from Gap and that evil sergeant. Likely you’ll win, and could gain a secure future for us all.”
“Is there a ‘but’ in there Jo?” asked Dorian, softly.
“Always a ‘but’ dear leader,” the guru replied, and left the girls to consider their course of action. Martha hadn’t sent for them yet, so in theory, they still belonged to Dorian.
First blood
It was nearly noon when Flossie Craken turned up with the order for the Dockside girls to report to the sergeant immediately, and enlist in Martha’s patrol.
“Inform your glorious leader that we will be over after a quick prayer in the chapel,” Dorian told her, and the unhappy trooper left the taverna, heading across the green.
The Docksiders made their way to the chapel where they bolted the door behind them, and Sami was sent to the roof to keep an eye on things. The villagers were slowly assembling on the near side of the green, and Martha stood in front of her motley crew of cut throats. She waved her hand vaguely behind her, then turned and swore at the priestess who hadn’t moved quickly enough for her liking. The reluctant girl read unsteadily from a scroll.
“It has been determined by the council of elders of Central, that the false prophet Hood has deserted her people, will not return, and that all record of her shall be removed from the Great History in Central Library. In the eyes of the all seeing godmother, Violet, it is an offence to make any prayer to the one named Hood, and all chapels dedicated to her shall be torn down.”
Martha narrowed her eyes and surveyed the silent crowd. 'What’s wrong with them', she thought, why weren’t they protesting?
“Furthermore, as the leader of this village has gone strangely missing and not found, all persons here shall be relocated for their own safety to Altmore, where there are numerous opportunities for employment and for worshipping the godmother.”
On the roof, Sami was joined by Dorian and they could see the patterns of the crowd changing below them. Then a loud, deep voice boomed across the village.
“Hear me, and you hear the voice of Hood.” A loud murmur started up among Martha’s troops and all heads were turning, to locate the speaker.
“Over there,” said Sami, “on top of the bakery.” Away to their right, a large figure was standing with arms outstretched. “It’s the man,” she gasped. “He’s huge. Beautiful day! He’s got no clothes on!”
“Before Hood was born, I was there to help create her. When she was a child, I was there to help her grow. When she became mighty, I was her servant, and she became my protector.”
Uproar ensued, and with all the troopers eyes on the speaker, the villagers threw off cloaks and shawls to don their round helmets and were quickly reforming into three battle lines as Martha desperately screamed orders at her stunned followers.
Dorian had thought she knew what to expect, but was amazed by the way the untidy crowd in front of The Vine had been transformed. Only fifteen in the front row, but they were the probably
the strongest women in the village, and had been allocated the mail shirts and round shields. There were about thirty of them with spears, and these also had short swords in leather scabbards hanging down their backs, whereas the rest of them, about another twenty or so, were carrying cleavers and hand axes.
She had no more time to watch as Sami spotted the movements predicted by Joan.
“They’re splitting like Jo said. Strake’s going left.”
“Come on kid,” said Dorian, “Time to give a hand.”
They gathered the others, and from the chapel, headed towards the left of the narrow green. While they were manoeuvring into position between the cottages, Martha had called for archers to kill the naked maniac on the roof, but Jade, Tilly and Kirsten were ready, and they shot down the patrol archers before they could carry out their frantic leader’s order.
“I see you Martha Torrent, and I am the last person you will set eyes on in this lifetime.” Sylvia was in the centre of the front line and Martha stared, wide eyed and open mouthed at the woman she had ordered killed less than half a year before. Joannie was on the left flank of the second line and she was the only one who didn’t have a spear. Although there were only forty eight of them, they were confident and didn’t give the enemy time to react but advanced eight paces across the small village green shouting “Hood” at every other step. It was payback time for years of abuse at their enemies hands.
“Halt and stand fast!” Simon bawled at them from his position near the right flank of the second line. He looked quickly left and right. “Who are we?”
“HOOD.”
“What do we do?”
“HOLD THE WALL.”
“Anybody stepping out of the line answers to me!” yelled Sylvia, who was in reality itching to draw her sword and charge at Martha.
“Let them come to you!”
“Hold the wall. They’re coming, they’re coming.”
The archers on the bakery roof were still picking their targets, and the troopers had the choice of fleeing or attacking. Martha drove them forward onto the shield wall which was not much narrower than the village green.
The wall held, and the short spears of the front row licked forward under and over the shields to seek out their soft targets. Ankles, legs, eyes, arms. Hit them anywhere and make them bleed. Put fear into their hearts and they make mistakes.
Thrust, pull back and thrust again and the leaf shaped blades became sticky with blood, while the rigid discipline of their training held them together as a unit.
Simon yelled to make himself heard above the screaming of more than a hundred women and girls. “Six paces… Advance.”
The lines moved slowly forward, and following Simon was Posy Tong, twenty two, and carrying his child in her womb. The trooper who lay crying on the ground before her was probably bleeding to death, but Posy swung her axe and it bit into the girls neck, silencing her cries for ever. All along the line, it was the same. Thrust, recover, thrust again and move, and occasionally arrows flew over their heads as the four archers on the bakery roof picked out a clear target. Behind the advancing lines, the grass was becoming slick with the blood of the fallen, and all the enemy fallen were dead, because all who went down wounded were helped on their way to the afterlife by the cleaners. At fourteen, Tanya was the youngest on the back line, but didn’t shy away from her grim task, and four of the back line were pregnant, fighting with determination for their children’s futures. Behind and to each side of the cleaners were another seventeen older villagers, poorly armed and without armour, there as an emergency reserve force, and they all prayed that they wouldn’t be needed.
They weren’t.
It had taken precious minutes for sergeant Strake to organise the Gap recruits into a unit, and when they charged round their right flank between the cottage and the forge, Dorian’s group were already waiting for them.
“We don’t want to kill the Gap girls,” she whispered to her, as yet, untried followers. “Try to keep them away from me, while I go for Strake.”
Not within living memory had a Docksider been involved in anything like this. She and Sami had been in some unsavoury barroom fights, including the infamous Full Moon riot at Gap, which had involved brass knuckles and knives, but this was open warfare. To actually use swords and spears on other people? This was something new to all of them.
Sasha Whalebone had brought her bow, and knowing she would only get one arrow away, kept it aimed low. To get a hit anywhere would be better than sending it over their enemies heads. Strake and the eight recruits came round the forge corner, and Sasha let the arrow loose. A recruit went down crying with pain, the arrow showing both sides of her thigh, but Strake urged them on with threats and curses. Afterwards, no two of them could retell the events of those confusing few minutes the same way, but the outcome of it was that Filian Strake and Dorian were facing each other, feinting and parrying, and they were a fairly even match until Charlot, one of the Gap recruits, accidentally got her spear between the sergeants ankles. As the unlucky sergeant staggered sideways, Dorian thrust her long sword under Filian’s round shield into her vulnerable midriff. It was effectively over from that point. Strake died with her hands clamped to her bleeding stomach, still cursing, and Dorian gave the recruits the opportunity to surrender while they could.
It didn’t all go Homesteads way of course. The Docksiders had a few minor cuts between them and Jenny’s nose was streaming with blood and probably broken, but Lydia was dead, slashed through the throat by the sergeants sword.
Out on the green, Caren, Sylvie and Denny (especially Denny), cut down their opponents with comparative ease, but between Sylvie and the right flank, Jan was out of the fight, having a tourniquet tied round the stump of her left arm by Ginny Brand. Simon and Maxine Ward pushed forward into the front row to fill the empty space, but over on the left flank it was going horribly wrong. Lottie and Rachel, the two spears between Joan Tulip and Georgie Strong were both down, badly injured. The cleaners, Susan and Terri snatched up the dropped spears as Georgie tried to fill the gap with her flailing sword, but they were all too late for Joan. Three yelling troopers made one last attack on the left flank and the valiant, but tired guru couldn’t keep them all at bay. She was struck twice in quick succession and fell to the ground, her sword dropping from nerveless fingers.
Homestead’s battle line was wheeling right as Martha’s mob slowly fell, and at last the shocked troopers fled from the village green towards the North pasture, chased on their way by salvos of arrows from the bakehouse roof.
Sylvia had been wrong about Martha. She wasn’t the last person that Martha would see after all. As the surviving troopers jogged Northward, they became aware that they were being shadowed by a dozen running figures to either side of them. Slowly the lines converged, and the fleeing women got their first view of the superdogs. Martha screamed at the terrified women to m
ake a stand, but they were beyond all reason now, and could only think of escape, but there was to be none. Outnumbered and out muscled, they were all trapped and killed by the wardogs, Daggit having the grim pleasure of skewering Martha on his new spear.
Frankie Vine and Ma Nesbitt were organising first aid on the green, and the older village women were tending their trembling daughters wounds.
“No, not our Joannie.” Ivy’s voice could be heard across the village as she cried for her sister. Denny pulled her away from the Dockside guru’s still body, as Caren bent over her to examine her wounds. She looked up into her adopted sisters eyes.
“She’s not dead. ‘Mother and Lady’ page twenty two.”
Denny nodded slowly, and turned to the gathering crowd.
“Jo, Billie, we’ve got to get her to Hoods Hole, and quickly. Frankie, strap her up as best you can. Stop her bleeding too much and she’ll be alright. Caren, you and Jade run to the Never now, and get the medico started.”
Her concise instructions compelled instant action in the group, and soon, Joannie was being carried on a table top towards Burnt Wood, while Sylvie stood with Denny watching the slowly diminishing figures go out of sight.
“Will she really be saved, Denny?” asked Homestead's worried leader.
Denny raised her head, searching the sky for sight of the moon.
“Oh Lady, please let it be so.”