Magda, watching the grim old face, wondered again, What kind of awful experience could make a woman hate herself so much that even neutering seems preferable to retaining any trace of female function? The neutering operation had been illegal on Darkover for centuries; not even the strictest enforcement of the laws had managed to stamp it out.
Jaelle yawned again, asking Rayna, who was the tallest, to put out the lantern. Another woman banked the fire so it would keep a few coals through the night. Magda pillowed her head on her saddlebags as she saw the others doing, laid the knife from her boots beside her head.
Now that the danger seemed over, and the acute fear of discovery had subsided, she found herself elated. She had learned more about Free Amazons in one evening than twelve years on the Darkovan side had taught all the agents. She knew that because before leaving her post she had read through everything actually known about them, including folklore, rumors and dirty jokes, and it all fitted on a printout she could hold in one palm. If I carry this off, I’ll have something to brag about for the rest of my life; that I could spend the night with them and get away undetected.
One after another, the Amazons dropped off to sleep. . Old Camilla snored very softly. Sherna and Gwennis, who lay side by side, talked for a few minutes in whispers, then slept. Magda, in spite of the long day’s hard riding, was too tired and tense to sleep.
The noise around the other fire did not subside, but grew louder; Magda wondered if it was deliberate, a way of expressing hostility the men dared not show. There was loud talk, drunken singing, some of the songs of such a bawdy nature Magda knew they would never have been sung directly before any woman with the slightest pretense to respectability.
For a time she listened, then grew bored and irritable. Were there no laws of polite use for the shelters, to determine how late one party might continue to carouse when sharing a shelter with another group of travelers? Damn them, were they going to keep up that racket all night? It was surprising the Amazons put up with it, but then, their code evidently forbade them to take notice of the band of men.
The songs came to an end; there was a brief lull, a minor fight broke out and was settled, and in another lull Magda heard one of the men say loudly ” … held at Sain Scarp…”
Magda went tense, straining herself to hear even one more word, but the loud drunken talk started up again. They do know something about Peter! If I could only hear!
Blurred by the conversation she seemed to hear the word Ardais-she was never sure-and her resolve stiffened. She must hear! The Amazons were all sleeping now. She would slip very quietly along the dark wall-She had partially undressed; she sat up and drew on trousers and under tunic in the dark; slid quietly from her blankets and went barefoot along the wall, clinging to the shadows. She could see Jaelle sleeping on her stomach like a child, her face on her bent arm. Magda tiptoed toward the far end of the room, holding her breath; was rewarded by hearing one of the men say ” … Ardais cub.” and ” … send him back at midwinter…”
“And what answer did the lady…”
“You think he tells me all that? All I can…” It was drowned out in a burst of drunken laughter, then one of the men stiffened.
“What’s that?”
“Mouse or rat, probably. Pass me the jug, you-”
Magda froze, but the first speaker got up, suddenly strode straight toward where Magda huddled in the shadow; she turned to slip away, missed her footing and fell full length. Above her she heard a great shout of laughter. The next minute hard hands came down on her and she was picked up bodily and carried into the center of the circle of men.
The man holding her set her on her feet, guff awing loudly.
“Some mouse or rat, Jerral!”
Magda saw that her captor was the big burly mustachioed man whose eyes had frightened her when she first came into the shelter. He bent toward her, taking her chin in his ham-sized hand.
“Tired of sleeping alone, chiya?” He used the word for “little girl,” which in family intimacy is affectionate; elsewhere, contemptuous. “Which one of us you got the hots for, hey? Bet it’s me; saw you looking at me before.”
-Magda was wildly trying to get her breath, to think. She would not; she could not struggle and plead with these men!
“Yeah, we’ve all heard about the Free Amazons,” said a big, black-bearded man, digging Magda’s captor in the ribs with a wicked leer. “Let’s wake up the rest of the girls and get them to join the party! What about it, little rabbit, did you come to ask if there was a drink for you here?”
Oh, God, what have I done? I’ve been responsible, for breaking the shelter-truce, if I’ve involved the other women in this, made these men think … Furtively she felt for her knife; realized, in horror, that she had left it lying by her saddlebag.
“What’s wrong, chiya? Not a word to say? Well, we’ll loosen up your tongue, soon enough,” said the big man who had grabbed her, and she felt his fetid, drunken breath hot on her face, the evil, bristling mustachios brush her cheek. He jerked her under tunic down around her shoulders. “Hey, a pretty one, too. Stop shoving, Rannar, you’ll have your turn soon enough-I caught this one. You want a girl, go wake up one for yourself!” He ran his hands down her bared body. Magda jerked away, caught him by the arm, tried to wrench him in a judo throw; he sidestepped, with a leering shout. “Hey, pretty, I know a trick worth two of that! So you’re a fighter, too? We can really have some fun with this one,” he said, leering. Magda’s arms felt numb.
What’s the matter with me? She felt him take her shoulder, twisting it cruelly; she could not keep back a cry of pain.
“Now let’s not have any more nonsense, precious. Just be a good little girl and we won’t hurt you, no, we won’t hurt you at all,” he muttered, running his hot hands down across her breasts. She backhanded him, hard, across the mouth; rearing back in drunken rage, he struck her a blow that flung her, half stunned, to the floor. “Damn it, you bitch, none of that! Hold her, Rannar-”
She fought and struggled, gasping, silent, afraid if she opened her mouth that some word of Terran Standard would escape her. The men clustered around, shouting encouragement to the men who held her. Magda had been trained in unarmed combat since her sixteenth year; she tried to catch her breath, to find the strength to strike effectively, but she found herself held too hard.
Why can’t I defend myself? How did I get this far? Suddenly, as a drowning man’s whole life is said to flash before his eyes, Magda knew the answer. I’ve psyched myself, for years, into behaving like a normal Darkovan girl. And they’re too timid to fight-they expect men to protect them. I’m conditioned to that, and it canceled out my Terran agent’s training. …
She hardly knew it when she started to scream. …
Chapter
NINE
Suddenly a light flared in Magda’s eyes; a torch came down, blinding the man who held her. He reared back, yelling. Then there were half a dozen knives, it seemed, bared and leveled at Magda’s captors.
“Let her go,” said a low, level voice; Magda saw Jaelle’s face above the torch. The man who held her backed away; Magda pushed the other man aside, pulled herself free and scrambled to her feet, clutching her torn tunic around her. The mustachioed man yelled something obscene, rushed forward, grabbing up his sword; there was a blur of blades, a clash, a howl, and the man fell, clutching at a slash across his thighs. Magda saw blood on Jaelle’s knife. One of the women helped Magda to gather her torn clothing around her, while the men clustered together, muttering.
“Look out,” Gwennis said sharply; the women fell back, braced, knives like a wall in front of them. Magda, thrust unregarded to one side, watched the slow, grim advance of the bandits, the unflinching barricade of the women’s knives. Everything seemed sharply focused as she stood there waiting for the clash: the rough, menacing faces of the men, the equally unyielding faces of the women; the torchlight, the dark shadowed beams, even the patterns of the stone-flagged floor, seemed etched
forever on her memory. Later she never knew how long that taut, sharply focused waiting lasted-it felt like hours, days-for the inevitable rush, clash of swords, tension drawn tighter, tighter. She felt like shrieking, Oh, don’t, don’t, I didn’t mean … and physically raised her hands to cover her mouth so that’ she would not cry out.
Then one of the men swore roughly, dropped the point of his sword. “The hell with all this. Not worth it. Put your knives down, girls. Truce?”
None of the women moved, but the bandit leader-the big, black-bearded man who had held Magda down-gestured to his men, and one by one they lowered their swords. When the last one was down, the women slowly relaxed, letting the points of their knives drop toward the stone floor.
Jaelle said, “You have broken shelter-truce by laying hands on one of ours. If I reported this at a patrol station you could all be outlawed, with any hand free to kill you for three years.” The strange beauty of her face in the torchlight, copper hair haloed around her pale features, made a strange contrast to her hard words. The leader said drunkenly, “You wouldn’t do that, would you, mestra? We weren’t hurting her none.”
“We could all see how much pleasure she took in your advances,” Jaelle said dryly.
The mustachioed man said thickly, “Aft; hell, she came to us; how’d we know she wasn’t looking for a bit of fun?” The wound across his thighs still oozed blood, but Magda could see now that it was no more than half an inch deep: painful perhaps, and humiliating, but not disabling or dangerous. Jaelle wasn’t even trying to kill him.
Jaelle swung around to Magda; her eyes glinted like green fire by torchlight, and Magda felt sick with shame and dread. I am responsible for all this.
“Did you come to them of your free will? Were you looking, as he says, for a bit of fun?”
Magda whispered, “No. No, I didn’t.” She could hardly hear herself speak.
“Then”-the Amazon leader’s voice was a whiplash that cut-“what were you doing that they could think so?”
Magda opened her mouth to say, “I wanted to hear what they were talking about,” but stopped before a single word could get out. Camilla had warned her: spying on men was not proper behavior for an Amazon. She could not disgrace these women, who had protected her without any obligation to do so, by bringing shame or contempt on them. They had welcomed her to their meal and fireside; dressed as an Amazon, she had violated one of their strictest codes of behavior. Now she knew she must lie, quickly and well, a lie that would not involve the Amazons in her misbehavior. She said shakily, “I-I had a cramp, and I turned the wrong way in the darkness, looking for the privy. When I saw I was wrong I tried to get away before they saw me, and I slipped and fell.”
“You see?” said Jaelle to the men. Her eyes flicked Magda’s face like the blow of a whip.
She knows I’m lying, of course. But she knows why. It was all the amends she could make.
Jaelle said, “You have broken shelter-truce, for which the penalty is three years’ outlawry. And you have attempted to rape a woman here, for which our penalty is castration. Think yourselves lucky that your man did not succeed. And now gather up all that is yours, and be gone. By law we need not share shelter with outlaws and rapists.”
Blackbeard said, and the drunken dismay in his voice was actually comical, “In this storm, mestra?”
“You should have listened to the voice of the storm before you broke shelter-truce,” Jaelle said, and her face was like stone. “Outside, like the dirty animals you are! And if one of you sets foot over the threshold while we are still here, I swear, I will cut out his cuyones and roast them over the fire there!” She gestured with her knife. “Out! No more talk now! Out!”
Fumbling, drunken, muttering obscenely, they gathered up their belongings; grumbling and angry, but before the gleam of the women’s knives, their massed, indomitable waiting, they went. When the door had closed behind the last of them, Jaelle said, “Rayna, Gwennis, go and be sure they do not disturb our horses and gear.” She handed the torch to Sherna, and came slowly toward Magda. “You. Are you hurt? Did they do anything worse than tear your clothes and maul you?”
“No.” Magda’s teeth were chattering with shock and reaction. I’ve been false to everything. To the Amazons, by behaving immodestly before men. To the mission I came on, by not finding out what I risked so much to know. She felt sick, shamed, exhausted with the violence of her emotions.
Jaelle put an arm around Magda, supporting her. The action was not kind, but contemptuous. She said, “Give her some wine before she finishes this by falling in a faint at our feet!”
She shoved Magda down on a bench; Camilla held a cup to her lips. Magda pushed it away. “I don’t want-”
“Drink it, damn you!” Camilla forced the cup against her mouth; Magda gulped, choked, swallowed again. Camilla said viciously, “You! I warned you, you bitch! Who let you out of the Guild-house in this state, with no notion of how to behave? If they had not all been as drunk as monks at midwinter-feast, it would have come to a fight, and we could all have been raped, or killed. You deserve to be beaten and sent back to the Guild-house!”
Sherna had built up the fire again; the women came in from the barn, and Rayna said, “They have gone; good riddance. I hope they freeze in the storm.”
Jaelle was standing with her back to the fire, looking formidable. Camilla shoved Magda toward her.
“Jaelle, you are our chosen leader; it is for you to deal with her. If you say so, I will beat her bloody for you; it would be a pleasure!”
Jaelle said at last: “Let her go, Camilla; if I decide she should be beaten, I can do it myself. Well,” she said to Magda, “what have you to say for yourself?”
It’s not over yet. I’ve got to go on bluffing. She said, with a spurt of defiance. “You are not my chosen leader. Do I owe you an explanation of my conduct?”
Jaelle said angrily, “You could have involved us all in your stupidity-or your wantonness, whatever it was! What is one of our first basic rules? Never get yourself into anything you can’t get yourself out of again! No one forces a woman into danger; but having taken a risk, you should be able to meet it. Now you have reinforced one of the old dirty stories about us, that we fight only in wolf packs and never meet our enemies fairly! Yes, damn you, I think you owe me an explanation; not me alone-all of us.”
That was fair enough. She said at last, truthfully, “I heard a part of what they were saying; and it seemed to me that it bore on the business that brought me into these hills. I felt I had to hear it.”
Jaelle considered that for a moment, frowning. Magda noticed, incongruously, something she had not seen until that very moment; Jaelle, standing there so secure and confident, was wearing nothing but her underwear. They all were. And somewhere at the back of her mind, the trained anthropologist, never off duty, was making notes: So that’s what Free Amazons wear for underwear.
Old Camilla’s voice was sharp. “Don’t listen to a word she says, Jaelle. Men’s boots, with a knife in them? And who let her out of the Guild-house in this shape, to disgrace us all? Any girl from the Guild-house, even a girl of fifteen, would know how to defend herself against rape, even unweaponed. There is something wrong here!”
“Yes, very wrong,” said Jaelle. “Someone has behaved irresponsibly, allowing her to go about alone before she knew how to behave. You shame whoever took your oath,” she said to Magda. “Who was she? Name her to us; she is responsible for your conduct!”
God help me, now I’m in for it! Well, the woman is dead, so Rohana told me, and it won’t involve any living person in trouble. She said, “I took the oath at the hands of Kindra n’ha Mhari.”
“You lie!” Jaelle raised her arm and struck Magda a blow that made her head ring. She slapped her again and again across the face. “You lie, you bitch,” she said, trembling. “Kindra n’ha Mhari was my foster-mother; I dwelt with her seven years before her death, and every one of her oath-daughters is known to me by face and name! How dar
e you slander a dead woman? You lie, lie, lie!”
Magda’s head was pounding with the pain of the blows. What now? What now?
Old Camilla thrust her face at Magda; she was white and shaking. She said, “If you were a man, I would call challenge upon you. Kindra n’ha Mhari took me in when I was alone and desperate; I have been a member of her band for thirty years, and I loved her as a twin sister! I don’t know who or what you are, that you think you can misuse her name, but you will not do so again! Rayna, Gwennis, get her saddlebags; we will see if there is something in them to give us a clue to this filthy bitch of an impostor!”
Rayna got down and started to go through Magda’s belongings by torchlight. Finally she pulled out the safe-conduct, handed it to Jaelle.
“It bears the Lady Rohana’s name and seal. A forgery, no doubt, but you had better see it, Jaelle.”
Jaelle turned it curiously in her hands, held it closer to the fire to see better. “Light the lantern, Rayna; we need light for whatever is going to happen,” she said. “I cannot read in this murk.” When the lantern was lighted she stood examining it for some time and finally said, “It is not a forgery; I know my kinswoman’s handwriting too well for that. And the seal is genuine.” She read aloud: ” … Call upon all those who owe loyalty to the Domain of Ardais to give such aid as is in their power …”
“Stolen,” said Camilla, her mouth lifting in a sneer.
“No, for it bears her name and a good description.” She went to Magda and handed her the safe-conduct. “Did my kinswoman truly give this to you?” “She did.”
“No one can force Rohana to do anything she does not want to do,” Jaelle said, “and I have never known her to lend her name to any wickedness. Are you truly on a mission in her name?”
Magda nodded. Jaelle said, “But you are not an Amazon, are you? How came you to try to pass yourself off as one, Margali-if that is truly your name?”