Attack of the Amazons (6 page)

T
he Amazon-like women who surrounded the Sleepers herded them along. Their weapons had been stripped from them immediately, and if they lagged they were prodded forward at sword point.

Josh tried to speak to Princess Merle. He suggested that there was some ingratitude involved here— after all, they had saved her life! “You don't have to take us prisoners like this,” he protested.

Princess Merle strode along in front of the captives. She had been given a sword, which she now wore belted around her trim waist. The glance she gave him was cool and calculating. She did not even answer him but said, “Sarah, you and Abbey come up here. Let the men go last.”

Abbey shot a quick glance at Sarah as the two were hurried forward. “What does it all mean?” she whispered.

“I think it's a male-female thing,” Sarah whispered. She had quickly grasped that the women warriors had little respect for the guys, although they did look with speculation at the tall forms of Reb, Josh, and Dave. Since poor Jake and Wash were smaller, they were treated rather roughly, being struck by the flat of the sword several times.

The procession made its way for half an hour, and the trail grew broader all the time. Finally, it opened up onto a rather attractive village of houses made of upright wooden stakes and having cone-shaped thatched
roofs. A stake stockade was built around the village, its top sharpened to needlelike points.

The gates swung open on some sort of hinges, and as soon as the troop was inside, they closed at once with a kind of grim finality.

“I don't like this, Dave,” Josh muttered. “It looks like we're not going to get a very good reception.”

Dave was looking at the women with narrowed eyes. “They sure do look like Amazons,” he said, “or at least what I thought Amazons might look like. But where are the men?”

As the Sleepers looked around, they discovered that some men were there, but all were unarmed and looked harmless. As a matter of fact, they looked almost cowed, and they were generally smaller than the women.

“These are sure funny people,” Wash said. He'd just been given a blow with the flat of a sword. “I never saw such mean-looking ladies in all my life! They look like they'd be wrestlers if they were back in Oldworld.”

“They do look pretty bad,” Jake agreed. “And the men—there's something wrong with them. Look how they kind of sneak around.”

Josh had no time to examine the crowd further, for they had come into an open space where a platform was built about two feet off the ground.

On it sat a woman in a chair made of carved, dark wood. She was blonde like the others, with blue eyes, and was obviously tall. She wore a headdress composed of feathers with some sort of green stones on the band. Josh realized at once that she was not young. There were scars on her arms, and her right leg was twisted, as though she'd been injured at one time. He decided this was no one important.

He thought,
Where's the chief? What did she say his name was?

Immediately, however, he was set straight, for Princess Merle went right up onto the platform and bowed to the woman. “Queen Mother,” she said, “these strangers I found on our land.”

She turned then to the Sleepers. “This is Queen Faya, warrior queen of the daughters of Fedor.”

Josh had to make an instant reevaluation. Obviously Chava, Merle's father, was of little influence. Was he the man standing over to the queen's left? He was short and had reddish hair like Merle's. He said nothing, but his eyes moved to the queen as though he waited to hear what she would say.

“What are you doing on our land?” Queen Faya demanded. She had a strong voice, and Josh got the impression that she hated being bound to her chair. She had obviously been a strong woman in her youth—and would have to be, he thought, to head these fierce women who made up the fighting arm of the Fedor tribe.

Josh announced his name and said, “We come on behalf of our sire, Goél.”

“I know no one named Goél.”

“He is the mighty leader who is going to deliver Nuworld from its bondage,” Josh said. “The powers of darkness will spread no more when Goél and his house crush the Dark Lord.”

At mention of the words
Dark Lord,
a strange figure suddenly emerged. She was a woman of some sixty or perhaps seventy years, with gray hair and sharp black eyes. She was wearing all sorts of what looked to be jewelry—brass plates with enigmatic markings on them. Her headdress was red and yellow feathers, and the necklace of bone around her neck jangled as she hopped before the queen.

“These men are the enemies of Maug!” she screamed. “We know no one named Goél. Do not trust them, my Queen!”

“I do not trust them,” Queen Faya said. She stared at the Sleepers, and then her eyes went to her daughter. “How did you find them?”

“I had been captured by Ulla and his band. They were about to sacrifice me to their god when these came to my rescue.”

At least,
Josh thought,
she told the truth.
He was, however, disappointed when Merle made little of the rescue.

“They came here with me, and now they are, of course, our captives.”

“Wait a minute,” Josh said, “we came on a peaceful mission. After all, we did save your daughter's life.”

Queen Faya did not seem impressed. Her blue eyes were cold as polar ice as she studied Josh almost clinically.

Then a man stepped forward and spoke up. “My Queen,” he said, “these people are not our enemies.”

“Zuriel, you are a historian, but
I
will make the decision about captives,” Queen Faya said. Her words fell like blows on the man, and he retreated silently into the crowd.

“I will claim that tall one for my own.”

The Sleepers turned their heads to see a big woman step out from the throng. She came to stand before the throne. “Sister, I call the blood kin and claim this captive.” She pointed at Dave with an air of possession.

Queen Faya's lips turned upward in a rather grim smile. “You are thinking of Ettore, Marden?”

“Perhaps I am. This one is tall and strong, and we need good blood in our line.” She made a motion, and
a girl of nineteen or twenty came forward. She had dark hair and black eyes, in contrast to most of the women warriors, who were fair. Her eyes glittered as she walked up to Dave, who watched her cautiously. Carelessly she reached out and felt the muscles of his arm, then commanded, “Let me see your teeth.”

Dave, outraged, shook off her grasp. “I'm not showing my teeth to anyone!”

Immediately the girl slapped him, hard. The blow drove him backwards, and the print of her hand was on his face in white.

“Keep your mouth shut, or I will shut it for you,” the girl Ettore said. She turned and nodded. “I will take this one, my Mother.”

“I will decide who will receive the captives!” Princess Merle said. “I captured them. The decision will be mine.”

Again Faya smiled as she looked at her daughter. “And which do
you
choose, daughter?”

“I
will take the tall one. He is strong and might make a good mate. Come here!” she commanded Dave.

Dave started to protest, but Josh said hastily, “Better do as she says, Dave. We can straighten it all out later.”

“All right, then.” Dave moved over to stand by her side.

Then Merle said, “I will have the young female also.” She pointed to Abbey. “I do not think she will ever make a warrior.”

Marden cried out again. “Sister Queen, I claim the right of blood. Give me a choice.”

“Very well.” The queen seemed already tired of the scene.

Marden, with a look of triumph, said, “I will take this one.” She pointed to Josh.

Her daughter said, “And we will take the tall female. She might make a warrior maid if we toughen her up some.”

Sarah stayed close to Josh as they walked to where Marden and Ettore stood.

Queen Faya said, “Who else chooses one of these?”

“I do. I want the tall one with the light hair.”

Reb blinked as another woman came forward. She was not lean and strong like the others. Because she stood with the trim, tanned women warriors, she seemed somewhat overweight. She was rather pretty, though, with large blue eyes, a round face, and a crop of yellow hair. She came up to Reb and touched his hair. “I will have this one, and I will take the little one too.” She motioned toward Wash.

“Let it be so then,” Queen Faya said. “We will hear their stories later.”

Reb's owner seemed delighted with her acquisition. She grabbed his arm, saying, “Come with me.”

She dragged him off, and Wash followed helplessly. Reb looked back over his shoulder. “I don't like this, Josh.”

“I don't like it either, Reb. We'll see how it goes.”

“You will come now.” The warrior maiden named Ettore grabbed Josh's hair and gave it a vicious pull. He did not cry out, and she grinned. “Good. You'll know what to expect if you are disobedient.” Then she studied Sarah. “Can you fight?” she demanded bluntly.

Sarah pulled herself up to her full height. She was not as tall as Ettore, but she seemed determined not to show fear. Defiantly she said, “I have fought before.”

“Have you ever killed any of your enemies?”

“Yes, I've had to, but I'm not proud of it.”

“You will learn better here. If you are to become a warrior maid of the Fedor, you will learn to be proud when you defeat your enemies. Now we go home.”

Dave and Abbey were left standing in front of Princess Merle. She watched them, seeming amused by their plight. “I haven't had such fun as this in a long time. Come along, I'll show you your places.” She turned to her mother and bowed low. “Queen Mother, I will care for these two captives.”

“See that you do.”

As the redheaded warrior maid led them away, Abbey felt fear rising in her throat. She knew she could never become one of these women. There was a wildness and a wickedness in their eyes that frightened her, and she stayed as close to Dave as she could as they made their way out of the clearing, headed toward the biggest house in the village.

T
here was no question of calling Chava “King.” Obviously his position in the house was more that of a servant than king or even husband.

Dave noticed that he did show great tenderness and care in helping his wife into the house. Queen Faya could walk using one crutch, but her steps were painful. He watched Chava help her into a chair, put her leg up on a low stool, and bring her something cool to drink.

“He takes care of her like he was her nurse,” Abbey whispered.

“I guess that's about what he is.”

“Dave, I don't like all this,” Abbey said. “Those women, they make me nervous. They're not—they're not normal.”

“They sure aren't,” Dave said. “A pretty cold-blooded crew, and we've seen some in our time, haven't we?” He saw that she was very frightened and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don't worry. We've gotten out of tougher spots than this. Goél won't let us down.” He smiled at her and was glad to see that his assurance seemed to help.

Then a sharp voice said, “Come along, Dave. I'll show you where to sleep. You wait here, Abbey. I want to talk to you alone.”

The house was simply built, though it did contain several rooms. One of these was very small, containing
only a bunk and a little table, but it had a window that let in the breeze.

When Dave looked down at the bed, he shook his head. “That's pretty short for me.”

“So it is,” Merle said. “You're very tall. Are all the men where you come from as tall as—” Then she broke off and shook her head. “No, I asked that—and I saw the two smaller ones. Our men are not as tall or as strong as you.”

“What's actually going to happen here, Princess? I mean, what am I going to do?”

“Oh, you'll do as you're told. There's plenty of work to be done in a place like this. You may wind up a slave. On the other hand, one of the women may choose you for a mate.”

“Where I come from, the men do the choosing.”

“You're not where you came from. The quicker you learn that the better.” Merle's eyes narrowed. “Let me give you some advice. Keep your mouth shut, do as you're told, and you won't come to any harm, but we have ways of dealing with slaves who don't know their place.”

“I'm not a slave!”

“You're not anything until I say so. Remember that. Now, go to sleep. You'll have a long day tomorrow.”

Dave waited until she left the room, then went to the door and called after her, “What about something to eat?”

“Tomorrow. There's water in that pot on the table.”

Dave was hungry, but there was no arguing. His pack had been taken from him, so what little food he had was lost.

He went to the window and saw that it was not barred. For a moment he thought about escape, but
escape to where? They were a hundred miles from the coast. And besides, he knew he couldn't leave his friends.

Discouraged, he walked back to the bed. It was built into the wall, so had only two legs, but it seemed sturdy. A thin pad was on it—cloth stuffed with leaves, he thought. He lay down on it, banged his head on the hard surface underneath, and wished he had a blanket.

There did not seem to be many insects in the air, and he was glad for that. For a long time he lay listening to the sounds outside—and some inside—the house. Finally he went to sleep, thinking,
I can't put up with this forever!

Dave woke abruptly the next morning, feeling a touch on his shoulder. He started and jumped up, putting a hand out defensively.

“It's only me.” Chava smiled at him in a friendly fashion. “Time to fix breakfast. Come, I will show you.”

Dave rolled off the bunk and followed the short man into the room that served as kitchen. “Do you cook at all?” Chava asked.

“A little bit,” Dave said. “I mean, I don't know what you eat around here.”

“It's very simple, really.” Chava began to show him how to prepare the meal. Expertly he made cakes out of some sort of ground grain, adding ingredients quickly, and put them in a stone oven, where a fire crackled cheerfully. “Can you milk cattle?”

“Yes, I can do that.” Dave nodded. “I'm not very good at it, though.”

“We will get the milk.” As Chava led the boy out of the hut, Dave looked around but saw no sign of the women.

“Where is everyone?” he asked curiously.

“The women do not arise until we have the breakfast ready.”

This did not sit well with Dave, but he realized it was no time to debate the issue. “Do you have other children besides Princess Merle?”

“Yes, a son, Rolf. He is about your own age. You will see him later in the day.”

Cautiously Dave began to question Chava and received straightforward answers. It seemed the men took care of the house, milked the cows, did the cooking and the washing and the cleaning.

“What do the women do?” he asked at last.

“Why, they fight, and they hunt.”

Dave realized suddenly that not only did the women of Fedor look like Amazons, but the whole culture was based on that concept. Everything was reversed from what he was accustomed to.

This will take some getting used to, and I hope it doesn't last long
, he thought. But deep inside he knew this was too far out for him!

For the next two days Dave went through the most humiliating transformation possible. He spent a great deal of time with Chava, learning how to run the details of the house. These were chores that he had never particularly disliked, but that was when the choice had been his. Now each day Princess Merle came in and gave him a particularly hateful cock of her eyebrow and set forth his duties. It was all he could do to keep from from throwing the dishwater in her face.

“Don't mind it, my boy,” Chava said kindly. The two of them were peeling potatoes in the kitchen, and Chava had been reminiscing about his own past. He said little about the situation concerning men and
women in Fedor but listened as Dave explained how things had been in Oldworld.

Now as the man carefully made a single, long peeling, it dropped into a bucket at his feet. He held up the white potato. “Now, there's a good potato,” he said. “I grow these myself. Not everyone can grow potatoes like this.”

Dave looked down at his own potatoes and saw that the peelings were thick and that he had wasted much. “I'll never get used to this,” he grumbled. “It's not what I was brought up to do.” He glared at the door as if he expected Merle to come through it. “You have a beautiful daughter, but I can't stand her.”

To Dave's amazement, Chava laughed out loud. “I'm not surprised,” he said. “The captives we get from other tribes where men are the superior beings all feel the same way.”

“Doesn't it
bother
you?” Dave cried with exasperation. He threw down his potato, picked up another, and began hacking at it. “I mean, after all, you're the
king
of Fedor.”

“No, I'm not. I'm the husband of the queen. There's quite a big difference. We have no kings here—only queens. Always.”

Dave stopped peeling potatoes, and his brow wrinkled. “I remember something in English history back in Oldworld. Queen Victoria married a man named Albert, and he was
Prince Albert all his life. Even though he married a queen, he never became a king.”

“Was he miserable with that?”

Surprise touched Dave's eyes, and he shook his head slowly. “No, as a matter of fact, they had a very happy life together. Queen Victoria loved him with all her heart, and when he died she wore black for the rest of her life as a sign of mourning.”

“I can understand that,” Chava said. He peeled his potato slowly, thinking. Then he said, “I love Faya very much, and I believe she loves me.”

“Then why does she treat you like a—like a slave?”

“It is the custom,” Chava said with surprise. “I suppose I'm used to it. And I like to garden. I like to keep this house. It takes a lot of intelligence, believe it or not. Houses don't just run themselves, and actually, my boy, I could never go out and face a tiger as my wife did.”

This caught Dave's attention. “You mean she actually fought a tiger?”

“You probably noticed that her leg is withered. It was mauled by a tiger. She killed him, and that's his pelt she wears as her royal robe, but she's never been the same since.” Chava paused. “After all, that's the problem, if your whole life is based on some physical activity. When you get older, you'll either get weaker naturally through age—or perhaps injury will strike you down. Then what do you fall back on?”

Dave frowned. “I saw that happen to some athletes in Oldworld. When they were young and strong, the whole world bowed down to them. But when they got older, they couldn't perform anymore.”

“And they were probably very unhappy. But if you think of people who work with their minds—teachers, poets, musicians—they probably had much happier, much more productive lives.”

Dave shook his head stubbornly. “That may be so, but I could never be happy living like—well, like you do, Chava.”

“No, I think you could not, because it's been born and bred in your bones that men are the strong ones and should rule over the weaker women.”

“Well, it's true,” Dave said. “I don't think your women
are
strong physically. Why, there's not a one of them that could stand up against me or Reb or Josh with a sword. I'd be willing to test it.”

“You'll never get the chance,” Chava said. “The warrior maids are a fighting unit. Each one of them is brave and strong and able, but if they see one of their number being overcome, they swarm to her defense.”

“I see,” Dave said slowly.

He was about to say something else when Princess Merle came through the door. She was wearing an outfit he had not seen before, a skirt made from the pelt of an animal, perhaps a black panther, and an upper garment made of some sort of woven material. He could not help admiring her and thought,
Back in Oldworld she'd make a million bucks a year as a model for one of those fashion houses. But if she didn't like somebody, she'd whack their head off, I suppose
.

“Come with me, Dave,” Merle said. She did smile at Chava and say, “I'll have to borrow your helper for a while, Father.”

“Of course.” He gave the pair a look as they walked out, and muttered, “There's going to be trouble with that pair. Both of them are strong-willed.”

“Where are we going?” Dave asked.

“I've got a job for you.”

“Look, Merle—”

“Call me Princess,” the girl said. “Remember your place.”

“All right.” Dave shrugged impatiently. “Princess Merle, then. I can't put up with this a whole lot longer. If you want me to do something for you, give me a sword or a bow. You know I'm able to fight beside any one of your women.”

“We don't have men fighting beside us. That's not the way things are.” There was a shortness in her voice, and she gave him a hard stare. “Don't try to change things, Dave. No matter what they were like back in your world, you're in our world now.” Then her voice softened, and she said, “Who knows? You may get chosen by one of the warrior maids as a mate.”

Dave yearned to say, “Take all your warrior maids and shove them in a black hole in the sky!” but some wisdom warned him not to provoke her. “What's the job you have in mind?”

“I'll show you.” There was a strange smile on her lips, and Dave had learned to hate that.

She led him to one of the outer quarters where they found Abbey standing by a warrior, being instructed in the use of the short sword. Abbey had never been particularly good with weapons, and Dave saw at once that it was a hopeless case.

“Why don't you let
me
do a bout with your warrior maid?” he suggested.

“You have your work to do. Take Abbey's clothes over to those pots and wash them. Be sure you get them clean.”

Anger raced through Dave. He glared at Abbey. “Did you ask for me to be your servant?”

“No,” Abbey said quickly, “I never said a word.”

“I'm
saying the word. Take those clothes and get going.”

“I won't do it!” Dave said. He folded his arms and stared at Princess Merle. “Do what you please—I'm not going to be her servant.”

Merle nodded to the warrior who had been teaching Abbey. She drew her own sword, and the two women began to close in on Dave. “Try not to scar him
any more than you have to, Freya, but he's got to be taught to mind.”

“No, don't hurt him!” Abbey jumped in front of Dave. “Please let me talk to him.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to him and whispered, “Don't mind it. I know it's something you'd rather not do, but we're all doing things we don't want to do.” When he still hesitated, she murmured, “Please don't make trouble. You've got to keep yourself whole and unwounded.”

Suddenly this made sense to Dave, who, in his blind anger, had forgotten that he had a responsibility to the group. Swallowing hard, he looked over Abbey's head and met the triumphant eyes of Princess Merle and the warrior maiden.

“All right,” he said, “I'll do it.” Stooping, he grabbed up the clothes in his arms and walked away toward the laundry pots.

A group of men was washing clothes in boiling water, and he joined them.

“I've never seen you before.” The speaker was a strong young man, at least five ten, which was about as tall as the men of Fedor ever got. He had muscular shoulders, dark auburn hair bound up with a leather thong, and a pair of strangely colored hazel eyes. He didn't look like any of the Fedorians that Dave had seen. And a spirit of rebellion seemed to leap out of the unusual yellow-brown eyes. “What are you doing here? Where did you come from?”