Battle for Tristaine Read online

  Jess and Brenna ran full out, quickly leaving Shann behind. Acid coated the lining of Brenna’s stomach as she snapped through the snarled greenery of the forest floor. She was acutely conscious of Jess, beside and slightly ahead of her, leaping a waist-high bank of brush without breaking stride, searching for any path through the dense trees ahead.

  They heard a frenzied squealing—not just one inhuman voice, but several, a chorus of chalkboard shrieks that chilled Brenna’s blood. Camryn’s rifle sounded a second time, then a third.

  The wild boars had lost one of their pack to Jess’s arrows the day before. Brenna had been unpleasantly surprised by the dead creature’s total lack of resemblance to the City’s domesticated swine. It was four feet of smelly, bristled brutality, its gray tongue lolling between two deadly looking tusks in its lower jaw.

  Now the rest of that wild porcine tribe were bursting through the green foliage all around her, their tusks slashing fat leaves to green slivers in their terrorized flight. Brenna dodged, narrowly avoiding one gray-black torpedo streaking toward her, and called back a sharp warning to Shann.

  She heard a solid thwacking sound and an explosive grunt, and as she followed Jess through a tangled curtain of vines, she saw Camryn. The young Amazon had reversed the empty rifle in her hands and used its solid oak stock as a club against the head of the last charging boar.

  The blow was powerful, but it didn’t stun the huge creature entirely. It was enough however, to dissuade it from another lunge, which was fortunate since Camryn had no leverage for a second swing. Her bad leg gave out beneath her, and she sprawled onto her knees in the sparse grass, keeping a white-knuckled grip on the rifle barrel.

  Jess’s solid kick was enough to send the addled boar into a shuffling, grunting trot after its brothers.

  Over her pounding heart, Brenna registered the trampled greenery and the high, thin squawking of birds startled out of their morning’s peace. Only a few feet away, blue-winged flies had already settled on the two dead boars in the high grass.

  Jess helped Kyla stand, and Brenna tried to make sense out of Kyla’s stammers as Shann joined them, panting.

  “They j-just attacked, lady.” She was as pale as ash. “You can let go of me, Jesstin. I’m okay.”

  Brenna went to Cam, who struggled upright, using the rifle as a crutch. Like Kyla, she was covered with dirt and a frightening amount of blood. It took Brenna a moment to reclaim her bedside manner.

  “Sit down, Camryn!” She grabbed the girl’s arm just as her leg buckled again and helped her awkwardly lower herself to the grass.

  “I shot him, then he jumped on me, but I’m fine.” Camryn’s teeth rattled like castanets, looking past Brenna to Kyla, who was staring just as wide-eyed back at her. “This is his blood on me—the pig’s. It’s not my blood.”

  “What happened, Cam?” Jess raked her fingers through her hair and willed the faintly sick aftermath of an adrenalin surge to pass. “Weren’t you watching?”

  “Wild boars happened, Jesstin. This isn’t a City park.”

  Shann knelt beside Brenna and Camryn. “Blades? What do you think?”

  Brenna finished her examination of Cam’s trembling extremities and sat back on her heels with a nod of relief. “You’re all right, Camryn. A few bruises, but nothing too serious.”

  “There were seven of them,” Camryn told Shann. “Seven boars. I didn’t even see them, lady, until they swarmed us.”

  She looked about twelve years old, Brenna thought. Almost as tall as Jess and a member of the same warrior’s guild, Camryn, though ordinarily inscrutable, was as pale as Kyla now that the crisis had passed.

  “I shot two,” Camryn continued. “Ky helped me bat one off. The others ran. Jess kicked out the last one before you got here.”

  “Those tusks are like razors, adanin. They could have cut you both down.” Jess was still angry. “You weren’t on a nature hike, Camryn. We knew this pack was out here.”

  “And our little sisters fought them off.” Shann’s voice was low as well, but her gaze on Jess was more intense than Brenna had seen before. “One rifle against seven animals. They did well, Jesstin. Let it be.”

  “I kept distracting her, Shann.” Kyla’s voice was still high and breathless, and she kept her hands pressed tightly to her thighs, as if to contain herself. “We found some henbane. No fennel, but a patch of fiddleheads, lady, for your eyes. Cam, I’m s-so sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, adonai.” Cam looked bleak.

  “Let’s get you both back to camp.” Shann’s tone warmed as she extended a hand to Camryn and helped her stand. “We’ll make you a fine pork dinner, adanin, a fitting end to this morning’s saga.”

  “Ah, Artemis, you guys are gonna be so pissed,” Kyla whispered. Tears rose in her eyes. “I’m sorry. Don’t yell, Jess.”

  “What are you on about, Ky?” Jess’s tone was milder, but Brenna eyed the red-haired girl uneasily.

  “I might as well…” Kyla sighed. “Look, I can’t move my hand off my leg to walk, okay, because if I lift it—” She demonstrated by removing her palm from her thigh.

  An alarming jet of blood sprayed from it, and Brenna shot to her feet.

  Jess lunged and caught Kyla as she fainted.

  *

  The supplies in the medical kit they had smuggled from the Clinic had been all but depleted after the clash with Caster’s men. Brenna was able to form a rudimentary tourniquet, which sufficed long enough to get Kyla back to their holdings, but once there, she used the rest of their suturing thread to close the wound.

  “That’s the last of the sulfa, too.” Brenna dropped the empty vial into the kit with fingers that were still wrinkled from repeated washing in the frigid water from a nearby stream. Her hands had been coated with blood by the time she’d gotten the wicked slice in Kyla’s thigh securely closed. She looked at Shann, troubled.

  “It’s a bad cut, Shann. Not long, but very deep.” Brenna kept her voice low, and both Jess and Shann stepped in closer to hear her. She glanced over her shoulder at Camryn, who sat by Kyla’s pallet, holding her wife’s hand as she rested. “I’m worried about infection. A wound like that needs a long course of antibiotics, and as of now, we’re fresh out.”

  “What about permanent damage?” Jess asked. There were fresh lines of tension around her eyes.

  “Not that I can tell.” Brenna finally had good news. “I don’t think any nerves were affected. She has full sensation and mobility. It’s just a damn deep cut. Can we use anything out here against infection?”

  “We can find herbs in the marshland just south of us that purify the blood.” Shann tapped her thighs thoughtfully. “But they can be toxic, and Dyan was allergic to most of them. That doesn’t mean her blood sister will have the same reaction, but we’ll want to watch her closely.”

  “She’ll need healing time before we travel.” Brenna brushed Jess’s arm and felt the tightness in the fine muscle. “We were planning to leave for Tristaine soon, but would a few more days do any harm?”

  “It might harm Tristaine.” Jess regarded Shann. “Our clan has been without their queen too long, lady.”

  “Ky, it doesn’t matter,” Camryn said behind them. They turned and caught her tender expression as she lifted her wife’s hand. “Will you please stop worrying about such dreck?”

  “It will.” Kyla looked obstinate, one of her more characteristic features, and Brenna was relieved to see a spark of returning spunk in her wan patient. “I’m going to have a gigantic scar like a big zipper running right up my leg. And did I get it in battle? No, no battle wound for Kyla. Kyla had to go get herself bit by a pig.”

  Shann settled on the grass beside the pallet, and her serene smile warmed Brenna’s jangled nerves. “Don’t dismiss the skills of our resident medic, little sister. Blades stitched you as carefully as a Tristainian quilt-crafter, and your zipper will hardly be noticeable.”

  “Thanks, Bren.” Kyla summoned a smile and played with Camryn’s
fingers. “Hey, Cam, at least our legs have matching deformities now. Except around the storyfire, you’ll brag about a bullet making your scar and a dumb pig making mine.”

  “It was a really big pig.” Camryn couldn’t smile. She was still as pale as Kyla.

  “We’ll swear it was a giant python around our storyfires if you wish, adanin.” Shann’s finely veined hand stroked the girl’s damp brow. “She’s still a bit shocky, Bren.”

  “I’m okay.” Kyla yawned, shivering.

  Brenna knelt and pulled the army blanket higher around Kyla’s shoulders, then felt her hands and took her pulse at the throat. “Your color’s still a little off, Ky, but your circulation’s picking up, and your heart’s strong and steady.” She glanced at Shann. “I think those breathing exercises really helped.”

  Shann was revered as a healer in Tristaine, but all Brenna’s City training rebelled at reliance on natural medicine. The use of wild plants as remedies was suspect enough, but guided visualizations and patterned breathing? To a certified Government medic, these techniques seemed the primitive milieu of witch doctors. But Brenna couldn’t deny the benefit of Kyla’s intent focus on Shann’s voice earlier, when it distracted Ky from the burn and jab of the stitching needle, and her comparative comfort now.

  “I was so stupid to keep yapping at you like that, Cam.” Kyla’s eyelashes fluttered. “If I’d just kept my mouth shut, we’d have heard them coming. If Dyan were here, she’d serve me my head on a platter. Apple in my mouth.”

  “I should have kept better watch, Ky.” Camryn’s thumb moved in repetitive circles across the back of Kyla’s hand. “Dyan wouldn’t blame you.”

  “True enough.” Jess stood over them, her arms folded. “Dyan was a wise woman. She’d blame the big pig.”

  Brenna caught Shann’s small smile at Jess. Camryn kept her gaze on Kyla’s limp hand.

  “Clouds moving in.” Jess studied the small circle of sky above the treetops surrounding their camp. “We’ll want to store some dry firewood in case those turn ugly.”

  She bent and rested her lips on Kyla’s forehead, then straightened and disappeared into the pines.

  Brenna looked after her and worried her lower lip with her teeth. It took a moment before she felt Shann’s nudge.

  “We could use fresh water, Blades. Would you mind a trip to the brook?”

  “Sure, of course not,” Brenna contradicted herself absently. “We’ll let Kyla rest for a while, Camryn. You need to get cleaned up, and Shann should check you over again. Be right back.”

  *

  Jess chopped a dead limb from the fallen tree, wrenched its dry, stringy branches from the trunk, and tossed them onto a growing pile. The open collar of her blue shirt was damp, but the sharp blade still bit powerfully into the dry wood with each swing. She turned at Brenna’s voice.

  “One should not sneak up on a hatchet-wielding Amazon warrior.” Brenna stood just outside the copse of aspen, her hands clasped behind her. Jess nodded, and she came closer and settled on a wide stone blanketed with moss.

  Jess went back to her chopping, bits of bark dancing in the dappled sunlight of the glen.

  “A pity Jode couldn’t have slipped a chainsaw into our packs,” Brenna observed, “before he helped us escape from the Clinic.”

  Jess shrugged. “Standard camping gear’s all he and Pam had time to put together for us, but this’ll do.”

  “You want to take a break when you’re through here? You’ve been pushing pretty hard the last few days, Jesstin, and it looks like we won’t be able to start for Tristaine right away.”

  “Amazons heal fast, and we want to be ready. We need to gather some vines that might be strong enough to rope us when we hit that ridge.”

  “You really think we can carry a wounded girl safely over miles of mountains? Not to mention cliffs?” Jess could hear the uncertainty in Brenna’s tone. “Two women and two newly recovered warriors?”

  “Five Amazons,” Jess corrected. She hacked at another branch.

  “I’m no Amazon, Jess.”

  “You weren’t born one,” Jess acknowledged. “But then, most of us weren’t. Shann herself was born in the City. And it’s miles of hills, lass, not mountains. Tristaine is remote, but there’s only the one ridge to worry about.”

  “One’s enough.” Brenna was quiet for a moment. “You know, Dyan probably could have erected a fully equipped critical care unit in the time it’s taken you to chop our kindling.”

  Jess was puzzled. “Sorry?”

  “I never met Dyan of Tristaine, but I can picture her perfectly.” Brenna leaned back on her hands on the sun-warmed rock. “She was seven feet tall, gorgeous, sexy, brilliant, fast, strong as ten horses—”

  Jess emitted a soft bark of laughter. “Dyan was five-six, broad as a barn, freckled, and plain as dirt. Young Kyla got more than her fair share of the looks in that family. But smart, strong. Aye, Dyan was that. And more.”

  “I know. She was on Tristaine’s high council. She led your warriors. She was Kyla’s blood sister and Shann’s wife. And Camryn’s hero, and your best friend.”

  Jess straightened and lowered the hatchet to her side. She raked her damp hair out of her eyes and looked at Brenna.

  “Jess, I don’t mean to preach about this. But I think Camryn’s back there blaming herself for what happened to Ky, because she thinks she’s not living up to some standard Dyan must have set for all of—”

  “Ah, Cam’s beating herself up because I half-flayed her in front of her sisters.” Jess grimaced and rested her foot on the log. “Dyan would have snatched me baldheaded if she heard me pop off at a scared kid like that.”

  “Look, that’s what I mean.” Brenna rested her elbows on her knees. “Dyan’s memory is all around us. She’s like a ghost you’re afraid of disappointing.”

  “Bren, it’s not Dyan.” Jess swung one long leg over the log and sat, gingerly. “Aye, she was one of the best of us. We love her, we grieve for her, and we’ll miss her forever. But no one here is trying to walk in Dyan’s boots, lass. It couldn’t be done.”

  “Okay. You’re not trying to live up to some impossible standard, then.” A breeze blew Brenna’s hair across her forehead as she surveyed Jess clinically. “But I can swing that hatchet almost as well as you, Jesstin. And either Shann or I could have helped you carry Kyla back to our camp. So why do you insist on pushing yourself like this right now, when your back’s killing you?”

  Jess sighed. Hiding the occasional twinge was difficult when married to a psychic healer.

  Brenna pushed herself off the rock and went to the log. She swung around and sat behind Jess on the rough bark, clasping the broad shoulders.

  “I’ve got a passing familiarity with this body now, so even if I weren’t a brilliant physician, I could tell you’re hurting by the way you move.”

  She slid her hands beneath the thick hair and wrapped them around the base of Jess’s neck, probing the dense muscle carefully. “You don’t have to do everything yourself, Jesstin. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this feels an awful lot like empty Amazon macha.”

  Jess didn’t answer for a moment. She studied the glen, unwilling to give in to the pleasant warmth Brenna’s hands were coaxing into her rigid neck. When it finally seemed reasonable to believe that no Government troops were going to leap from the trees at any moment, Jess lowered her shoulders beneath her lover’s gently insistent touch.

  “Aye,” Jess said slowly. “Maybe it is Amazon macha. But it’s not Dyan we’re trying to live up to, adanin, me and Cam. Or not only Dyan. You called us warriors…You know what that means to us?”

  Brenna’s hands smoothed the planes of her upper back now. “Well, I know you and Camryn are pledged to Tristaine’s warrior guild, and Dyan was your leader. That means you’re part of your village’s fighting force, your army?”

  “We fight,” Jess affirmed, shivering with the tendrils of pleasure spun by Brenna’s strong fingers. It was important to her to get this right.
Jess talked to Brenna as easily as she prayed to her Mothers, but the complexities of Tristaine’s culture were difficult to explain. “But an Amazon warrior is more than a soldier. We protect Tristaine’s women in times of peace too. We make sure they’re safe. Whether the threat’s a flooding river, or rabid bats, or a mad Government scientist.”

  “Or a charging boar,” Brenna finished. Her hands stilled. “There are rabid bats in Tristaine?”

  “Aye, they have their own guild.” Jess grinned when Brenna tweaked her ribs. “Camryn and I, we’re the only warriors here, Bren. Shann’s our queen, you and Ky are both dear to us. We have to stay alert.”

  “Jesstin, that’s sexist as hell.” Brenna moved her hands lower on Jess’s back. “I saw Shann put a bullet through a man’s head before he could kill you, and both Kyla and I have been in Caster’s talons and escaped whole, just like you and Cam. We’re not delicate little—”

  Her probing thumbs hit a particularly painful kink, and Jess tightened, her left shoulder rising.

  “You found it,” Jess pointed out.

  “Sorry,” Brenna murmured, smoothing the stiff muscle with the flat of her palm.

  “I’m not calling any Amazon frail, Bren.” Jess rose, shaking off Brenna’s restraining hand. She reversed herself on the log so she sat facing her. “You’re strong, and you have a brave heart. I know that. I love that.”

  She lifted Brenna’s hand and held it, sifting through her fingers. She opened them and held her palm to her damp chest. “But this—you—are precious to me, adanin. I’d give my life to protect you. That would be true even if I’d never taken a warrior’s oath.” Jess searched Brenna’s face. “Let me do what I think I must to keep you safe.”

  Brenna stared at her silently for a long moment. Then she smiled, the love in her eyes rich and tender, and cradled Jess’s face in her hand. “I accept your protection. And I thank you for it. But just know this, Jesstin. When I was ten, this bully at the Youth Home pushed my sister Sammy down, twice. I broke the bitch’s nose. Does that tell you anything?”