Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  Until now, nobody had really understood her, including herself. Even Etanalon's magic mirror had drawn its basics from her, and since she was confused so it could only work with what it had. It wasn't that she was this Storm Princess, or that she wanted to run from responsibility. It was rather that she'd always been an outsider, a totally square peg, even back home, and even more so in this far more structured and restrictive society. Nobody who didn't always feel different and abnormal—and was—could ever understand that, and only now, when she was in all ways as "normal" as the other girls here, or the ones she was likely to meet, did she herself truly understand her own longing.

  If anything, she was more "normal" than Charley had ever been. Charley would look down her nose at this kind of life. She never needed or wanted a husband or anything that smacked of convention, that was clear from the way she'd gone and kept going on this world. The funny thing was, Boday was more a model for Charley, love potion or no love potion. Boday had talents, not all of which were of the noblest sort it was true, and she'd carved her way by force of will, brains, and without any magical powers, into a position where she was totally in control of her life, and really needed no one even in this traditional, male-dominated society. Yeah, that's where things had taken a wrong turn at the start. Boday and Charley were kind of natural partners, or at least soul-mates; she hadn't even fit in with Boday. Not sexually— Boday had been straight until she'd gulped that potion, as straight as Charley—but even in that they both had the same basic lack of regard for men as anything more than sex partners and certainly no desire for long-term commitments. Not that Boday hadn't married guys—it was practically a hobby with her—but she dumped them just as quick when lust cooled down.

  Well, that was the two of them. She'd had another option chosen for her, but it was one that meshed with and quieted her own inner demons. She hadn't even had any of those Storm Princess dreams since, nor did she feel the rain or other storms now any more than ordinary people had. Whatever powers she had were gone with her old life, and she felt freed by that as well.

  She sat uncomfortably in a chair at me table and picked up a worn and weathered deck of playing cards. Cards here weren't like the ones back home; for one thing, they had ones to fifteens in five suits and looked more like Tarot cards than regular ones, but by removing the extras she could make a fifty-two card four-suited deck and, by now, she was more than used to the suits and knew the funny squiggles for the proper numbers. She shuffled the cards and dealt them on the table in the familiar pattern of Klondike like her father used to play. She knew and had played a lot of solitaire games from back when she was living with Boday. They were good time-passers when she didn't feel like doing much else, although lately she'd been taking them much too seriously. Somehow she wasn't in full control of her emotions any more, and it didn't seem to be the spell. The other girls said it was a natural part of the last stages of being pregnant, but it was the hardest of all to take.

  Any little things that seemed to go wrong, even the most petty little shit, and she'd wind up crying and getting depressed for long periods. She'd bawled more at nothing the last few weeks than she had at any time since she herself was a baby. Sometimes she'd get suddenly feeling real insecure, even paranoid, and she'd huddle there and shake with fear and finally, if she couldn't stand it any more, she'd manage to get down and go over to Putie's as fast as possible just for company and a hug.

  Other times, just as suddenly, she would have an enormous need to Just be totally alone and get real introspective, like now,

  It worked the other way, too. Sometimes with other people she just couldn't stop talking and talking even if she had nothing else really to say, and the littlest things would strike her as enormously funny, and she'd laugh abnormally long and hard to get the giggles and be unable to stop. And all the extremes might come one after the other, like somebody throwing a switch.

  It bothered her, but she didn't really want to intrude on the others, particularly since Quisu was just getting over having her own kid, a boy with the lungs of a lumberjack, and had her own hands full, and Putie'd had hers, a daughter, just three days ago and was in pretty poor shape, while Meda was due any day now. All had their men, or most of them, around as well and that made her long for her own husbands, all of whom were out working double duty to fill in for the guys attending their own wives back here.

  The fact was, nobody really knew when she was due. She'd not looked at a calendar, let alone a watch, in so long she had no sense of how much time had gone by except that it seemed like years and was definitely less than nine months. For that reason they'd rigged up a bell on the porch so if she suddenly felt the baby coming, she could summon help in a hurry. They'd all offered to take her in while the boys were away, but with all those other men around she felt more comfortable here. It wasn't modesty, just feeling too much like a stranger intruding on somebody else. She'd seen and even helped with the babies, though, and she wanted her own real bad.

  Still, she worried. She worried about her old friends and what might have become of them, and she worried about her own eventual safety, since she knew that while she might have changed, the child inside had not, as evidenced by the thunder and lightning all around the place when she kicked. Mostly, though, she worried about the impending birth. Not that she wouldn't be more than happy to have it over with, but she'd sat there by Quisu and then Putie, and it didn't look like much romance or fun at all. In fact, it looked awful enough that if she had some way of backing out of it, she certainly would have lost her nerve. Seeing the level of pain and discomfort it brought, and seeing, too, Quisu's almost twenty-two-hour labor, she knew now just why it was called "labor," and she didn't like that one bit.

  She heard someone coming up the ladder and turned, curious. It didn't cause any alarm, since she knew all the people there were for a hundred or more miles in any direction, but she was curious as to who would be dropping by. She was quite unprepared for the figure that struggled in, using the doorway to steady himself. He looked like hell, his clothes were in shreds, and the shirt was heavily stained with blood.

  "Crim! My God! Is that you? What are you doing here? And what happened to you?"

  She went over to him and tried to help him to one of the beds, but he shook her off and collapsed in a chair instead. She immediately forgot her own thirst and offered the cup of wine to him, which he drank greedily and then tried to catch his breath.

  "Been protecting you," he managed. "Did a good job for a while, but it was finally too much."

  She frowned. "Protecting me from who?" She suddenly had a fearful thought. "I'm not going back, Crim. You can't make me!"

  "I knew the situation, that's why I could only protect, not bring you out," he told her. "I wish I could—that would have prevented this, but that doesn't matter now. Nothing matters right now but the moment. How many people are there in the camp right now, besides you and me?"

  She thought a moment. "Sixteen, counting the other girls— Why?" She began fussing with his shirt to see and perhaps help dress the wound, but he again would have none of it.

  "Forget me now. If we don't act and soon. it won't make any difference if the wound's bad or not. Can you call the others? Get others here in a hurry?"

  "Yeah, I got a bell, but"

  "Then do it! Now! All our lives depend on it! Theirs, too!"

  She knew Crim well enough to take him at his word, and she went out and immediately rang the bell loud and long for all it was worth. When she finally decided that even the dead couldn't have missed, she went back inside. "Now what's this all about?"

  "Sam if I could find you, they could find you. Klittichom's already started the war. He attacked and destroyed Masalur. Boolean got away but it's ugly. Now a mercenary bastard I should have killed years ago named Zamofir is riding here hard. They've got repeating guns that can shoot hundreds of rounds a minute and they intend to get you and everybody else and just level this place, just to make sure."

  "Z
amofir! That son of a bitch from the train who was in with them raiders? Oh, I know him, Crim. How many?"

  By that time the first of the camp people had appeared, with several more following. Two of Putie's husbands, Ladar and Somaz, and one of Quisu's, Dabuk, anyway, as well as Putie herself. They initially froze in hostility at the sight of Crim, but his condition told them he wasn't somebody to be feared. Sam told them briefly who the stranger was, and that he was trustworthy, and they listened with growing concern.

  Ladar, a big, muscular man, and by agreement of the women the best-looking male body they'd ever seen, nodded. "How many are there?"

  "There were twenty when they started, but there are only fourteen now." the Navigator responded with a touch of pride in his voice. "But they're mad as hell and they got nothing but blood in their eyes at this stage. I overheard them saying they were going to kill every living thing here and burn the place. I pulled two of me fancy rifles off the dead ones and got two boxes of ammunition as well. Hauled them on foot the last three leegs. They're simple to operate and you don't have to aim they'll nail most anything within maybe a thirty-or forty-degree angle of where they're aimed. You have anything else to fight with?"

  Ladar turned to Dabuk. "Get back to the still. That stuffs pure grain alcohol. You remember the firebombs Jerbal used back in that raid? Make some. Figure what to do with the rest. Somaz, you and Putie go tell the others and have everybody meet here. This here and the mill across the way are the first two buildings they got to pass. You—Navigator. How much time you figure we got?"

  "An hour, maybe a little less. Hard to tell today."

  He nodded. "Might be just enough. All right, everybody move!"

  They put Putie in charge, getting the other women well back in the jungle they all knew, along with the two babies. They were just to go as far back as they could, far enough back so that the crying of the babies wouldn't attract anybody. Sam was ordered back, too, but she refused, "No, this is my fight, my fault," she told them. "If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't be comin' here. The others'll make out, but I want my crack at the bastards. Besides, if they get us and I'm killed, maybe at least they won't risk stayin' around to find the others, but if I'm not here, they'll stay until they find us." That last was the clincher.

  Crim showed Ladar how to work the submachine gun and the big man took it and one box of ammo and set up in the loft above the mill about a hundred yards away across a clearing. Crim himself kept the other one, propping himself up behind the porch stove and cutting a hole in the netting big enough to fire through. Other men took their positions with baskets filled with fire bombs—small gourds filled with nearly pure grain alcohol and plugged with strips of cloth. The rest loaded rifles and pistols, all single-shot legal kinds, and waited in a line behind bales of hay. All seemed almost relieved that they didn't have long to wait.

  They rode into the camp slowly, bold as brass, eyeing everything like they were speculators out to see if the place was worth buying. Sam had a feeling of unreality about the scene, as if she had seen it many times before in countless western movies, where Constable Earp faced down the Clanton mob or a hundred old Duke Morrison turns on late night TV. The only difference was, most gunfights were at dawn, not sunset. Damn! This was more Charley's style than hers. She couldn't help counting them, and suddenly came up short.

  "Crim!" she whispered urgently. "I only count ten!"

  Crim nodded. "One or two to watch the road just in case, and two more probably coming in on foot to cover them. We'll just have to take the hidden ones as they come. We got the high ground."

  A man—one of Famay's boys, Sam saw—got up from behind a hay bale, rifle at the ready. "That's far enough, strangers!" he called out. "What do you want here?"

  Zamofir, looking ridiculous and haggard at one and the same time, with his big waxed moustache and riding clothes, came a bit forward, but not too much. "Covanti's under attack," the little man shouted back. "A general uprising by the natives in a ton of colonies. We've been sent here to evacuate all of you to the hub until the crisis has passed."

  "That so? We heard of the troubles but there ain't no natives around here, either. This ain't their type of place. And if we was gonna be evacuated, they'd send the army."

  "The army's too busy handling the flow of refugees and setting up defenses. There's whole armies of rebels converging on die hub border, and massacres of Akhbreed throughout the colonies. They couldn't spare a troop of soldiers for this little outpost, so they sent us, instead."

  Zamofir, she thought, was as glib and convincing as ever, and just as much a skunk and a liar.

  "That's pretty good, you bastard!" Crim yelled down at him. "Zamofir, if I didn't know you so well, I'd almost swallow that myself!"

  Zamofir suddenly went white and somehow slid, horse and all, back into the midst of the gang. "Crim! Iuh! Old friend, I know we haven't seen eye to eye on a lot of this, but … scatter, boys! They're ready for us!"

  At that moment Crim and Ladar opened up a sudden, withering crossfire, and men and horses went down in a bloody mess in the clearing. Some who had bolted at Zamofir's first syllable made for the mill or the house, on the instinct that neither man would fire towards the other's position. It was also clear that they'd gotten more horses than men; machine-gun fire was being returned from the midst of the clearing, behind the figures of horses, some still, some thrashing in agony. Bullets whistled through the house and mill and down the main road, and Sam beat a hasty retreat to the rear of the house, where the angle kept direct shots from hitting. Furniture, pans, you name it, started moving, flying, and shattering all at the same time.

  She was ashamed of herself for cowering like this, and she was worried for Crim. It didn't sound like he was firing any more.

  The firing at her didn't last long, though; she heard sounds like breaking glass outside and then the sounds of men screaming, and, cautiously, she made her way forward again to see. The men in the trees had started throwing firebombs down on the massed men in the clearing, creating a hellish fire, and individual shots picked off men, some on fire, who ran from the cover into the open

  Suddenly there were sounds on the porch vibrating through the floor, and into the interior lurched a huge, filthy, bearded raider brandishing a pistol. He stood there, staring at her, and gave a laugh and then brought the pistol up, still chuckling. Suddenly someone appeared behind him, and, before he realized that anyone was there, he suddenly stiffened and bent backwards a little, the most incredulous expression on his face, then keeled over and collapsed on the floor, a big Navigator's knife sticking full into his back.

  "The sun set just in time," Kira said with satisfaction. "Now, help me get out of Crim's shin and jacket before 1 tangle and fall myself!"

  Sam was almost too shocked to do anything, but Kira galvanized her into action. There was more shooting outside now, and a lot of yelling.

  Kira got the rest of Crim's clothing off and then crouched down and looked at the situation outside. Although the sun had set, it was still very light, but there was little to see. The survivors of the raiders and whoever was still going defending the camp were all under cover now, and it was hard to tell who, what, or where, or even friend from foe.

  Kira looked over at Sam and gave her a reassuring smile. "I feel like a native now. Crim couldn't haul much more than he did, so I guess I'm bare-assed and everything else for me duration."

  Sam partly recovered her composure. "Crim I didn't hear…."

  "Like I said, nick of time," the pretty woman responded. "That bastard got under the porch, climbed up, and pulled Crim and half the netting down. I guess he thought Crim was dead, and if sunset had been another five minutes, or those guys had waited until dawn, he would be. Now he's sort of suspended, at least 'til dawn." She sighed. "Wish I had something decent to fight with. Any weapons here except this one-shot pistol?"

  "Crim had the repeater. The only thing we got is an old set of sabers, Jubi—one of my husband's—kept from his o
ld army days."

  "Get them. God, that horse barbecue out there smells awful!"

  Sam fumbled and then opened the trunk. Although it was growing pitch dark in the house without the lantern, she knew her way as if it were the back of her hand.

  Kira took both sabers, hefted them, men picked one. "This'U do. You take the pistol and shoot anybody who comes through the door."

  "What're you gonna do?"

  "A little hunt in the dark. This is my element, remember? And I'm fresh as a daisy." She started to duck out, but Sam called after her.

  "Kira what about Crim? Come morning, I mean. And you?"

  "If help doesn't come before morning, then Crim will die," she responded calmly, as if referring to someone else. "And if Crim dies, I probably will, too. That makes the next few hours real precious, doesn't it?" And, with that, she slipped out.

  Sam felt suddenly terribly guilty and panicky at one and the same time. This wasn't me way it was supposed to go, damn it! Would they never leave her alone? Now Crim and Kira were gonna die for her, too, and maybe most or all of the people she loved here! And all she could do was sit there in the dark on the floor with a pistol.

  Or could she? Suddenly she smelled smoke, not from outside, that had pretty well died out now but like it was coming from…. The house was on fire! The bastards had set fire to it, and maybe to other places in town. The four left behind, and anybody who got away, now working to create light and force the defenders from their own ground out into the open.

  And it was a good plan, since there was no question of her staying where she was. She got up and carefully peered out at the porch, or what was left of it. Was the one who set fire to her place hiding under it? Damn it, what could she do? The glow from underneath told her that the place would quickly be engulfed in flames, but she'd also be silhouetted against that glow when she got down. Jumping was out of the question not in her condition. Taking a deep breath, and holding the pistol tightly, she let herself out over the edge of the porch, turned as best she could, and dropped, landing on her feet for a moment but then falling over. She forgot all her physical limitations, all danger, picked herself up and made for the darkest area she saw nearby, behind some bullet-scarred trees.