Battle for Tristaine

by Cate Culpepper

  Half a league, five minutes, I’m there, Brenna thought. The prospect of fading out for a while on a gentle, drugged wave held strong appeal at the moment. She wondered if the craving for a drink would ever leave her entirely. She had made no reference to that desire in her notebook, but it still occupied her thoughts daily. She drained the bowl of fragrant soup in one swallow.

  Shann regarded her for a moment. “You have questions, I think.”

  Brenna readjusted her stiff legs on the poncho to give herself time to focus. She realized she still looked for Caster’s mind-twisting in Shann’s quiet authority, and still felt a wave of disorientation when she couldn’t detect it. In their weeks together, Shann often sought Brenna for private counsel and usually began their talks with that same gentle invitation.

  “Yeah. Several dozen.” Brenna flipped through her journal for a clean page to take notes. Then she relaxed her fingers around the pen and looked up at Shann. “Jess said something, weeks ago, about Tristaine being divided since Dyan’s death. What’s that about?”

  “There was division even before we lost Dyan.” Shann folded her hands in her lap and almost visibly ordered her thoughts. “The City has always feared us, Brenna, for the many generations of Tristaine’s existence in these mountains. And now there are those among us who believe that cooperation with its Government is the only way to ensure our survival.”

  “Cooperation?” Brenna was puzzled. “How can anyone in Tristaine believe that? You guys scare the crap out of the Government, Shann. That’s why the Military hired Caster in the first place—to wipe out Tristaine. Amazons are legendary in the City. Women keep defecting to your village in droves.”

  “Hardly droves.” Shann smiled. “But we’ve had a small, steady stream of City women join us through the years. And it’s our newest sisters, those who’ve come to us in the last decade or so, who seem most willing to trust the Government’s offer of peaceful assimilation.”

  “They really think they’ll be allowed to keep their culture intact under City rule?”

  “They believe cooperating with the City is our only hope if we’re to keep Tristaine intact, period.” Shann’s velvet voice was troubled. “Our sisters aren’t evil or stupid women, Brenna, but I fear they’re dangerously deluded. And one of them, Theryn, sits on our high council. Dyan’s reputation was enough to keep her faction in check while she lived—”

  “And now Dyan’s gone.” Brenna softened her voice. “You’ve been away from Tristaine for months. Are you afraid this Theryn is trying to take over? Is that why they sent for you?”

  “The glyph Talfryn brought us means rising tensions, yes.” Shann turned her mild eyes on Brenna. It seemed there was no one else in the world more worthy of the queen’s respect and attention at that moment.

  “This will be the Tristaine we bring you to, little sister,” she continued. “I wish we could offer you the feminist utopia that was our grandmothers’ dream, but Amazons have learned that finding sanctuary must always be a process, rather than an achievement. Do you understand, Blades?”

  “Yeah.” Brenna nodded. “I do. But I have to admit, the stories you guys tell me about Tristaine, it really does sound like some kind of paradise sometimes. Hearing that it has its problems is probably a good thing, right? It’ll help me keep some perspective.”

  “Tristaine is a paradise, peopled by very human women.” Shann smiled and covered Brenna’s hand with her own. “With all the joy and angst inherent in that simple phrase.”

  “Ooh, I like that,” Brenna murmured, scribbling neat notes in her journal. “‘A-n-g-s-t.’ But, yeah, Shann, I see what you’re saying. I’ve always known we’re not through with the City. Or with Caster. And I realize I might not be universally welcome in Tristaine. Don’t worry. I never sugarcoat my prospects. I know what to expect.”

  “You’ve had to, I imagine.” Shann studied her silently for a moment. “What’s going to happen in Tristaine in three days, Blades?”

  Brenna looked up at her, puzzled, then closed her journal with a rueful sigh. “Shann, I don’t know why I said anything about a timeline. I didn’t even realize you were asking me about the village.”

  “And you didn’t know what was happening to Camryn before the boars attacked, only that she was in danger.” Brenna grimaced, and Shann smiled at her. “Don’t try to force it, adanin. Our Grandmothers are slow to share their secrets.”

  “I’m sorry, Shann, but your Grandmothers, being dead for umpteen generations—”

  “Shann, Brenna?”

  They both turned as Jess’s low voice reached them. They couldn’t see her, crouched as she was on the rock overhang above the camp, until she moved. Brenna followed her raised arm to the blankets where Camryn and Kyla lay. Camryn had lifted herself on an elbow and bent over her partner.

  “Help an old lady.” Shann took Brenna’s arm.

  Brenna’s own knees creaked as they hurried toward the small fire that still burned near their bedrolls.

  “She hasn’t slept.” Concern roughened Camryn’s voice and emerged as irritation. “I’ve been trying to keep her covered, lady, but she’s—”

  “Been changing my own diapers for years now,” Kyla cut in and tugged the blanket from Camryn’s grip. “I’m fine, people. You can stop hovering over me like wasps every time I twitch.”

  “Manners, little sister.” Shann knelt beside Kyla. “Can we blame your foul mood on the pain in your leg?”

  “Oh, Shann, I’m two days from my moons,” Kyla grumbled, “and that’s as close to an apology as you’ll get from me. Bloody hell!”

  Shann’s eyes darkened as Kyla’s hand tightened in her own, and Camryn stroked Kyla’s hair until the spasm passed. Brenna managed a sympathetic smile for Cam. She knew all too well the helplessness she had to be feeling.

  “We scale the ridge tomorrow, lady.” In the shifting firelight, Camryn looked as if she’d aged ten years. “Do you think Ky can make it?”

  “I’ll be riding in that sling thing,” Kyla mumbled.

  “Blades?” Shann looked at Brenna. “Your thoughts?”

  Brenna hoped the tsunami that roared through her stomach at the thought of the climb ahead didn’t sway her clinical judgment. Another look at Kyla’s ashen features convinced her. “Ky, you’re hurting a lot as it is, and you haven’t slept well. We might want to talk about taking just one day here to rest.”

  A stubborn line formed between Kyla’s brows in a way Brenna now recognized as reminiscent of her blood sister Dyan.

  “I’m crazy to get home too, adonai.” Camryn cradled Kyla’s free hand in her own. “But if Shann and Brenna both think we—”

  “Look, I should get to decide this!” Kyla clenched her wife’s hand with sudden strength. “I haven’t seen Tristaine in half a season. I miss my sisters. And my dog. And if we can get there by the full moon, we’ll be in time for the Festival of Thesmophoria, and I’ll get to sing the Challenge, rather than that tone-deaf, immature, lame little toad Deidre. So shut it, Camryn. We’re going home!”

  Brenna blinked. Shann looked up at Jess, who stood over them with crossed arms, one shoulder braced against an aged cedar. Jess shrugged.

  “We’re decided then,” Shann said pleasantly. She tucked the blankets around Kyla again. “If you rest tonight, Kyla, we’ll face the ridge tomorrow. And the night after, we’ll warm our feet at Tristaine’s hearth.”

  She leaned forward and kissed Kyla’s forehead, then laid a hand on Camryn’s bony wrist. “Try to sleep, adanin. That means you too, Brenna, and take Jesstin with you. I have first watch.”

  *

  Brenna lay still while Shann finished feeding the small fire that warmed their circle. She tied her cloak around her shoulders and settled again on a moss-shrouded stone to begin her watch.

  Brenna turned onto her back and scanned the star-spangled sky overhead. She could now pick out the Seven Sisters easily. Tristaine believed that particular star field composed the small campfires of the clan’s seven
founders, the women who first carved a crude camp above the City seven generations ago. Their names ticked through her mind like music: Kimba, Jade, Beatrice, Julia, Constance, Wai Yau, Killian.

  According to Shann, the star representing Julia’s campfire guided her, Tristaine’s first—and only—seer and prophet. I’ll follow any star that gets us up that ridge tomorrow, Brenna promised silently, not realizing she was praying. If that star can wipe out a few zillion of those gnats, that’s gravy on the meat loaf.

  She looked across the camp and studied Shann’s austere beauty in the moonlight, made more poignant by the lines of grief that bracketed her mouth. She was studying the colorful glyph etched on her wrist, which identified her as an Amazon queen. Along with the design, the symbol of royalty, Shann’s glyph consisted of the figures of three women—Amazons, presumably—and her fingers moved slowly over them now.

  Not for the first time, Brenna wondered at the emotional burden carried by the leader and guardian of an endangered tribe of warrior women. One who had recently lost her own adonai—her wife and closest adviser—to violent death.

  Brenna clasped Jess’s forearm, which rested lightly beneath her breasts. She turned on her side, and Jess stirred and moved closer, warming her back.

  “Ye haven’t relaxed since ye were five,” Jess teased in a sleep-thickened voice that turned her brogue to malt.

  “I’m sorry, Jesstin,” Brenna whispered, stroking the muscled arm holding her. “I finally got you to sleep. Don’t let me undo my own good work.”

  Jess let the soft slide of Brenna’s palm on her skin coax her awake. She breathed in the light scent of her lover’s hair and rubbed her tense shoulder.

  “You’re tight as wire, Bren.” Jess worked her left hand gently between Brenna’s thighs. “How do City girls unwind after a long day?”

  “Uh, not that way.” Brenna grinned, then tapped Jess’s arm. “Hey, listen. Kyla’s snoring. Good. At least she’s sleeping deeply enough to…Jesstin?”

  “Darlin’?” Jess slid one leg over Brenna’s and laid her arm beneath her breasts to hold her in place. Her fingers had moved beneath the waistband of Brenna’s pants and softly stroked the furred mound between her legs.

  “Jesssss.” Brenna squirmed. “Excuse the hell out of me, but this is not the way to relax me, all right?”

  “You’re wrong, lass.” Jess’s breath brushed warmly across the side of her neck. “This works every time. It’s an old Amazon remedy for easing tension and summoning pleasant dreams.” Brenna could feel faint tremors coursing down her back.

  She suppressed a gasp as the long fingers slid home, gliding among her suddenly liquid folds with insolent confidence. Her spine wanted to melt, but she was acutely aware that they were not alone. “Jess! We’re at a slumber party here!”

  “We’re going home, my Brenna.” Jess’s voice and fingers stroked her skillfully, patiently, in a pattern proven to reduce her to shivering fragments. “In Tristaine, you and I will have a lodge of our own at last, and privacy. But we’ll not do anything, then or now, that would shame us to have our sisters hear.”

  “Damn it, Jess, you know I can’t—” Brenna bit her lip and tried to slow her breathing. “I can’t just…whoa…do this quietly…this is the second time you’ve—”

  “Shhhh, Bren, aye, you can be quiet, if I ask it,” Jess whispered as her fingers moved faster now, with a tighter urgency. “Silent as a breeze…”

  Brenna crested hard, and Jess was damnably right; the effort to keep silent only prolonged her pleasure. She timed Brenna sweetly and well, stroking her down slowly from shuddering climax to liquid peace.

  Jess chuckled, gloating, and Brenna nudged her with a reproving elbow. She woofed into her soft hair. “Are you worried about tomorrow’s ridge, lass?”

  “Nope,” Brenna sighed, melting back against Jess at last. “Piece of cake...sleep, Jess, now.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Across the camp, Shann smiled up at her seven Grandmothers, as tears traced the lines of her face.

  *

  “Did you get hit?”

  There was gruff concern in Camryn’s tone, and Brenna made herself lower her hand from her eyes. “No, Camryn, I’m fine.”

  “Don’t look down unless you have to,” Cam advised her again.

  “It’s not looking down that gets me, at the moment.”

  Jess’s ascent was kicking down enough small gravel to warrant proper eye protection for the women waiting on the ledge below. But apparently basic Amazon climbing gear did not include safety goggles. Or anything even faintly resembling a net.

  They had one nylon rope they had smuggled out of the City, and Shann had brought another from Tristaine, made of some tough, sinewy fiber that seemed equally durable. But this high off the forest floor, Brenna found the twined vines that made up the rest of their suspension anchors woefully inadequate. She shaded her eyes to look up at Jess, then covered them again in spite of herself.

  “She’s climbing well, Blades.” Shann patted her arm reassuringly. “Jesstin grew up in these mountains. She scaled heights like this when she was just a—whoops.”

  “What?” Brenna cried.

  “Nothing,” Shann said, steadying her quickly. “That outcropping there juts out too far to manage Kyla’s sling, that’s all. Jesstin’s marking the second route for us.”

  Brenna looked for herself. She appreciated Shann’s kindness, but refused to take comfort in anything she said. After all, it was Shann who had referred to this harrowing cliff as “a bit daunting.” She peered skyward through her spiky bangs and sighted Jess again, working her way steadily toward the crest. Her movements were smooth and unhurried as she passed from one hold to the next.

  Jess was climbing unanchored, laying rope and vine for the rest of them to use as she went. The lines would offer marginal security as they moved up the rock face, but if Jess slipped, nothing would stop her from plummeting down to the granite ledge where they waited, or beyond it to the valley below.

  “She’ll be fine, Bren.” At Brenna’s feet, Kyla managed a wan smile. Camryn tied off the last of the vines that would secure the makeshift sling designed to carry her over this treacherous stretch. “Jess is half mountain goat.”

  “More than that,” Camryn muttered.

  Brenna crouched cautiously on the narrow ledge and helped Camryn slide Kyla’s bandaged leg into the folded blankets that comprised the sling. It was a clever contraption, strong enough to bear her weight, but leaving her uninjured leg free so she could distance herself from the rock.

  “I wouldn’t mind hitching a ride in this thing myself.” Brenna eyed the sling with some envy as she checked the dressings on Kyla’s thigh.

  “It’s how we carry babies and little kids,” Kyla grumbled.

  “And injured, sulking Amazons,” Shann added. “Look, adanin.” She pointed to a dizzyingly high spot up the cliff. “Our goat has triumphed.”

  Brenna craned her neck and saw Jess rise to her feet at the top of the ledge and slap dirt off her legs with her hands. She rested her fists on her hips and stood still a moment, scanning the forest below.

  The goddesses who guarded Tristaine had granted them fair weather for the climb, which made Brenna weak-kneed with gratitude. She couldn’t imagine scaling all this loose rock in a downpour. She tried to focus on anything other than imminent death and concentrated instead on the goal. She would glory in the sunshine and the soul-satisfying view that Jess, after her months of captivity, was sure to be soaking up at the crest.

  “Blades.” Shann laid a hand on her shoulder, and Brenna rose carefully.

  “I’ll get started.” Shann steadied herself against the rock and looked down at Brenna, her eyes warm. “You’re strong and agile, little sister. You’ll be fine.”

  “I will be,” Brenna confirmed, “if no queens fall on my head.” She smiled up at Shann with more bravery than she felt.

  “I’ll swan dive past you, I promise.” Shann bent and kissed her cheek, th
en gripped the nylon rope. She pulled herself up to the first long shelf that marked the route Jess had set for the climb. “Camryn, Kyla, move with care, please,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Lady,” they chorused in assent, and all watched Shann’s progress closely.

  The order they ascended made sense to Brenna, at least after Jess had explained it. The strongest climber, Jess, went first to set anchoring points and chart the safest route to the crest. Shann climbed second to help guide Kyla’s sling up the rock, while Brenna and Camryn shared Kyla’s weight with Jess, who pulled the vines that raised the sling up the cliff’s face.

  “We’re set.” Camryn leaned in and kissed Kyla solemnly. She and Brenna would have to climb evenly up the rise to keep Kyla level. Jess had prioritized that necessity as she marked their path.

  “Hokay,” Brenna said to the stone wall before her. “I could be filling in requisition forms for Caster right now.” That perspective helped her begin.

  At first the climb was not the wet-palmed horror she feared it would be. Shann was right. She was up to this. Brenna had been an athlete even in the City, and long weeks without alcohol, with regular workouts and fresh air, had strengthened her. She moved slowly up the steep grade, finding holds where her hands and feet expected them, keeping her center of gravity in easy balance. She and Camryn watched each other carefully, glancing down to monitor Kyla’s progress.

  “Slowly, sisters.” Jess’s faint, low voice sounded above them like a benediction from one of the Seven. “This isn’t a race.”

  “Watch the patch of loose shale here, Cam,” Shann called down, panting a little as she lifted herself to the next hold. Camryn whistled acknowledgment.

  Kyla was weathering the climb well. She used her free leg to kick off from the rock face, but otherwise moved as little as possible to keep the sling steady. Brenna heard a lilting melody below her as she pulled herself, gasping, over a snarl of roots.

  “Oh, great, Ky’s being funny.” Camryn’s breath was coming a bit harder too. “That’s an old Amazon love chant she’s singing. The words are ‘don’t let me go.’”