by George Olney
Grae moved fast after Frenchy's interview with Locar. After leaving the office, he hustled both women into a waiting cab and flew them to what looked like a ranch built of roughhewn wood a good ways out of the city. "This is Lookaway Station," he explained. "It's owned by the Arm, so this is a safe place to outfit for a jaunt into the Tribal Mandate. I hope you can ride, Frenchy, or else learn real fast."
She shot him a sour look at that, noting the smile on his face.
Frenchy found out what Grae's remarks meant only a few minutes later. One: the Tribes defined a jaunt as a trip by gortback into the barren lands of the Mandate, with a purpose but no particular route. Two: a gort was an impossible cross between a Spanish fighting bull and a unicorn. This boded ill for the Home Team because… Three: she was expected to ride the damned thing.
She stood there for a few moments, fists on hips, trading stare for stare with the animal. Although it was standing there placidly chewing its cud, the look it returned her bespoke intense power and vitality as well as, she thought, a mean streak.
Time to look up Grae and render a few choice thoughts. That gentleman shortly found himself the recipient of a heated discourse on his projected itinerary, Lycanthi wildlife in general, and a certain gort in particular. Grae replied the way he usually did to her, which is to say he ignored all of her comments except the points he decided were relevant. "We are going by gortback," he said calmly, "for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that skimmers can be tracked. I prefer to arrive in my own time, by my own route, and unheralded. Now go load your mount and get ready to ride."
He strode off, grinning, leaving her to fume. Maev, strangely enough, was the one that came to the rescue. She took Frenchy's arm and said, "Come on, I'll show you what to do." Walking over to the gorts, she commented to Frenchy, "A gort is impressive, but docile unless you goad it to fight. I grew up on one and a gort’s actually pretty easy to ride. Come on, I'll show you how."
Frenchy got a friendly lesson in packing, and what items were needed in the Barrens. Finally, she eyed Maev, attired like Frenchy in shoes and a coat of sun tan oil. Unconsciously running her hand down the back of a bare thigh she asked uncomfortably, "What about riding? Uh, straddling that saddle when you're riding bareback... so to speak... uh, might rub... shouldn't it?"
Maev got her meaning and laughed. "Nope.
"A girl likes to keep herself soft enough for a guy to want to pet, thank you. That's why the saddles have that ofar fleece covering them. Won't get sweaty and won't rub bare skin. Everybody rides ‘bareback’, as you call it, from time to time and nobody likes to be rubbed raw while doing it. Besides," she smiled, "both men's and women's saddles are split down the middle and that really makes them pretty comfortable."
Frenchy returned the smile and decided she liked this Maev far more than the one she first met, even if the girl was hung up on sex. “Keep herself soft enough to pet.” Sheesh!
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They were well out in the Barrens now. The land that surrounded them was near desert, low and rolling, broken by rough cut gullies and ragged hills. Not too much grew more than knee height in the dry country, but the tan color of the sandy soil was strangely restful to the eyes, set off by the reddish warm colors of the rocks that continually jutted in strange formations to improbable heights, some a hundred feet high and more. In the distance, the surrounding hills blended the off-green foliage with the tan soil into a brown that contrasted sharply with the deep blue of the cloudless sky. The Barrens, she felt, were well named, but they gave her a feeling of space and freedom.
Frenchy rode with newly gained confidence, left hand holding the reins lightly while her right rested casually on the butt of her ax, holstered head-down on her right thigh. As she rode, she studied both the land and its current human occupants, particularly Grae.
His appearance always suggested a wild background. Now he was as much a part of the surroundings as the hills towards which they were heading. He'd stowed his vest and rode bare-chested, wearing a pair of leather breeches and his boots, hair bound back in its usual ponytail. Every so often, a motion of his head would send a gleam of sunlight off the earring that dangled from his left ear. She carefully noted that he was also fully armed, carrying his big sword strapped across his back, as well as the gun on his hip and knife on his boot. He also had some kind of rifle in a saddle scabbard. Thinking about that, she checked that her ax was loose in its head-down holster.
They took a break later in the day at a miniature oasis created by a tiny spring bubbling from a cleft in the rocks. Frenchy sat in the limited shade of a small bush, eating her trail ration and watching Maev do something strange. The girl had taken out a flat round container of red paste and was applying it in a definite pattern around her right eye. When she finished, she had a red teardrop shape surrounding her eye and the point trailing back halfway to her ear. "I give," Frenchy remarked as she crumpled an empty food container. "I can't say the paint job is an improvement on your face, but it does attract attention."
"It's supposed to," Maev replied with a smile. "We don't wear paint in Galactic surroundings, but we're in the Mandate now so I'm putting mine on. Tribal face paint is almost a language of its own. Every pattern means something. This one means I'm committed to someone."
Before Frenchy could make a sarcastic remark about she and the girl both being in bondage, Grae's dry voice came from behind her. "She's Bitter Water, so the pattern means that she's committed, but feel free to look all you want. She's flirting."
Maev's giggle and the gleam in her eye told the truth of that. Frenchy looked around at Grae, ready to make a joke, but stopped dead with a gasp, dropping the crumpled container in her lap. Grae's craggy features were painted with a pattern of jagged green rays, streaming back from the back corners of both eyes and both sides of the mouth. He looked terrifying.
Grae casually leaned over, picked the discarded food container from her lap, and smiled at her. The smile was no less frightening. "My tribe wears paint also," he commented mildly. "Make sure you leave no trash to betray our passage. I'll bury this."
Maev said with a tinge of awe in her voice. "It's the pattern of a master warrior on a mission."
He grinned at both women. "Maev, you've been civilized too long. It means I'm hunting someone, not just on a mission."
Frenchy looked from one painted face to the other. "You guys are Grade A weird! I suppose I ought to paint myself up, too?"
"No," Grae's voice was oddly serious. "For you that would be wrong. Just wear those earposts. Never take them off out here." With that, he strode away to saddle the gorts.
"It sounds like he means that," Frenchy said with a slight puzzlement tingeing her voice as she watched him walk off.
"He does," Maev replied. She was also watching the retreating back. "When I first saw you, I thought those posts were an affectation. Now that I know he's a Master, everything's different. Only a Master can proclaim a Valued Woman, and he backs that proclamation himself. Not one Lycanthi in a thousand will bother you with those things in your ears."
Frenchy's ego soared quickly. "Besides," she commented with a toss of her head and a flip of her hair, "they're beautiful."
Maev turned and grinned at her with a little envy. "Yes, they're beautiful."
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By the time they made a simple camp at dusk, sheltered in the cut of a high rock wall, Frenchy was both muscle sore and highly appreciative of a number of minor benefits of civilization. Chief among them, she wryly reflected, was toilet seats. Adventure was fine, she thought, but creature comforts were wonderful to have along. Her attitude considerably improved when Grae made her lie back on her bedroll and massaged the tightness out of her inner thighs. It pleased her that he obviously enjoyed the process.
She wasn't so pleased a few minutes later when he performed the same service for Maev at her request. Maev was Tribal. Frenchy was sure the girl was fully capable of riding for days on a gort without the slightest stiffness. B
oth Grae and Maev enjoyed that little massage, too.
She forgot her irritation during an excellent meal of wild game, courtesy of Grae's spring rifle, and trail rations cooked over an open fire as darkness fell. Maybe it was because she was hungry, or tired, or the outdoors, but the food tasted so damn good it made up for the day's few drawbacks.
After dinner, Grae rummaged through his saddle bags and produced a small receiver with a spike on its base. Driving the spike into the ground, he punched up a music broadcast station. "We're not so primitive," he commented dryly at her surprised look. "This receiver was made by a Tribal factory not too far from here. We also have our own broadcast stations."
"Okay, I got that part earlier," she shot back with some of her old irritation. Then she continued with some curiosity. "What does your tribe make?"
He settled himself comfortably. "Oh, robotics, mostly. None of our industry is large by galactic standards, but it produces what we need, though. Yellow Knife robotics are used to manufacture the other items."
Deciding it was a good time to find out a few things, she also settled in, hugging her shins and resting her chin on her knees. "If you have all that," she asked, "why do you live what I guess you'd call primitive lives? I mean, swords, and gorts and leather clothes and all that? Why not like the city?"
He looked at her with an air of mild proprietary pride. "I said once you ask good questions. I like the way you use your mind." She flushed at the compliment, but he diplomatically ignored her expression and turned his thoughts to an answer. "You ask why we don't live like Galactics. I suppose they are happy, but we don't like to live that way. The measure of intelligence is the ability to control the organism's environment to suit itself. Tribes like the wild life, becoming a part of nature. Oh, we aren't uncomfortable. We change things to suit us, but life in a box isn't life to me, or my people. Life is to be lived, and if that means danger, it also means living it that much more fully."
That made her thoughtful for a moment. Toilet seats were fine, but what about the rest of civilization? Did she really miss the way she used to live? Brother, the answer to that one was an emphatic NO! Frenchy realized she was feeling more alive than ever before. Sure, her life was no bed of roses, and she wanted to be free with an ache that grew each day. Given that, she decided she was having fun.
She began to see where the Grae and the rest were coming from. If only they didn't have that damned attitude towards women! And that included the women, too! Maev was just as bad as he was.
The music coming from the receiver had changed while Frenchy was meditating on the idiocy of Tribesmen, one and sundry. It was now strong, compelling, with a beat that got into the blood. She decided it had to be Tribal music. It fitted them too well.
Her guess was proven right a few seconds later when Maev flowed to her feet with some of her old arrogant, catlike sinuosity. She posed straight and rigid, her hands clasped behind her back, looking back over her shoulder at Grae. There was a sudden element of sexual tension in the air. Then she began to twirl and dance to the music, moving only her legs. Her movements were regular, in a systematic pattern. It was obviously a formal style of dance.
The fact was confirmed a few seconds later when Grae, after watching Maev for a short period, got up and began to dance with her, his body posture complimenting hers. They were back to back, hands clasped tightly behind them, looking over their shoulders at each other and turning as they danced to the beat of the music, the flickering light of the campfire making their movements more exotic. The air was taut with the sexual intensity of the dance. The music was heavy, demanding. The very rigidity of the dancer's postures emphasized the force of the sexual innuendo they were communicating.
Frenchy began to feel left out. She was also feeling the rising tide of temper. It wasn't as though that slinky bitch was just making a play for Grae; she was doing everything but climbing on top of him. And that no-good bum was just as bad. He looked ready to body slam her sometime in the next ten seconds.
Frenchy finally got to the point she either had to walk off or lay waste to the adjoining neighborhood, with special emphasis to the inhabitants thereof. As the two continued to dance in rhythm to the music, she jumped up and stormed off to sit in the cool solitude of the dark. Fuming, she stalked directly away from the fire, music, and the two dancers.
A short way from the firelight, the muted sound of the music was no longer so demanding, or irritating to the enraged woman. A low boulder provided her a convenient seat to look out on the barren, starlit landscape. She sat carefully on the smooth stone, still warm from the day's heat, only because her bare bottomed state was not conducive to plopping on the rock in high dudgeon. The quiet darkness gave her a chance to steam about the way that alley cat was just rubbing herself all over Grae, not that he was objecting. Why in the hell did she care? She wanted to be rid of the bum, anyway. Maybe he would let her go if he decided he liked the homegrown product better! So why was she so mad? What did he mean to her, anyway?
Her survey of the surrounding quiet terrain was casual, her mind full of confused thoughts. A few minutes later, the impression got through her preoccupation that there was something strange. That snapped her out of her reverie. A second, closer study revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
There!
She was prepared to swear that two or three large bushes weren't in the same place as a few moments ago. Uncomfortable, she noticed she was farther away from the fire than she should be for safety's sake. She was also unarmed. That was extremely unhealthy if this world was anything like Grae said. And Grae never exaggerated.
Nervously, she mentally debated trying to identify the threat or just get the hell out and lie about it later. One of the "bushes" moved, and that decided her. Time to leave. Cool and casual, she told herself, like you were just getting up to go to the ladies' room, not that any such existed out here. The idea was to try and lull whatever it was trying to lull her until she could make a break for it.
Casually scanning the area, without an apparent care in the world, she took careful note of the fact that there were three bushes out of place. All three were markedly closer.
She began a calm stroll back to the firelight, every sense alert. It was even money what was going to happen first. Either she was going to make it or they, whatever the bushes were, were going to jump. Behind her, she heard a rustling, loud and erratic, out in the dark. She wasted a second looking, and almost stopped short in shock.
Bats!
That was her first thought. They had muscular, spindly limbs, a sword in one clawed hand and huge bat wings. That wasn't what caught her attention. She could barely see the face, but it was all large pointed ears, big eyes, and a fanged muzzle. Bats!
The lead one was a few steps ahead of the others, but all three were coming on in a scramble that would overtake her in a few seconds. She took off at top velocity, legs and arms pumping in a straining run. "Gra-a-a-e!"
There was movement around the fire. A figure was coming her way! "Gra-a-e!"
He passed her at a dead run, sword in hand. The first clash of steel was only seconds later. She didn't stop. She headed straight for the fire at top speed. Maev was standing there, staring into the night, Grae's spring rifle in her hand. Frenchy began yelling as she approached the woman. "AxAxAxAxAxAx!"
Maev whirled and grabbed her ax, pitching it to her as she got close enough. Frenchy wasted no time. She reversed her direction as she picked the weapon out of the air and headed back at top speed, Maev trailing her.
The fight was on and it was a dilly! One of the bat things was already limping away from the flashing length of steel in Grae's hands. The other two were trying to split up and take him from different sides. To do that, they were going to have to stay alive, and that was proving difficult anywhere in Grae's reach.
As she thudded up, out of breath, one of the bats left off attacking Grae and turned on her, sword out. Her first swing knocked the blade out of the way, but the bat dodged
as well. She barely ducked its answering slash.
She was in trouble. She knew how to fight, but not with the ax. The bat, on the other hand, was damned good with its weapon. Too damned good.
There was a snap from behind her. The bat's head rocked to one side, bonelessly limp on the neck, and it collapsed. She looked behind her and there was Maev, bringing Grae's spring rifle back down off her shoulder.
Frenchy turned back to Grae's fight, with some idea of helping, but Grae had things in hand. He felled his attacker with a wicked overhand slash, and whirled on the wounded bat. The thing tried a clumsy takeoff run, attempting to get away. Grae flipped his sword in the air and grabbed the hilt like a spear. Rearing back, he threw the five foot long needle pointed weapon as easily as if it had been a javelin, and as accurately. The bat was barely off the ground when it was spitted in midair.
Frenchy stood there flatfooted for a second, holding her ax limply, feeling remotely foolish. Maev walked up to stand near her and asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," she answered in exhausted tones. "Yeah. Thanks for the assist."
Maev hefted the spring rifle and looked at it. "This is something else I grew up with. That isn't the first of the lee'thal I've put down." She looked at Frenchy musingly. "That was a good try. Took guts. Just know what you're doing before you do it."
She jerked her head in Grae's direction. "He'll tell you the same thing."
Frenchy nodded her head, abashed. "Uh, yep... well, let's go face the music."
"Oh, it's not so bad," Maev said lightly, and hugged Frenchy's shoulders with one arm as they walked together towards the man. "After all, we did take one of them out. He's not superhuman, you know."