The stream they were following ran by outside the cavemouth. Rain was falling again, coming down in a persistent drizzle from a darkening sky. They gathered wood, which was all damp or waterlogged. For kindling, they stripped the bark from a resinous tree, then Draven lit a fire. Yen Olass watched him, fascinated by his patience as he worked with tinder and flint. He had never struck
her as a patient man, but, coaxing a flame to life, he revealed resources of infinite tenderness.
Men could be so kind when they chose, lavishing love and care on infant fires, cherished weapons, a loyal pair of boots or a bit of soup they were nourishing with gentle heat. So why did they have to be so cruel to Yen Olass? Nobody in this group had said the word yet, but she knew what they were thinking: dralkosh.
As yet, there was no proof that she was with child: even if she was pregnant, it would be months yet before the thought sleeping in her womb grew large enough to swell her belly. So, for the moment, her companions could not be certain that she had really got herself with child. But what if she was pregnant? What would happen once there was undeniable proof?
Sitting back from the firelight, Yen Olass watched the fatigued faces of her companions, finding nothing there to comfort her. Later, after the fire had died down, she lay in the darkness, staring at the stars burning within the stone globe she had recovered from the river. She remembered the way the voices had hurt her just before she escaped from the bud.
What if there was a child, and the voices had hurt it? What if she gave birth to something with a liquid head or steel hands? Something dead? Or something… otherwise changed. Mad, maybe. Born without ears. Without eyes. Without bones.
Very quietly, Yen Olass began to cry. Resbit was already asleep, snoring very lightly; there was nobody to comfort her.
That night, Yen Olass dreamt of her homelands, dreamt of Monogail. In the moments just before waking, she was certain she had returned to those northern reindeer lands; waking, she knew otherwise.
When Yen Olass woke, everyone else was still asleep. The rain had ceased; mist obscured the stream. The grey
morning light revealed trees bulking out of the mist. It was quiet, but for the low-voiced chatter of water talking to stone as the stream ran west toward the river.
Yen Olass slipped outside and went to use the little toilet which had been excavated near the cave the previous evening. It was brimming over. There is nothing in the world more squalid and depressing than an overflowing shitpit; Yen Olass crept into the bushes and dug her own little cat-scraping.
Granted such privacy, she examined herself carefully, looking for the changes she had wished for inside the metal bud. To control their virgins, the Sisterhood mutilated them. By abusing its members, the Sisterhood demonstrated a concern for discipline which confirmed its subservience to the Collosnon Empire and the empire's need for order and obedience at all costs.
Yen Olass still remembered how she had fought. Someone had smashed her in the face, making her nose bleed. She remembered the taste of blood in the back of her throat. She remembered the grin of a razorblade sadist, the pain as a blade cut away her clitoris. She remembered the monstrous agony she had endured as flensing steel thinned the flesh of her lower lips. She had screamed and screamed and screamed. They had laughed at her. And the old woman with the needle had sewn up her vagina with strong cords which prevented it from opening far enough to accept a man.
Now, the cords were gone, with not so much as a scar to show were they had once been; the full flesh of her lower lips had been restored, and the most sensitive part of her anatomy had renewed itself. Yen Olass was both pleased and frightened. Pleased, because the mutilation of her body – an obscenity unknown in Monogail, though common in many other human cultures – had always shamed and disgusted her. Frightened, because she knew the power of the empire, and knew that she had set herself up against that power by claiming her body for her own purposes.
Creeping out of the bushes, she allowed herself a smile. She was Yen Olass Ampadara, pleased to be her own person making her own choices. Washing her hands in the stream, scouring them with a little gravel, she found a spot of rust on one of her fingernails. She was alarmed, but did not allow this to destroy her growing sense of triumph. She would treat her fingernails with boot grease, making sure they did not rust through. It was a small price to pay for the rebirth of her body.
That morning, the men went hunting while the women gathered snails and dug for worms. The mighty hunters returned toward noon with two frogs, a newt and a nest of baby birds. These, together with watercress and assorted invertebrate protein, made a meal which, though interesting, was less than entirely satisfying.
After lunch, the men set off again, returning much later with a bear. They had surprised it in a clearing. It had fled for the safety of a tree, which they had cut down. The bear had been killed in the fall.
This creature was not a wark, but a brown bear the same size as Yen Olass. The two boys, Shant and Mation, boasted outrageously about how they had chased the bear, and how funny it had looked falling from the sky. Yen Olass was glad when Draven, irritated by this prattle, cuffed them roughly and told them to shut up. She felt sorry for the bear: but she helped skin it all the same. It had been gutted already.
While the bear was being skinned, the men talked about two strange creatures they had seen, fox-fur animals which seemed to walk on two feet before dropping down on all fours and hastening away into the undergrowth. They wondered aloud if these were any good to eat.
This talk ended when the bear was skinned and a bright fire was blazing. Without waiting for the fire to die down to red coals, everyone hacked off chunks of bear meat,
stuck these on pointed sticks and jostled each other as they contended for cooking space.
Draven was ready to eat his meat rare, but Yen Olass cautioned him against it:
'Bears are like pigs. They carry lots of diseases. You have to cook the meat properly.’
'What do you know about bears?' said Draven.
'There are more bears in Tameran than there are on the Greater Teeth,' said Yen Olass.
That was true, as far as it went.
In the end, Draven, grumbling, cooked his meat thoroughly.
Bear was not as appetizing as pork, but they all ate with a will, then cooked more meat to eat cold later. Their hunger was now appeased, and they all felt stronger and more confident.
They were ready to march.
That evening, Yen Olass examined the lightweight coat of rabbit skin which she had bought so long ago in Gendormargensis. War had not been kind to it. She needed to replace it urgently, but how? Draven had already snaffled the bear skin. Fortunately her league rider's weather jacket, made to stand the punishing routines of military life, was lasting well. So were her boots.
She greased her boots – and then her fingernails.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lord Alagrace was weary. He knew the truth: he was too old for campaigning. In particular, he was too old to go tramping for league after league through wet, damp forest in pursuit of mutinous officers. He said as much.
'This is going to be the death of me,' said Lord Alagrace. 'Given the choice, I'd rather have died in Gendormargensis – not in some nameless place like this.’
'It isn't a nameless place,' said Yen Olass. 'It's called Nightcaps.’
'Who told you that?’
'Oh, everyone knows it,' said Yen Olass vaguely.
'I asked you a question,' said Lord Alagrace, displeased by her offhand manner. 'Who told you that?’
