couple of horse pistols in his belt. He was one of your typical Wollos, handsome as Lucifer and every bit as kindly to judge from his sneering grin, but when I rolled my eyes in dumb appeal he pulled out the gag.
I was too parched to speak at first, but probably because he wanted to hear what I had to say, he signed one of the band who held a chaggle to my lips, and the first words I croaked out, to confirm my suspicions, were: “Where is she?”
“The Queen Uliba-Wark?” says he. “Be patient, you will see her presently… and she will reward you for your services.” It was the same soft mocking voice that had threatened me with a chat to Old Nick, chuckling pleasantly as his gang grinned like a pack of wolves over a peasant, and I gibbered at him.
“What the devil d’you mean? D’you know who I am? A British officer, the envoy of
He struck me back-handed across the mouth. “Speak foully once more of Queen Uliba-Wark and you’ll be unable to speak to Shaitan! For before you die I’ll tear your tongue out!” He slapped me again, and resumed his mockery. “No one will know what has become of you,
So he wasn’t a mercenary, as for a second I’d dared to hope, but a genuine Uliba-worshipper, one of the crazy conspirators who’d survived the botched coup to put her on the throne. And thanks to Masteeat’s idiotic indulgence, she was free to make a second attempt—and to butcher me.
“Don’t be a fool, Goram,” said I, calm and quiet, for I saw yelling wouldn’t serve with this one.
He clapped a hand over my mouth, and now he was stuffing the gag back between my teeth—he might be loyal to Uliba, but he daren’t risk his gang being tempted by a fortune in silver. I tried to spit it out, but he had it bound in a trice, and I could do nothing but heave and roll my eyes. Then he spat in my face.
“If you were tortured for a year, it would be too light a punish ment! You would have slain our royal lady—she who had loved you and stood your friend! And you think you can buy me, her sworn warrior who lives only to see her on her rightful throne!” He spat again, and shouted to the others to bear me up. So we set off once more through the night; the rain had stopped, but thunder was rumbling in the distance, with an occasional crackle of light ning in the night sky.
Then the pace was slackening as we went up a steep ascent, and now there was a glow ahead, and a challenge to which Goram replied, and I was carried between great boulders into a rock-girt clearing where a great fire burned, and a half-score of Gallas were resting on their weapons. I was dropped without ceremony in front of a seated figure, cloaked and hooded, and my fearful gaze took in long and beautiful legs elegantly crossed, and above them the lithe figure and handsome face, cold as a basilisk’s, of Uliba-Wark.
There was no trace of the fury she’d shown at our last encounter. For a long moment she looked down at me, with a lack of expression that made my skin crawl, and then she rose, shrugging off her cloak, and came to stand beside Goram, one hand on her hip, the other toying with her braids. But not a word did she say, and paid no heed when Goram, having called a question to some sentry out in the darkness, frowned and shrugged and muttered in her ear. Without taking her eyes from mine, she held out her hand, and Goram drew his knife and handed it to her, grinning. She stropped it once, slowly, on her palm, and nodded, and at a word from Goram three of his ruffians seized me, two at the shoulders, one at the ankles, to prevent my struggling.
She signed to Goram to hold out his spear, and to my horror cut the ghastly trophies from its head, slowly and deliberately, to a delighted murmur from the onlookers; she watched me intently, and must have seen the terror in my eyes, for the chiselled lips smiled for the first time, as Goram dropped to one knee beside me and wrenched at my waistband, trying to tear it open.
The horror of that moment is with me still, and always will be: the ring of grinning black faces crowding closer to watch, Goram’s foul breath in my nostrils, the bestial leer of the scoundrel gripping my ankles, the knowledge of the agonising, unspeakable abomination Uliba-Wark was about to inflict on me as she placed her feet one either side of my legs and prepared to stoop, knife in hand…
… and beyond her, on the very edge of the firelight, there appeared a figure which could only be a guardian angel come down from heaven to save poor Flashy from his tormentors, for it was female and beautiful with flowing hair beneath its little white head dress like a halo, naked to the waist as an avenging fury should be, with a spear raised to hurl—and it wasn’t a hallucination or vision conjured by superstitious funk, for she was letting fly with the spear, and the man at my ankles was rearing up with a shriek of mortal anguish, eyes bulging and hands clutching at the bloody point emerging from his chest, flopping forward and spewing gore as he fell over me… which effectively cut off my view of the battle royal which was breaking out all around.
The hands at my shoulders were gone, Goram was no longer tearing at my britches, oaths and screams were in my ears and shots were ringing out and steel clashing as I strove to throw off the body of the dying man sprawled over me; he slid sideways, choking on his own blood, and I lay bound and helpless, staring at my incredible salvation.
For a wild moment I wondered if my brief delusion of divine aid hadn’t been true after all, for now there was a good score of ministering angels racing into the firelight, half-naked women who howled like Harpies and slashed right and left at the Gallas. But only for a moment: angels don’t shout war cries or squeal with pain when they’re wounded, nor do they yell with delight while two of ’em hold an enemy down and a third rips him open. And they don’t peel like Big Side chargers, either; my spear-thrower had looked like a statue of Diana, but some of her companions were as broad as they were long and could have thrown chests with King Gezo’s Dahomey Amazons. They fought with appalling savagery, and the Gallas were hard put to it to hold them; for a few minutes the fight surged to and fro, and then more attackers came leaping out of the dark, the Gallas fell back as the little darlings swept into them in a final charge, hair flying and juggs bouncing, and as two more of my captors went down, hideously slashed, I knew there could be only one end to it.
Goram knew it too, the swine, but where I would have turned and run, the spiteful brute was faithful unto death to his damned Uliba. He cut down one woman, parried a thrust from another, sprang back, shot a look of pure venom in my direction, barked an order, and leaped back into the fight. And to my horror, two of his ruffians broke away from the melee and snatched up my stretcher… but not to carry me out of harm’s way. No, not a bit of it. They threw me on the fire.
As you may know, during my service in the Punjab I had the misfortune to be basted on a gridiron over a slow fire, and bloody disagreeable it was, leaving me singed and smoking but mercifully underdone. An open blaze is different; two or three seconds and I imagine you burst into flames unless your stretcher happens to be made of stout bullock hide, but even then it’s only a matter of time before you come all over of a heat, and your one hope is the arrival of the fire brigade, at speed.
By God, I was lucky. I crashed into the heart of the blaze with a tremendous shower of sparks, and for a heartbeat there was no sensation before the flames began to lick at my feet, which overhung the stretcher, and I’d ha’ been horribly maimed at least if one of the angels (’cos that’s what she was even if she looked like a female gorilla) hadn’t thrust her spear beneath my stretcher and tipped me clear of the blaze with a tremendous heave which deposited me face down with a seared arse and back but no lasting damage.
She and her mates turned me over, and one of ’em had the wit to pour the contents of a chaggle over me, for I was smouldering painfully, and when they pulled the gag out I woke the echoes with complaint and gratitude, mostly complaint, but they very civilly cut me loose from the stretcher, which was uncomfortably hot still, Gorilla Jane helped me to a drink, and they set me with my back to a boulder, where I could take stock of the astonishing scene.
There wasn’t a Galla left standing. The onslaught of these amazing females had overwhelmed them in minutes, and by the excited yells and ghastly chopping sounds their wounded were being despatched, with my spear-hurling Diana supervising the slaughter. Her followers were a mixed bag, mostly young and as handsome as
