Chicks in Chainmail

CHICKS IN CHAINMAIL

Edited By

Esther Friesner

CONTENTS

Introduction
, Esther Friesner

Lady of Steel
, Roger Zelazny

And Ladies of the Club
, Elizabeth Moon

Exchange Program,
Susan Shwartz

Goddess for a Day
, Harry Turtledove

Armor-Ella
, Holly Lisle

Career Day
, Margaret Ball

Armor/Amore
, David Vierling

The Stone of War and the Nightingale's Egg
, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

The Growling
, Jody Lynn Nye

The New Britomart
, eluki bes shahar

On the Road of Silver
, Mark Bourne

Bra Melting
, Janni Lee Simner

The Old Grind
, Laura Frankos

The Way to a Man's Heart,
Esther Friesner

Whoops
!, Nancy Springer

The Guardswoman
, Lawrence Watt-Evans

Teacher's Pet
, Josepha Sherman

Were-Wench
. Jan Stirling

Blood Calls to Blood
, Elisabeth Waters

Maureen Birnbaum in the MUD
, George Alec Effinger

CHICKS IN CHAINMAIL

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 1995 by Esther Friesner

All material is original to this volume and is copyright © 1995 by the individual authors.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box
1403

Riverdale
,
N.Y.
10471

ISBN: 0-671-87682-1

Cover art by Larry Elmore

Printed in the
United States of America

Dedication

For Alice Lewis and for
Bellatrix

They know why

And a special round of thanks to Toni Weisskopf,

who girded on editorial armor and said,

"Yes. she
can
use that title."

CHICKS IN CHAINMAIL

Esther Friesner

^
»

EN GARDE.

I'll bet you're wondering about the title of this book. Well, I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear right from the outset: It's all my fault.

When I told people the concept I wanted to use for this anthology, the reaction I got everywhere was not just favorable, it was downright enthusiastic (viz: "Cool!").

When I mentioned the
title
I wanted to use, the reaction I got everywhere—from editor, publisher, and potential contributors alike—was: "Are you
sure
you want to call it that?"

But we called it by that title anyway. All my fault. No one else to blame so don't try.

FEINT.

I've never been one to leave sleeping stereotypes lie. It's been my humble opinion for a while now that the Woman Warrior in today's crop of fantasy literature has gone beyond stereotype all the way to quadrophonic. She's strong, she's capable, she's independent, and she's
serious
. She's more than a match for any fighting man. But mostly, alas, she's got a posture problem, either from that chip on her shoulder or from toting around the full weight of an Author's Message.

(Granted, this beats the heck out of her venerable Woman Warrior ancestresses, whose posture problems all came from physiques that made them look like they'd been hit from the back by the proverbial brace of torpedoes. You can still view this less-than-endangered species by opening the pages of
Spandexina! Mutant Babe of the Parallel Universe.)

Now I'll be the first to admit, today's crop of Ladies Who Lunge (and Parry and Thrust) has it all over their predecessoresses in one department: Wardrobe. In the olden days, when comics still cost a dime and licorice whips wasn't the name of an X-rated movie, if you did have a Woman Warrior she would almost invariably be clothed in some variation on the chain-mail bikini. Like the U.S. Postal Service, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night would be enough to get her to change into something more sensible, less drafty, and less likely to cause certain strategic areas of the anatomy to freeze or fry on contact. (To say nothing of the unjustly ignored problem of the armored wedgie.)

Indeed, the one advantage of the chainmail bikini was how easy it was to slither out of when the Woman Warrior finally found the one Unspoiled Barbarian Swordsman who could make her a
real
woman.

(I think they sell the kit for that at Wal-Mart.)

It is this image of the Woman Warrior as bimbo-with-a-blade that has caused the stampede in the other direction among fantasy writers. Ana a very nice stampede it has been, too, except for the fact that once we chucked the chainmail bikini, we also chucked the chance to create a fighting woman who can let down her guard once in a while and just be human instead of an Image.

THRUST.

When I pitched this book, the super-compact capsule description I used was Amazon Comedy.

Amazon Comedy. Yeah, right. What are you, Friesner, some kind of sexist? Oh sure,
you
can get away with this because you're a woman, but just let some man try to write Amazon Comedy and watch him get reduced to a puddle of Politically Incorrect puree!

(This is the same phenomenon that allows members of one ethnic group to tell Those Jokes and use Those Words to one another, but heaven help the outsider who tries.)

Wake-up call time: Not all comedy needs to be cruel. Not all humor depends on ridicule. Most of the best relies on holding up the mirror to our fallible human nature. It lets us laugh at ourselves without making us feel belittled, hopeless, disenfranchised, or dumb. We make mistakes, we laugh at them, and we learn.

All of us. Even strong women. Even Warrior Women.

PARRY.

I once met two dogs.

If you took the Sunday
New York Times
and dropped it on top of the first one, you could probably squash him flat. If you heard how this tiny little flea-with-fur yapped his fool head off at a pitch and volume guaranteed to raise the dead every time anyone trespassed on his Personal Space, you would go right out and buy
two
copies of the Sunday
New York Times
just to be sure you got him good.

The other dog was big and strong enough to play Australian rules football—as his own team—and win. His teeth could punch holes in sheet metal. When his owner played Frisbee with him, this dog got confused and fetched the hubcap off a Monster Truck. With the truck still attached.

This second dog lets babies massage strained peaches into his fur, allows little girls to use his hair and nails when they play beauty parlor, and did not so much as say "Woof!" when his owner's child dressed him up like a clown for Halloween. He really looked silly. Everyone laughed at him. He just sat there with one of those big doggy grins on his face and laughed too.

Try to lay one hand on his food or his family and that's one hand you won't be seeing again in this life.

My point? We're secure enough to take a joke, we're smart enough to tell a joke from a jab, we're human enough to enjoy a good laugh, and we're not going to kill you if you laugh along with us. But try to walk all over us and you're history.

We being the real Women Warriors and our friends.

We do exist, you know. We may not have the chain-mail and the swords, but we've got the challenges and the quests and the battles. We can handle them, too.

Remember: It takes a stout heart to hold off a horde of beer-crazed trolls in a dockside tavern, it demands guts of steel to face hand-to-hand combat with the Dark Lord of the Really Ugly in his very citadel. Still, that ain't nothin' compared to the raw courage it takes to be stuck in a car for a four-hour drive with a two-year-old and her favorite Barney tape that she wants to hear
again
or the sheer heroism required to be trapped at an Official Family Function and cornered by a well-meaning relative who demands to know "Why aren't you
settled down
yet, dearie, is something
wrong
with you?"