The Saga of the Renunciates (67 page)

“If it were only the Guardsmen,” Camilla murmured—she was sitting between Magda and Rafaella—“we would all work together and camp together too. But some of these men are riffraff and we do not trust them. After a time you will learn which men can be trusted and which cannot. Always err on the side of caution. You should know that.”

Annelys heard her and said, “I am not so sure that any men can be trusted completely. They are not when I am in charge of any work details of Renunciates, believe me, Camilla.”

Camilla shrugged. “Maybe I am more trusting than you. Or perhaps it is only that I have nothing more to lose, and any man who lays a hand on me will draw back a bleeding stump—and knows it perfectly well!”

Annelys yawned. “Well, today was a long hard day, and tomorrow will be longer and harder still. Let us sleep, my sisters,” she said, and bent to cover the fire. Magda was tired and sore from riding, and the ground was hard beneath the thin blankets, but even as she told herself that she could not possibly sleep under such conditions, she drifted off. She woke once in the night, seeing the campfire like a sullen red eye, still smoldering; Camilla had moved close to her, and Magda put her arms around the woman, glad of the warmth, for she was cold. Camilla murmured something drowsy, shifted her weight in her sleep, and Magda snuggled close; Camilla kissed her lightly and Magda felt her drift off into deep sleep again.

But Magda felt troubled. As she had done all too often in the last few weeks, she found herself examining her thoughts closely.

Jaelle. Exactly what had happened between them? They had wakened in one another’s arms, out of a shared dream, the
laran
she had not known she possessed . . and Jaelle had pulled her down and kissed her, not the casual light kiss she could have taken for granted, the offhand sleepy kiss Camilla had just given her, but a real kiss, the kiss of lovers, with an intensely sensual awareness which frightened Magda. Like many women whose experience has been entirely conventional, she found it hard even to imagine that she could respond to such a thing. Jaelle had not been angry… but Magda had run away. Now, close to Camilla, she tried again to test her own feelings. Camilla, too, had once asked this of her, and Magda had refused her but she no longer knew why.

Is this what I want, then, is this why my marriage failed, because at heart I am a lover of women…
? She felt troubled, alien to herself. Finally, telling herself firmly that hard work awaited her tomorrow, she managed to drift off into uneasy dreams.

Before noon the next day they began to smell and hear the fire, a roaring, a dull acridness in the air, lurid red against the sky. Along the hillside a row of grimy forms, men and boys, stretched out with hoes and rakes, scraping a firebreak in the soil; when they reached the camp, they found others felling trees within the firebreak.

Magda and Felicia were put to scraping firebreak-lines with the men; Keitha, they judged, was not strong enough to work on the lines, so they sent her to the fire-camp where women were cooking and hauling water. Camilla was sent to the tree-felling party with Annelys and some of the others.

Magda could not, where she was working, even see the fire, but she could hear it; the grubby hoe in her hands scraped blisters, even through her gloves, and her back began to ache before she had been at the work for an hour, but she kept on. After an hour or so, some men brought a pail of water along, and she straightened and drank in her turn. The man beside her on the line looked at her for the first time, her smudged face and filthy hands, the rough riding clothes, and said, “Zandru’s hells, it’s a girl! What are you doing here,
mestra
?”

“The same thing you are doing, man—fighting a fire,” Magda said before she remembered that she had been ordered not to speak to any man, good or bad, and lowered her head, draining the cup and returning it to the old man who was carrying the water bucket. The old man said, “What is a nice girl like you doing out here among all the men, girlie? Shouldn’t you be back at the camp, where my wife and daughters are?” But Magda shoved the cup into his hand and picked up her hoe, bending to grub away at the line, and after a time the man, grumbling, moved on to offer his cup to the next man.

No one had bothered to explain to Magda what they were doing, but Annelys’s explanation had told her a little, and she supposed that the idea was to scrape away everything burnable beyond a certain distance, so the line was barren of anything which could support the fire. At dusk they were relieved by another party, Magda was almost too weary to stand; her hands were blistered and her back felt as if it would never stop hurting.

Down in the camp there was a place to wash hands and face, and the women passed them big bowls of bean soup which had been simmering all day over the cookfires within the ring. Magda wished there was a place to bathe, but they were all in the same predicament, grubby and sweating and smelling of smoke. Magda started off toward the latrine, but one of the Amazons from another Guild House grabbed her and reminded her that they always went two by two, for protection, and though Magda felt self-conscious about going to the rough latrines before the other woman, when she saw the faces of some of the men outside she was glad.

Barbarian. Among the Terrans I could work among the men and no one would touch me unless I invited it
! Yet a thousand years of different customs set them apart. The ordinary women, protected by their long skirts and the caps on their braided hair, walked where they wished alone, and no one would dare to touch them because they were known to be the property of some man who would avenge any rudeness offered to his possessions. The Free Amazons belonged only to themselves and therefore they were any man’s for the taking…
Barbarian
, Magda thought again. But the Terrans had their own faults…

When the Amazons had spread their bedrolls, again two by two, at their own end of the camp, Keitha, who had joined them, whispered “The women were worse than the men. They stared at me as if I were something with a thousand legs which they had found in their porridge bowl, and one of them asked why I was not home caring for my children. And when I told them—”

“Never mind,” said Rafaella gently. “We have all heard it. We have had time to get used to it, that is all, and you will too. Remember to be proud of what you are and what you have done; if they do not understand, that is their worry and not yours. We have all done well for the Domains today; go to sleep, love, and don’t let anyone make you think less of yourself for doing what you think right.” Magda was surprised at the kindness in Rafi’s voice; in general she had little patience with Keitha’s timidity.

Camilla murmured, “It’s true, though, the men are not nearly so bad as the women. Once the men get it through their heads that we work to the limits of our strength and want no special privileges, they accept us. The women never do. They feel that by working beside men, we endanger their privileged status; how can they convince their husbands that they are fragile and delicate when we are there to give them the lie? Keitha thought she was going to easier work than ours because she is not strong—”

“Do you accuse me of shirking?” Keitha blazed.

“Never, oath-daughter; your work is suited to your strength as ours to what
we
can; but it is just as well you should have encountered this. I would a thousand times rather work amid the hostility of men, than of women. Your trial is far more severe than ours. No woman thinks me a danger when I work beside her husband—” she added grimly, and Magda, looking at the scarred and haggard old
emmasca
, knew Camilla’s scars burned as deep inwardly as outwardly, “but you are young and pretty, you could have a man, a husband, a lover whenever you chose. They will forgive me for renouncing what they think I could never get even if I wished for it. But they will never forgive you, and you may as well know it now as later.”

The next morning was damp and dripping. “Let us pray that it will smother the fire,” Camilla said grimly as she drew on her boots. “Margali, child, let me see your hands.” She drew a harsh breath as she examined the blisters. “Here; put on some of this cream, it will harden the skin a little,” she said, and made Magda smear her hands with it before she drew on her gloves. They stood in line with the men for breakfast, bowls of thick grainy porridge, cooked with onions and other herbs. There were buckets of beer and pails of a hot grain drink. There were more comments from the men, but Magda kept her eyes down and pretended not to hear. Camilla, on the other hand, laughed and jested with the men; many of them knew and evidently respected her. She told Magda that she had served alongside them in the last border war.

As she took up her place beside Felicia on the firelines, a man called softly, “Hey, pretty things, what are you doing with that old battle-ax? What did they do, get hold of you before you knew what you were missing? Come over here with us and we’ll show you a good time—”

Magda ignored the comments, staring straight ahead. She had a hoe which was too short for her, and stopped to trade hoes with Felicia, who was not as tall as she was. While they were settling into place again, a man ran down the slope.

He was small and slender, with dark-red hair, wearing a cloak of orange and green. “The fire’s jumped the break up that way,” he shouted, “Don’t go up there! Get back and move the men, move up the carts, we’ve got to bring the camp back down—”

There was a stir in the ranks of men. “It’s Lord Damon,” they heard someone say, and the men hastened to do as they were told. Magda was set to piling up food supplies and blankets on a wagon, and as she handed them up to Felicia, she could see the man they had called Lord Damon, talking in low worried tones with the line bosses, drawing maps on the ground with a long stick. Someone handed him a mug of beer; he took a sip or two, rinsed his mouth and spat on the ground, coughing, then drained the cup and asked for another. His clothes, though fine, were filthy and rumpled as if he had slept in them on the ground like the others. His voice was hoarse with fatigue and smoke.

“Stop gawking,” Camilla told her harshly, “Go over to that other wagon and lead the horses away; carefully, now, don’t let them bolt!”

Magda started down the slope, her hand on the bridle of the near horse. The animals, smelling of fire, snorted and reared in the harness, balking and neighing, and finally Magda unknotted her sash to tie over her mount’s eyes; but the animal smelled the smoke in the cloth and reared, shying away. Magda called to Keitha to bring her apron and tied it around the animal’s head. Now it came peacefully as Magda urged it along with soft words.

Lord Damon came down a little way toward them. “A good thought,” he said. “Stay to the right of the dry watercourse there, as you lead them down, and set up camp there—” he pointed, “in the shade of that grove of featherpod trees where the men have been felling them. Make a firebreak around the camp, at least three spans wide. Go with them—” he pointed out half a dozen women who followed the wagon down, and after a time, another wagon lumbered along. The blindfolded horses came quietly to Magda’s touch on the rein, as she urged them along step by step.

“So there, good fellow, come along, that’s right—”

At the indicated spot the women began off-loading the wagons, piling bowls and kettles and blankets into the arms of waiting helpers. Magda worked hard, pulling down loads of blankets.

“Here,” she said, piling a final armload into a woman’s hands, “these are ours, from the Guild House; could I trouble you to set them down over there?”

The woman glared at her and let the blankets drop deliberately from her arms into dead leaves and brambles. “Take them yourself,” she said. “I am no servant to you filthy
lemvirizi
—”

Magda gasped at the foulness of the word. “Sister, what have we done to deserve this? We are here helping your people to fight the fire—”

The woman glared at her, twisting her face. “The Gods send forest fire to punish us for our sins, because we tolerate such as you among us; a sign that the very ground itself cries out against such filth as you. I am no sister to any of your kind!” She turned her back on Magda and strode away, and Magda, shaking all over, bent to pick up the fallen blankets. Tears stung her eyes; she tripped over a loose stick on the ground and almost let them fall again.

“Let me help you, sister,” said a soft voice, and Magda looked up at a strange woman; her hair was cropped like an Amazon’s, and she wore a Renunciate’s earring, but she wore ordinary women’s dress, skirt and tunic. She took a part of Magda’s load, but Magda stood silent, staring. She knew the woman, she had seen her, heard her voice somewhere…

“Are you one of us, Sister?”

“I am Ferrika n’ha Fiona,” said the woman. “Pay no heed to these ignorant women, we will teach them better some day. I am midwife at Armida,” she added, over her shoulder, as she dumped the load of blankets where Magda had asked and bent to straighten them, but someone called out, “Where is the healer-woman? They are bringing three men down with burns!” and Ferrika said swiftly, “I will speak with you later,” and hurried away, her tartan skirts trailing in the dust. Breeches, Magda thought, really made much more sense out here, if the woman was a Renunciate why didn’t she dress like one?

Later she was sent to clear away brambles, a hard dirty job that snagged her clothing and tore her gauntlets. A new firebreak was being built and it seemed so far from the fire that Magda asked in dismay, “Do they really think it will come down here?”

In answer the woman pointed. “Look.”

Magda drew a breath as she saw that the fire had topped a hill to the right of them and was burning across where their camp had been last night, little tongues of flame racing down across bramble and underbrush. Here and there a resin-tree would take fire and shoot up like a flaming torch, sparks flying hundreds of feet in the air.

“Everybody to the lines down there,” a man shouted. “Women, too, all of you, from the camp! If there aren’t enough shovels, grub it up with hoes, rakes, bare hands if you have to, we’re working against time!”

Magda worked where they sent her, back bent, trying not to look up or listen to the fire. The smoke hurt her throat and the dust from the firebreak made it hard to breathe; Magda pulled her tunic up over her mouth and tried to breathe through it as some of the men did, wishing for a moment that she had a woman’s kerchief. Some of the villager women were working beside her in the lines, their skirts tucked up to their knees, but still caught on dead branches and tore on briars; and Magda thought that her own Amazon breeches were more modest as well as more comfortable, and wondered why she was thinking then about that? They were hauling at brush and brambles now so that the men could get at the trees to fell them, and around her she heard fragments of snatched, breathless conversation—felling these trees was a sacrifice of good timberland but anything was better than letting the countryside burn! A man touched her on the shoulder—the noise made it difficult to hear connected words— and beckoned her to one end of a two-man saw; she was quite sure he had no idea she was a woman, for she did not see any of the other Amazons doing such work, but she went without comment.

As the young boys carrying water came down the line, she saw the man she had seen this morning, the one they had called Lord Damon, riding along the bare patch. She supposed he was in charge of the whole operation, a kind of engineer.

“No good,” he said vehemently to someone Magda could not see. “They’ve got to pull out up there and let it burn; it’s gone anyhow, and the best we can do is put all our men down here on this side. That way we can hold the line and keep it from burning over toward Syrtis—there are five villages down there, man!” He looked down to where the workers were straightening their backs for a moment, drinking as the buckets were passed; he saw Magda and gestured to her.

“You led the horses this morning, didn’t you, lad? Good thinking. I need someone with his wits about him to carry a message to the men on the other side of that ridge up there. Give your end of the saw to that man there—” he pointed—“and come here.”

She remembered that she had been ordered not to speak to any man; but that could hardly apply to listening to orders given by the man who was bossing the job! He was hardly looking at her; his eyes were troubled, surveying the distant roar and swirl of smoke and fire.

“Go up along that ridge there, and you’ll come to a gang of men working under a big man, fair as a Dry-Towner; ask for Dom Ann’dra if you can’t find him. Tell him he must pull out all the men along that ridge and let it burn out, it’s hopeless. Tell him I need all the men he has down here on the east side, to keep it from burning over toward Syrtis. Have you got that?”

Magda repeated the message, pitching her voice as low as she could. “And who shall I say sent the message,
vai dom
?”

He looked straight at her for the first time. “Oh, you’re not one of my men, are you? You’re one of the group they sent out from Thendara, right? Tell him Lord Damon sent word. Run along, now.”

Magda went off as quickly as she could through the heavy tangled underbrush. As she climbed the slope she could see the fire on the other hill they had left that morning, burning down relentlessly toward the new firebreak; where they had breakfasted was all afire now, but there was a long stretch of clean firebreak between the workers and the fire. The stench was horrible, with overtones of roasting meat, and Magda thought of the animals trapped in the fire. As she caught sight of the gang of men, she saw, with them, a gaunt, familiar figure in gray tunic and heavy trousers; Camilla. Magda recognized her only by the low Amazon boots; Camila had tied a sweat-rag over her face, for the dust and heat were temble. She was the only worker on the line who had not stripped to the waist.

Magda would have spoken to her, but her message was too imperative; she went along the line, looking for a tall fair-haired man. But the smoke was thicker here, rising from the other slope, so she could hardly see; she asked a man hastily “Where is
Dom
Ann’dra? A message from Lord Damon—”

The man coughed and pointed through a thick haze of smoke, and Magda plunged into it; behind her someone shouted but she could not distinguish the words. Now she saw, indistinctly, a tall man in a board-brimmed hat, fair-skinned and well over six feet tall.

“
Dom
Ann’dra?” she called, and the man turned. “I gave orders no one should follow here—”

“A message from Lord Damon,” she said quickly, coming up to him, coughed for a moment, then quickly repeated her message. Her eyes were streaming with the smoke. The tall man, Ann’dra, swore angrily.

“He’s right, of course, but I’d hoped we could save the pastures up here; horses will go hungry this summer! All right, go down as fast as you can, and tell him I’ll have everyone down there in half an hour, got that?”

Magda nodded, coughing too hard to speak; his face, blackened with smoke, took on a look of concern.

“You should get out of the smoke as fast as you can, lad. Come this way—” he motioned her along, back toward the workers, taking the hat from his head and waving it in great sweeps.

“Pull back, men, pull back. Lord Damon needs us below— Raimon, Edric, all of you, grab the tools and get down—” he shouted, abruptly his voice took on a new sound of warning.

“Hi! Look out there, drop everything and
run
—breakthrough over there!” Magda stared in horror as a wall of flame leaped from nowhere and came roaring up the little gully she had crossed on her way up here. The thick, choking smoke was suddenly sweeping all around her, and when she started to run she was overwhelmed by coughing, stumbled and fell. Then she was picked up in strong arms and carried to clearer air;
Dom
Ann’dra set her down after a minute and stared at her.

“God almighty,” he said but he had spoken in Terran! While Magda stared at him he shook his head and said in the mountain tongue, “Sorry—I mean, we’ve got to make a run for it; have you something you can tie over your face?” Magda ripped at her undertunic; it was no time to think about modesty! The smoke was so thick no one could see anyhow.

“Good,” he said tersely, and took her hand. “Don’t be scared, I won’t let go of you, but you’ve got to trust me; you might get a bit scorched, but better that than roasted for the devil’s supper! Hang on, now!” Holding hands, they ran directly toward what looked like the center of the fire. Magda felt a blast of heat, smelled her hair singing and searing pain in the soles of her feet; she heard herself screaming, but she ran on, her hand held tight in the big man’s grip. Then they were through the flame and out of the smoke, coughing and choking and gasping. Her eyes were streaming; suddenly the world went dark and she slid to the ground.

“Ferrika!” she heard
Dom
Ann’dra bellowing, “Is the healer-woman in the lines? Well, get
somebody
up here, and make it fast! We’ve got to get this youngster down fast, he risked his life to get through—” and Magda felt herself lifted up; he scooped her up, arms beneath shoulders and knees, as if she had been a child. Then he drew a quick breath, staring down at her in consternation and said in a whisper, “Good God, it’s a girl!”

She said in a shaky whisper “Don’t—I am all right—put me down—”

He shook his head. Only then did she realize that he was still speaking Terran. “Put you down,
hell
, your boots are burned half off your feet. And who are you?”

“I am a Free Amazon from Thendara—”

“Yeah,” he said in an undertone, staring skeptically, “that’s what you say. Now who in the hell
are
you? Intelligence?” His eyes flared at her like steel filings in flame, out of the blackened, grimed mess that was his face. “Whoever you are, you’ve got guts enough for three, girl. Those boots aren’t going to be good for much.”

Ferrika, the Renunciate Magda had seen briefly in camp, came hurrying toward him; at her side was Camilla.