Titans of Chaos

Not fast enough. I had ridden the few tame ponies at the Academy, of course, but they were nothorses like this. Everything about the artificial beast was different: its gait, its contours, itsmovements. I was not riding; I was clinging desperately to its back, with my hair blown back bythe hurricane of its speed. The super-steed was barreling down the deer-path at the kind of clipone expects from a motorcycle, and the noise, dust, and shrieks of the maenads, undiminished,were rising through the trees behind me. After half a minute of flight, I had come only about halfa mile down the path, when the deer-path opened suddenly into a little glade carpeted withknee-high marshy grass.

A troop of horsewomen were there, maybe a dozen young beauties in black catsuits and helmets,charging toward me at immense speed. The warrior-women were bent low over the necks of theirsteeds, their hips higher than their ponytail-shaking heads, their spines more or less parallel withthe grass over which they flew.

Each rider was skilled. As each Amazonian steed jarred and thundered wetly across the whippinggrass, each Amazonian rider absorbed the shocks with smooth, quick motions of her long legs, sothat her prone black form seemed to float, moving not an inch up or down.

As I fumbled, trying to rein in my horse and get its head turned around, there came a loud, clearfemale voice rising over the riders: a command to break off. With the precision of a machine, thecavalry troop wheeled left and right, avoiding me.

The horsewomen also drew, aimed, and fired their rifles as they wheeled, their aim not one whitdisturbed by the maneuvers, leaps, and gyrations of their steeds.

Some of the Amazons, I saw, did not even try to fire in my direction. They merely pointed theirbarrels at the ground and shot the dimension-collapsing shells into the grass.

Again, ribbons of energy unfolded. These acted like flares. Hyperspace lit up with the dazzle ofmusical spheres, expanding and popping like bubbles. To the red and to the blue of me, I sawLeucosia and Parthenope, strange as flying saucers made of rings of eyes and deadly light,emerge from the gloom of hyperspace and push through the dimensions toward the dazzle.