Worlds That Weren't

His body stayed loose, but his hands were tinglingly aware of the position of saber and pistol and knife. He’d met men like these before, from peoples whose ways demanded that a man be prickly and quick to take offense and forever ready to fight. You had to begin as you meant to go on, and be ready to back it up, like the head wolf in a pack. The air crackled between them, and the native’s eyes shifted slightly.

Just then the drumming sound of hooves turned heads. A ridden horse, a remount and a mule, all sweating a bit. And the rider…

Well, well, it’s the little redhead, King thought. He’d gotten most of her story out of Robre, and felt a certain sympathy-it was a hard world, and harder still for an orphan. Well, well, not so little, either.

In sunlight and flushed with exertion she looked even better than the other night’s tantalizing glimpse. She kicked a leg over the pommel of her saddle and slid to the ground, bosom heaving interestingly under the coarse cotton shift as she came toward him with her dog panting at her heel.

“Heya, Empire-Jefe King,” she said bluntly.

“Hello, miss,” he answered, amused. I am an Imperial chieftain, I suppose.

“Hear you’re hiring,” she said. “I want work.” At a snicker from the crowd of clansmen, she turned around and glared. “And not as no bedwarmer, either!” Turning back to King, “I can carry my load, ’n’ I know the eastern woods. Hunted east of the Three Forks since I was a girl, ’n’ with my pa east of the Black River twice.”

Beside King, Robre stirred, surprise on his face. Evidently that’s some claim; but she’s not lying, I’d think. Intriguing!

Haahld sunna Jubal snorted. “You got to be a fightin’ man for this trip, missie, able to carry a man’s load. Want me to test your wrasslin’?” The clansman roared with laughter.

Sonjuh’s face flushed red, and her foot moved in a blur while Haahld sunna Jubal was still holding his sides and hooting. There was a meaty thump as the toe of the girl’s boot slammed into the native’s groin.

King’s lips quirked upward; he thought he’d have been better prepared than the luckless Haahld, but then he’d stopped thinking of women as necessarily helpless when he was an ensign leading a patrol to break up a brawl in a military brothel in Peshawar Town. An Afghan tart crouching under a table had nearly cut his hamstrings with a straight-razor, and he’d never forgotten the raw terror of the moment.

The haw-hawing laughter turned into a strangled shriek of pain as the man doubled over and fell to the ground, clutching himself and turning brick red. Ouch. That hard a kick in the testicles was no joke-something might have been ruptured; the girl’s long legs were slender, but muscled like a temple acrobat’s from running and riding and tree-climbing. Now, there’s native talent, he thought, grinning and wincing slightly.

She stood back in the sudden silence, then seemed to lose a little of her bristling aura as most of the company guffawed and slapped their thighs; even Robre, who seemed like a sobersided young man, grinned openly.

Haahld was puking helplessly now, and moaning. Someone threw a bucket of water over him, which seemed to give him a little strength, and he crawled away to haul himself upright along a tree trunk, still nursing his crotch with one hand. He got a good deal of witty medical advice about poultices from the crowd, although a few of the older and more respectable looked shocked and disapproving.

“Well, miss, generally if I want to kick a man in the groin, I handle it myself rather than hiring it done,” King said, smiling. “Although I concede that was good work of its kind. What else can you do?”

“Ride. Rope. Run like a deer. Handle a pack mule. Track meat-game or big cat-or a man-through brush country; we lived aside in deep woods. I’m a pretty good shot, too.”

She turned, unslung the crossbow from her saddle and fired it at the target eighty yards away. The snap of the string and the thunk of the bolt striking the magnolia came almost instantly, and the octagonal steel head sank deep into the midriff of the human figure chalked out on the bark. King raised a brow, impressed despite himself, and at the speed with which she reloaded. Then she slid the tomahawk from where it rested across the small of her back and threw; that went home in the center of the X they’d carved in a dead pine twenty paces away. Haahld winced away-he’d used that trunk to regain his feet-and fell again.

“Your man Robre there can look at my beasts,” she said. “Sound backs ’n’ feet, ’n’ kept proper.”

“Well and good,” King said calmly, as Robre did just that, picking up hooves to check their shoeing and seeing that no bare gall-marks or sores hid beneath the tack.

King continued: “But why do you want to go on a dangerous expedition?”

“You’re going into the east woods,” she said. “Mebbe as far as the Black River, naw? I can’t go that far by my own self; too dangerous.”