Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

Chapter 17

The women who entered the hut carried bowls of hot water and armfuls of fragrant flowers and leaves whose strong aroma cut through the stench of sickness in the room, making it almost bearable.

They set the bowls down on either side of the fire, then pulled stone knives from crude sheaths at their hips. One approached Gabriel, the other Millie. The first said something—something Gabriel couldn’t understand, of course, but he recognized the tone of warning in her voice. She raised the blade, brought it close to his chest. Out of a corner of his eye he saw the other woman doing the same to Millie.

“Count of three, boss?” Millie said under his breath.

“No,” Gabriel said. “They wouldn’t bring us here just to kill us.”

The woman before him grabbed a fistful of his sleeveless shirt in her other hand.

“You sure?” Millie said.

“You remember what I told Velda about being sure?”

“You say lots of things, man. Hey—!” This as the woman in front of Millie grabbed a handful of his shirt as well, and no small amount of chest hair with it.

The woman brought her knife down in a swift stroke. The taut fabric beneath her hand sliced open.

With a similar stroke, the woman in front of Gabriel cut through his shirt as well.

They went around to the other side of the two men and Gabriel felt the torn fabric of his shirt being pulled back, away from his skin. The sound of two more slashes came—and it wasn’t a shirt anymore, just strips of cloth that fell away to either side, leaving him still bound at the wrists but naked from the waist up.

The women came around again.

One of them spoke and gestured for them to stand.

“Now, look, sister, enough’s enough,” Millie said, but he stood as the sharp stone point came up under his chin, pricking not at all gently into his skin. Gabriel stood with him.

The stone knives made short work of the knee-length thermal underwear that was all they had left on other than their boots.

Without speaking another word, one of the women collected the other’s knife and went to hand them off to someone on the other side of the tiger skin, while the other woman bent and came up with a double handful of the strong-smelling leaves that had been soaking in the steaming water. She began scrubbing them roughly up and down along Millie’s torso, a look of intense application on her face.

The other woman returned, took a similar pile of leaves out of her bowl and slapped them wetly against Gabriel’s chest. This close, the smell was overwhelming. But the herb-laden concoction was effective—Gabriel felt layers of caked-on sweat and grime coming off him as she washed.

He heard a swift intake of breath from Millie. “Lady, you want to be gentle down there,” he muttered. “Ah, hell, what am I talking for? She can’t understand me.”

Gabriel stifled an exclamation himself as the woman washing him reached the same delicate spot on his body. But she left it undamaged and moved on to his thighs and knees and shins.

“I don’t know whether I’m being perfumed or prepared for a cooker,” Millie said. The woman working on him had switched from water to a thick, scented oil, which she was spreading along his muscular arms with the side of a long feather.

Once they’d both been oiled from neck to knees, the women brought out a thick crimson paste and used it to daub spirals on their faces and chests.

Gabriel kept his fist closed tightly around the pocket watch and scanned the dark interior of the hut, inch by inch, looking for any weapon, any way to cut the ropes, any hope of escape. He found nothing.

When the women had the two men clean, oiled and decorated, they tied strips of painted barkcloth around their waists, forming a sort of short kilt of overlapping pieces. It was, Gabriel thought, just enough to maintain modesty—if you stood in a perfectly unmoving, upright position. He did.

One of the women clapped loudly and two others came into the hut bearing a platter of roasted meat. When Gabriel inhaled the savory aroma of the food he suddenly realized how hungry he was. The last time he’d eaten anything had been the chalky frozen energy bar. How long ago had that been? It felt like a different lifetime, a different world.

The women fed Gabriel and Millie by hand, tearing off long strips of meat that Gabriel suspected had come from their avian adversary and slipping them between their captives’ lips, keeping their fingers carefully outside biting range. Once the food was gone, the women retreated, taking the empty platter with them. Gabriel used the moment of privacy to lift his bound wrists awkwardly and attach the chain of Dr. Silver’s watch to the waist of his kilt like garment, tucking the watch itself underneath one of the barkcloth strips. It would have to do.

He had barely completed this task when a quartet of grim-faced huntresses appeared. One pair held Gabriel and Millie at spear point while the other threw loops of rope around their necks. They were led from the hut, bound and leashed.

The reddish light filtering through the tinted ice above seemed way too bright after the dim interior of the hut. There was no hint of any kind of change to indicate the passage of time. Was it night? Day? Down here there was no way of knowing.

Their captors led them to the large central building, through the skull-framed doorway and into a high-ceilinged interior. Small basins of burning oil provided flickering amber illumination that revealed more painted pictographs swarming across the walls.

To the right was a row of steaming natural pools that gave off a faint odor of sulfur beneath the heady masking scent provided by hundreds of white blossoms floating on the water’s surface. In the largest of the pools, a group of women clustered around a single platinumhaired bather who, at the sound of Millie and Gabriel’s arrival, slowly stood, water and petals sluicing from her glistening nude form.

Her body, Gabriel noted with unwilling admiration, was extraordinary. The flickering light and smoky shadows only served to highlight the trim musculature of her arms and thighs, the taut abdomen below her strong rib cage, the fierce, proud breasts from whose engorged tips hung decorations made of polished bone. At the juncture of her thighs a slender curl of wet hair, as pale as the locks on her head, did little to cover her sex.

“Ah, hell,” Millie said. “You can’t dress me in a skirt and show me something like that.” Glancing over, Gabriel saw the reason for his embarrassment. “Eyes front, boss,” Millie said. “If you don’t mind.”

Gabriel watched as the woman’s attendants, rising equally naked from the water behind her and climbing out onto the surrounding ledge, helped her into a flowing golden garment. It revealed more than it covered. Two of the attendants lowered an intricate woven headdress of flowers and bones upon her white-blonde head and, balancing it without any apparent effort, she slowly approached the two men.

Her face had a regal, almost aristocratic cast, though Gabriel couldn’t say whether it was a matter of physical structure or just the way she held herself. Her eyes were the familiar pale blue, her features not measurably different from any of the huntresses they’d watched bring down the bird. She didn’t even look as old as they did—she was twenty at most, more likely in her late teens—and she had a smaller frame. But her striking platinum hair set her apart from the others, as did her garment and headdress and bearing, and of course the deference all the others showed her. She was clearly the ruler of this village of women.

“Man,” Millie said out of the corner of his mouth. “This just keeps getting more and more…”

“You are…English?” the woman said with a pale eyebrow arched. Gabriel and Millie exchanged a glance. Her husky voice was flavored with some strange, unfamiliar accent, but the language she spoke was recognizable.

“American,” Gabriel replied.

Her eyes narrowed at this bit of information.

“How is it that you speak our language?” Gabriel asked.

“My grandmother’s grandfather teach to her many language. She teach to me,” she said. “To me and to my sisters. I am Uta. I am Queen of Kahujiu.”

“Uta,” Gabriel repeated. “I am Gabriel Hunt. This is my friend Maximillian Ventrose. We came here to find another American who was lost near here—”

She waved dismissively.

“How many child do you make?” she asked.

Gabriel frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Child,” the queen said again, impatiently. “How many child do you have?”

“None,” Gabriel said. “I don’t have any children.” She turned to Millie.

“And you, do you make any chil…children?”

“No, ma’am,” Millie replied. “None that I know of.”

She scowled and spoke to her attendants in their native language.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Gabriel told Millie.

“Silence,” the queen spat. “You do not speak together, only to me.”

“Queen Uta,” Gabriel said again, trying to keep his tone respectful. “We came here with two others, two women. Where are they? We would like to see them.”

“The females are useless to me,” the queen replied. She took a step closer to Gabriel and reached out to touch his painted chest. “You are useful. You and your friend.” She looked over at Millie, not at his eyes or face, but at the very spot he’d asked Gabriel to politely look away from. A grimace curled one corner of her lush mouth and he heard her breathing quicken. Gabriel couldn’t be sure in the amber light, but he thought Millie was blushing.

The queen returned her gaze to Gabriel, her expression once again sober. “Our tribe, we die. You understand? Our boy children. They begin strong, but grow weaker every year. They do not become men. Men who come here from beyond the sky can only make children for one-half of one cycle of light and darkness. After that, they too become weak and useless. It is the anger of the god Unterg that takes away their strength and their power to make children. You are strong, big. You last more than one-half cycle. You provide much seed, so our tribe live.”

In Antarctica, half of one light and dark cycle would be six months. Gabriel had no intention of spending even another six hours in this village. He had to find some way out.

“But first, to settle roles, we have ritual,” Uta said.

“What ritual?” Gabriel said.

“It is law: when more than one come from beyond the sky, they shall fight, prove who will make stronger children. The winner, he is mine. The loser, to the women of the tribe, each of them in turn.” She looked over and down again, and this time Gabriel thought he saw her shiver slightly, perhaps thinking of her small frame and the prodigious instrument jutting between the plates of Millie’s kilt. She took Gabriel’s chin in her hands and leaned in close till her lips were nearly touching his.

“You,” she said. “Fight hard.”

Gabriel pulled his chin from her grasp. A flare of anger flashed across the queen’s face. She gave a command to her guards and then turned away as Gabriel and Millie were led away by their rope leashes.