The Hand of Zei

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Six days later, two ships pulled into Damovang Harbor. One was the Yars, the other a stock boat full of ayas, which Barnevelt had bought for his private army with part of Alvandi's reward. The flag that flew from the masts of these ships made the folk of Damovang scratch their heads, for it was the ancient flag of Qirib, used back before the days of Queen Dejanai and the matriarchate.

The ships came quietly up to the vacant wharf. A line snaked ashore and was caught and belayed by one of the loafers to be found on any pier. Then out of the first ship tumbled a swarm of armed and armored men. Before their points, the people about the docks scattered with screams like a flock of frightened aqebats.

"Hurry up with those aya!" yelled Barnevelt, clad in steel from head to knee.

From the second ship, more men were leading the beasts to the wharf. As they arrived, Barnevelt's most heavily armed men climbed or were boosted into the saddles.

(After a long argument between Barnevelt and Gizil over the merits of an assault on foot from the sea versus one mounted from the land, they had decided to combine the two in an amphibious cavalry assault. Barnevelt's hardest task had been to compel his men to wear armor. Being mostly sailors bred, they distrusted the stuff because they knew how quickly it could drown them if they fell overboard during a sea fight.)

"Follow me!" called Barnevelt. Gizil behind him blew a trumpet. The force clattered up the nearest street in double column. Behind them came the rest of the army on foot.

"What means this?" screamed a voice, and there came a trio of Amazon guards to block the way.

"The men of Qirib come back to claim their own!" said Barnevelt. "Out of the way, girls, if you don't want to get hurt."

One Amazon poked a pike at Barnevelt, who chopped off the spearhead with a swift slash, then whacked the brass helmet with the flat of his blade. The girl rolled on the cobbles. As his aya plunged forward, he spanked the second girl. As the third turned to run, he reached out and caught the hair that flowed from under the helmet.

"Just a minute, beautiful," he said. "Where's this wedding between the new queen and her consort?"

"At the't-temple of the Mother Goddess in the upper city."

"Gizil, lead the way. And make it snappy with those handbills."

Certain of Barnevelt's men began pulling fistfuls of handbills out of saddlebags and tossing them fluttering into the air. They read:

MEN OF QIRIB, ARISE!

Cast Off your Shackles! The Day of Liberation has Come!

Today, after five generations of female tyranny, a dauntless band of exiles has returned to Qirib to lead the glorious revolution for

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR MEN!

Arm yourselves and follow us! Today we shall hurl from its base the ugly image of the false vampire goddess whose degrading worship and obscene rites have so long served as a pretext for a vicious and unfair oppression…

Barnevelt held down his impulse to gallop madly ahead, leaving his foot troops behind. As the column, brave with pennon-bearing lances, wound up the slope to the spired city in Qunjar's lap, he looked back and saw that behind his own foot came a straggling column of male civilians waving chair legs and other improvised weapons. Some people ran away as he approached, while others crowded up to see. Men cheered while women shook fists and spat threats.

In the plaza in front of the temple of Varzai, Barnevelt reined in. Across the plaza, ranged in a semicircle in front of the entrance, a body of Amazons was getting into formation. An officer rushed up and down, pushing the girls into place. All held their spears outthrust, as on the night of the pirate raid on Ghulinde; those of the rear rank held their pikes over the heads of those in front, who knelt.

Barnevelt signaled Gizil to hold the men back while he trotted across the plaza.

"How's the wedding coming?" he asked the officer.

" Tis even now being solemnized. What's this incursion?"

Barnevelt looked back. The logical way to attack the Amazons would be by archery, holding his cavalry back in case they tried to charge on foot. But his pikemen and ar-balesters were only now beginning to file into the square, and to organize such a barrage would take several minutes. He made up his mind.

"Disperse!" he shouted. "We're coming in!"

"Never! We defy you!"

Barnevelt whirled and galloped back. "Form a square!" He backed his aya into the center of the front rank and brought down his visor with a clang. "Ready? Walk!"

Plop-plop went the hooves on the flagstones. It would be nice to work such a coup without bloodshed; but this was Krishna, where they had not attained the squeamishness towards violent death that Earth took pride in.

"Trot!" These six-legged mounts had a hard, jarring trot, as the saddle was right over the middle pair of legs.

"Canter!" The pikes ahead looked awfully sharp. If the girls did not break before they arrived, and if the ayas did not shy back from the hedge of points, there'd be a messy moment. He hoped he wouldn't be thrown off and trampled.

"Charge!" Down came the lances. The gallop of an aya's six hooves had a drumlike roll. Barnevelt slacked up until he could see the points of lances on either side of him; no use being absolutely the first to hit the line.

Closer came the line and closer. He'd try not to kill the pretty girl facing him…

Crash! The pretty girl warrior disappeared. Barnevelt knocked one pike point aside with his left arm while another glanced from his armor. His aya stumbled and was pulled up again with a furious yank on the reins braided into the animal's mustache. For an instant, the world was all Amazons and ex-pirates turning somersaults. The middle of the Amazon line disappeared as the ayas rolled over it; the other girls dropped their pikes and shields and ran.

A riderless aya ran past. A dismounted man was hitting an Amazon with a broken lance shaft. Another was getting back on his animal. There were a couple of dead ayas and several Amazons lying still.

Raising his visor, Barnevelt snapped orders to Gizil to call off the fighting, tend the injured, and mount a guard around the temple and the plaza. Then he led a squad into the temple.

The audience sat frozen as the animals and their riders in steel plate clattered down the central aisle to where Queen Alvandi, Zei, Zakkomir, and some priestesses of Varzai stood in a group.

"Saved!" cried Zakkomir.

Alvandi spoke: "Never shall you carry through this antic enterprise, detestable Earthman! My people will tear you to pieces!"

"Yes? Come and see what your people are doing, madam." He grinned down at her, then turned his aya and led the group back up the aisle, crowding past the column of his own men who had followed him in. At the portal he said, "See?"

His own men had formed a square around the portal, and beyond it the plaza was packed with male Qiribuma. Gizil was harranguing them, and from the way they yelled and waved their cudgels they seemed to like it.

"What mean you to do?" said Alvandi. "Frighten me with threats you cannot, for my superior social order is dearer to me than life itself."

Barnevelt said, "Madam, I admire your courage even if I can't approve your principles. First, you're a usurper yourself, because you've never laid a fertile egg and therefore should have been executed long ago." (The queen quailed.) "Instead, you bought a kidnaped Earth girl, a small child, and reared her as your own. Will you demonstrate, Zei? Like this."

He reached up to his forehead and wrenched off the false antennae. Zei did likewise.

"Now," he continued, "I won't kill you merely because you should have been sent to the chopper by your own silly law. Since the present regime is proved illegitimate and unlawful, it's time the old order changed, yielding place to new. I'll help them draw up a constitution…"

"With yourself as ruler?" sneered Alvandi.

"By no means. I won't have the job. I'll just give advice— for instance to exile you. Then I'll take Zei, some ships, and some volunteers, and take over the Sunqar."

"But that's mine by treaty with the admirals…"

"Was, you mean. It's state property, and my followers, who being both Qiribuma and Sunqaruma are qualified to decide its fate, have given it to me."

The queen turned to Zei. "At least, daughter, you'll not willingly yield to the wicked importunities of this crapulous vaporer?"

"And why not? No daughter of yours am I, but one of another race whom you've sought to use as a puppet to prop your own power, even to forcing me into an alliance mis-cegenetic. I prefer my own."

"Zakkomir?" said Alvandi.

"The same for me."

"You're all against me," said the queen, drooping. She turned to Barnevelt with a last flicker of defiance. "What have you done with my warrior girls you carried off? Deflowered them and fed them to the fish?"

"Not at all, Queen. They're all married to my ex-pirates."