Read Online Motherlines by Suzy McKee Charnas - Free Book Online Page A

voices grating after the women’s liquid speech. Their truculent attitude was evident in their glances, their asides to one another, the way they withdrew slightly to avoid contact with passing women. Their demeanor repelled her. She wanted – what? Certainly not these closed and suspicious faces.
    She turned and wandered away among the tents to where the ferns’ wagon stood, outside the camp. Troubled, she drew nearer. Femmish leaders had designed her escape so that she might bring back a pledge of aid from free ferns. Now here were real free ferns; she felt off balance, flooded with guilt for her abandoned task.
    She walked the length of the wagon, touching the bleached and weathered wood of its lower walls; it smelled of dust and tea and sweat. Suddenly it rocked under her hand. Someone jumped down from inside and looked around the end wall at her, then leaned back to speak tensely to a hidden companion. Another face appeared.
    ‘That’s no woman, that’s a fem – look at the butt and legs on her, sprinter’s muscle. You know these wild people never walk if they can ride, let alone run anywhere.’
    ‘Then it’s her,’ said the long-faced one.
    ‘She’s young,’ said the other, shaking back dark hair, eyes measuring Alldera from head to foot. ‘Hey, don’t they keep watch on you? Where’s your guard?’
    ‘I have no guard.’ Alldera stood where she was, suddenly wary. The two had a predatory look.
    ‘You mean you’re not a prisoner? We came to rescue you, fem.’
    It was too late to pretend that they were wrong, that she was a Riding Woman. ‘No one’s held me prisoner,’ Alldera said. ‘I live like the others here.’ She realized that it would be a mistake to tell them she had not learned of their existence until today. She could picture their sneers at that, their knowing glances.
    One said, ‘Don’t tell us you’ve just been living here contented as one of their stupid horses, ignoring your own people.’ Their hatred of the women came off them like heat.
    ‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’ the long-faced one said. ‘Get into the wagon, quick, while nobody sees. We’ll go get a few others, haul off as if we were going to make an early camp for the night, and just keep on going. The rest will catch up. Then let those Mares come galloping after us and try to take you back!’
    Alldera moved a few steps back toward the tents, alarmed by visions of blood and battle.
    ‘Where are you going?’ The black-haired one closed in on her.
    Alldera glanced around for help, a witness, anything. She heard the long-faced fem say low-voiced to the other, ‘Look at that, they must have bewitched her to keep her from us.’
    Too late, Alldera bolted.
    They sprang after her. A spear shaft thrust between her legs brought her down with a racking pain in her shin. She could not help it, she lay and hugged her leg, and they dropped their weapons and took hold of her, lifting her toward the wagon.
    ‘You explain to Elnoa back at the tea camp,’ the black-haired fem growled. ‘We want to know why they’ve kept you from us, and everything you know about them. Nobody’s lived among them as long as you have, we need your information.’
    ‘You can’t take me!’ Alldera cried through tears of pain, as if in a nightmare that they meant to take her to their master. ‘Let me stay – ’ A hard hand clamped over her mouth, cupped to avoid her teeth.
    ‘Mare lover!’ spat one of the ferns.
    As they wrestled her back against the tail of the wagon, trying to heave her inside, something jarred a cry from the one on her left. The other fem gasped and let go. Alldera twisted free. Sprawled on the ground, she heard the thump of blows, saw the frenetic figures of children leaping up from the tall grass to fling stones at the ferns.
    She looked up at the black-haired fem’s angry face squinting at her from inside the wagon where the two of them had taken shelter. She heard the furious words: ‘Come in here,