"2570-12" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jerome Bigge - Warlady 8 - The Queen Of Time)THE QUEEN OF TIME 2570 A.D.! A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN THE SECOND DARK AGE By Jerome B. Bigge Chapter Twelve We rode at "road gait", that fast trot that is the fastest speed that a horse or unicorn can keep up for any period of time. My sword glistening there in the sunlight in my right hand, while Hope held her bow at the ready, an arrow placed on the string. I was well aware of the "legends", that Darlanis had once said that nothing "short" of a Legion could "cross" these ruins in safety. It is also said that anyone who stays long in this place will die of a strange disease that neither Physicians or Priestesses can cure, this perhaps "memories" of a time when radioactivity made the ruins of Los Angeles "unsafe" to enter shortly after The War. "Sure did `level' everything," Hope announced as she bounced along there behind me, it being necessary to "stand" a fast trot like this one, balancing yourself on the balls of your feet in your stirrups, going along with the up and down motion of your mount. Our mounts themselves seemed "skittish", their ears often now laying back, their heads going down, presenting their sword long ivory horns against any possible enemy. Normally a unicorn is not "aggressive", but our animals, once we'd been able to get them to enter the ruins, seemed eager enough to get through them! "The `bomb' was in the kilomegaton range," I answered back. "Must have been `quick'," she now answered, looking about. "I once saw a movie about Hiroshima," I answered back. "Don't `mess' with the Lorr," she now laughed behind me. "We'll make it `through'," I said, recognizing that "laugh". I've heard such before, when you watch the enemy warship coming into range, stand there on the quarterdeck knowing that the enemy commander is pointing you out to her crossbowmen, to her ballis- tae crews, her golden hair gleaming there in the sun, her long slim blade in her hand as she wonders if she will live or die... "I think there has never been another like you," she said. "Like Janet Rogers `one of a kind'," I laughed back then. "She looked upon you like a mother," Hope said to me now. "Perhaps I've judged her too harshly," I answered back. "Something `moved' ahead of us there," Hope announced. "We're being `watched'," I spoke, seeing more movement. The sun was noticeably higher in the sky now, the forest now far be- hind, several miles at least, I estimated, calculating our speed at about seven to eight miles per hour, the best our mounts could do here for any long period of time. I felt of my animal, felt the wetness of his hair, the heat of his body beneath the saddle. "We need to take a `breather'," Hope suggested in reply now. "There's a large open area ahead," I pointed out to her... "Wish I had a M-99, a half dozen clips of 35," Hope grinned. The M-99 being an advanced version of M-16 of the 20th Century, a rifle that was eventually replaced by a more advanced type using a rotary tubular magazine that ran the length of the stock. This was the sort of a rifle I'd once seen there at the Warrioress Academy, the sort of a weapon that hinted of things left unsaid! A similar rifle is used on Mars by the Women, this weapon firing explosive small caliber bullets that nothing can resist. There is also a handgun using the same sort of ammunition, this being the weapon I used back in 2568 when I rescued Sharon from the pi- rates of Alaska. A weapon that Aurora managed to "slip" to me before Tais put a halt to visits by my Martian friends to Earth. "Can you shoot?" I asked, well aware of what her mother had thought of guns in general, Carol being rather opposed to "guns", although I think more to "hunting" in general, Carol being what a member of the National Rifle Association might call a "Bambist"! "My dad taught me when I was little," Hope answered back. "That was before Janet outlawed guns," I grinned at her. "I think she did what needed to be done," Hope answered. "I think we'd better get going," I replied, aware that I could see movement now and then among the ruins in the distance. "What!" Hope gasped from behind me, telling me that a rock had flown on past her face! The young woman turning in her sad- dle, looking, although the thrower was well hidden by the ruins! "Afraid of this!!" I snapped, well aware of the ample supply of such "missiles" in a place like this. Another striking my own unicorn just then, making me pay "attention" to keep my saddle!! "`RIDE FOR IT'!!" I now cried, kicking my mount in his ribs then, another chunk of concrete just missing me as my unicorn bounded ahead! We were in the middle of the ruins, with miles yet to go! A rock striking me in the back, the blow taking my breath as our unicorns galloped across this rock strewn "HELL" as fast as they could flee! The hot sun burning down upon us leaving no doubt it was quite possible that we could leave our bones to bleach here! The creatures that inhabited this places obviously quite hostile! "Not so `open' here," Hope commented, our unicorns dripping with sweat as we slowed them from the pounding gallop we'd held them at, using our reins, our heels, even the flats of our swords to urge them on forward, well aware of what sort of THINGS lived here in these rubble strew ruins left of this once great city... "Perhaps through `there'!" I snapped, pointing it out now. Hope following behind as I urged my gasping animal forward again! Into the rubble, into a place where neither of us might escape... I cut the reins hard across my mount's neck, turning him, a missile that looked like an arrow about a yard long whizzing by! A "thing" like something out of a drug addict's nightmare fitting another arrow on its string, Hope's arrow, shot off the back of a unicorn at full gallop, coming close enough to make it "duck"!! A clawed, scaly fanged HORROR leaped out of the ruins at me, a thing that Lys never made, never breathed life into before me! My unicorn lowering his head, hitting at full gallop, impaling the HORROR on its horn, my sword cut almost severing its reptile head from its scaly humanoid body! A howl of pain behind me leaving no doubts that Hope was giving a good account of herself as my unicorn somehow managed to drag his horn free, his head bloody from its claws, one of my mount's ears torn off, the bri- dle itself half ripped free, leaving me in a scant control of him now! Another HORROR, like some white slimy thing you'd see under a damp rock now dashing towards me with a level spear! The point passing just under my arm as my blade cut down, ripping into it!! "ANOTHER!" Hope screamed, the hairy HORROR impaling my own unicorn as my animal drove its horn into it, jumping free, giving that HORROR no further note just then as another came out of the ruins with something like a sharpened length of steel, a spear I managed to deflect, to get my sword point into it! This last I noted in passing "female", although such that no man would have wanted to see it! A thing with a face only Stephen King (famous author of horror stories of the 20th Century) could have loved! A companion creature throwing a rock which I fortunately dodged, Hope putting an arrow into it as I dashed now for her, aware that if we didn't get out of here we would die in this horrid place!!! "Got us this `far'," I said, pulling the arrow out of Hope's unicorn, mine having died fighting as befitting a Warrioress' own mount. We'd made perhaps another mile before Hope's unicorn had "given out" on us, the animal now totally exhausted from carrying both of us. Those who had attacked us for the moment at least no longer in evidence, although I did not think we'd seen the "last" of them as yet. Hope standing there with a look in her eyes I've seen before only in battle, when one stands on a deck littered with the dead, "surprised" to still be alive after "everything"!! "Guess you're as `good' as you said you are," Hope spoke. In the distance beyond her like "heaven" I could now see Trella. "Not `good' enough for `this'," I breathed, looking at her. I was not a "young" woman anymore, and we couldn't run very far! "If they come..," she spoke, aware of our last mount's con- dition. Given time it would recover, but carrying double we had little hope now of ever escaping from these ruins, the thought going through my mind that none would ever know how we died here! "Go on ahead," I said, sheathing my sword and taking the bow I'd carried on my back in my hands, nocking an arrow on the string. I thought perhaps it was time I lived up to my reputa- tion of being a "Warlady". Carrying WAR back to these HORRORS!! "No, Lorraine, I won't let you die for me!" she wept back! Hope no doubt well aware of what I planned to do here. Delaying these HORRORS while she made her escape on the unicorn she had... "I'm just an old Warrioress with one last battle in her," I answered, knowing that here in this place Lorraine Richards, the Queen of Trelandar, Warlady of the Empire of California, would do what a Warrioress does when she knows there is no "retreat" left! Hope would live, someday become the Queen of this Trelandar, and I supposed perhaps in "legends" I would live on as the Warrioress who once stood in these ruins and fought a battle like no other!! "Then the daughter of Carol Simmons, once Warlady of Dularn, stands at your side!" Hope cried, driving off our last unicorn with the flat of her sword! The tears streaming down her cheeks! "We shall greet SHE as she's never been greeted before!" I laughed, thinking of the HORRORS we'd take with us to greet Her! "How many arrows do you have left?" I asked, Hope standing there in the shade of some building wet with sweat in the heat... We'd fought our way across these ruins for perhaps a mile or more, using both our bows and sometimes cold steel when the HOR- RORS came too close. Twice now my blade had taken "life", life of a sort far different from that it had ever taken before here! She was bleeding from a wound in her leg, my own bloody side only a further proof of the hopelessness of this fight against beings like nothing that had ever existed upon the Earth before. Soon she would shoot her last two arrows, Hope having used all of mine as she was the better archer by far of the two us here, I note. How many creatures we'd killed or wounded I didn't know, although I suspect from what Queen Joyce has told me that in the history of her entire people there has never been two "fighters" like us! "It will no doubt be `quick' when it comes," she said to me. I reached out, took her hand, cut it a bit with the edge of my sword, did the same to mine, and tasted of her blood while she did the same of me. Such is meaningful to "barbarians" like me. I did not need to explain to her the "meaning" of such an act... "Your mother would be `proud' of you," I said, remembering. "The Warrioress is selected by her caste," Hope said then, repeating one of the sayings that are a part of our own "Codes". We are not like other women, nor like the crybabies of the past! A Warrioress would laugh at the thought of "sexual harassment", at the sort of things the "feminists" of the past so wanted here! We are, I think, the sort of women that once stood beside their men long ago, in an age when cave bears and saber tooth tigers yet roamed the surface of the Earth. When Cro-Magnon man first painted on the walls of his caves, a "warrioress" might have been his companion, bearing his children, and standing at his side, a spear or bow in her capable hands when the need arose back then!! "Another one!" I hissed, stepping around the corner, driving my sword deep into it, and dodging the claws that reached for me! The "twang" of Hope's bow leaving no doubt "another" had bit the dust as I heard its howl of pain, the thought again going through my mind that this young nineteen year old woman had more "guts" than most Warrioresses that I had known back in the 26th Century! Hope "joining" me now, picking another off a pile of rubble, the creature dropping its crude bow to stumble down among the rocks!! "Cold steel now," Hope said to me, drawing her own sword. "The proper `companion' for a fighting woman," I smiled. THE QUEEN OF TIME 2570 A.D.! A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN THE SECOND DARK AGE By Jerome B. Bigge Chapter Twelve We rode at "road gait", that fast trot that is the fastest speed that a horse or unicorn can keep up for any period of time. My sword glistening there in the sunlight in my right hand, while Hope held her bow at the ready, an arrow placed on the string. I was well aware of the "legends", that Darlanis had once said that nothing "short" of a Legion could "cross" these ruins in safety. It is also said that anyone who stays long in this place will die of a strange disease that neither Physicians or Priestesses can cure, this perhaps "memories" of a time when radioactivity made the ruins of Los Angeles "unsafe" to enter shortly after The War. "Sure did `level' everything," Hope announced as she bounced along there behind me, it being necessary to "stand" a fast trot like this one, balancing yourself on the balls of your feet in your stirrups, going along with the up and down motion of your mount. Our mounts themselves seemed "skittish", their ears often now laying back, their heads going down, presenting their sword long ivory horns against any possible enemy. Normally a unicorn is not "aggressive", but our animals, once we'd been able to get them to enter the ruins, seemed eager enough to get through them! "The `bomb' was in the kilomegaton range," I answered back. "Must have been `quick'," she now answered, looking about. "I once saw a movie about Hiroshima," I answered back. "Don't `mess' with the Lorr," she now laughed behind me. "We'll make it `through'," I said, recognizing that "laugh". I've heard such before, when you watch the enemy warship coming into range, stand there on the quarterdeck knowing that the enemy commander is pointing you out to her crossbowmen, to her ballis- tae crews, her golden hair gleaming there in the sun, her long slim blade in her hand as she wonders if she will live or die... "I think there has never been another like you," she said. "Like Janet Rogers `one of a kind'," I laughed back then. "She looked upon you like a mother," Hope said to me now. "Perhaps I've judged her too harshly," I answered back. "Something `moved' ahead of us there," Hope announced. "We're being `watched'," I spoke, seeing more movement. The sun was noticeably higher in the sky now, the forest now far be- hind, several miles at least, I estimated, calculating our speed at about seven to eight miles per hour, the best our mounts could do here for any long period of time. I felt of my animal, felt the wetness of his hair, the heat of his body beneath the saddle. "We need to take a `breather'," Hope suggested in reply now. "There's a large open area ahead," I pointed out to her... "Wish I had a M-99, a half dozen clips of 35," Hope grinned. The M-99 being an advanced version of M-16 of the 20th Century, a rifle that was eventually replaced by a more advanced type using a rotary tubular magazine that ran the length of the stock. This was the sort of a rifle I'd once seen there at the Warrioress Academy, the sort of a weapon that hinted of things left unsaid! A similar rifle is used on Mars by the Women, this weapon firing explosive small caliber bullets that nothing can resist. There is also a handgun using the same sort of ammunition, this being the weapon I used back in 2568 when I rescued Sharon from the pi- rates of Alaska. A weapon that Aurora managed to "slip" to me before Tais put a halt to visits by my Martian friends to Earth. "Can you shoot?" I asked, well aware of what her mother had thought of guns in general, Carol being rather opposed to "guns", although I think more to "hunting" in general, Carol being what a member of the National Rifle Association might call a "Bambist"! "My dad taught me when I was little," Hope answered back. "That was before Janet outlawed guns," I grinned at her. "I think she did what needed to be done," Hope answered. "I think we'd better get going," I replied, aware that I could see movement now and then among the ruins in the distance. "What!" Hope gasped from behind me, telling me that a rock had flown on past her face! The young woman turning in her sad- dle, looking, although the thrower was well hidden by the ruins! "Afraid of this!!" I snapped, well aware of the ample supply of such "missiles" in a place like this. Another striking my own unicorn just then, making me pay "attention" to keep my saddle!! "`RIDE FOR IT'!!" I now cried, kicking my mount in his ribs then, another chunk of concrete just missing me as my unicorn bounded ahead! We were in the middle of the ruins, with miles yet to go! A rock striking me in the back, the blow taking my breath as our unicorns galloped across this rock strewn "HELL" as fast as they could flee! The hot sun burning down upon us leaving no doubt it was quite possible that we could leave our bones to bleach here! The creatures that inhabited this places obviously quite hostile! "Not so `open' here," Hope commented, our unicorns dripping with sweat as we slowed them from the pounding gallop we'd held them at, using our reins, our heels, even the flats of our swords to urge them on forward, well aware of what sort of THINGS lived here in these rubble strew ruins left of this once great city... "Perhaps through `there'!" I snapped, pointing it out now. Hope following behind as I urged my gasping animal forward again! Into the rubble, into a place where neither of us might escape... I cut the reins hard across my mount's neck, turning him, a missile that looked like an arrow about a yard long whizzing by! A "thing" like something out of a drug addict's nightmare fitting another arrow on its string, Hope's arrow, shot off the back of a unicorn at full gallop, coming close enough to make it "duck"!! A clawed, scaly fanged HORROR leaped out of the ruins at me, a thing that Lys never made, never breathed life into before me! My unicorn lowering his head, hitting at full gallop, impaling the HORROR on its horn, my sword cut almost severing its reptile head from its scaly humanoid body! A howl of pain behind me leaving no doubts that Hope was giving a good account of herself as my unicorn somehow managed to drag his horn free, his head bloody from its claws, one of my mount's ears torn off, the bri- dle itself half ripped free, leaving me in a scant control of him now! Another HORROR, like some white slimy thing you'd see under a damp rock now dashing towards me with a level spear! The point passing just under my arm as my blade cut down, ripping into it!! "ANOTHER!" Hope screamed, the hairy HORROR impaling my own unicorn as my animal drove its horn into it, jumping free, giving that HORROR no further note just then as another came out of the ruins with something like a sharpened length of steel, a spear I managed to deflect, to get my sword point into it! This last I noted in passing "female", although such that no man would have wanted to see it! A thing with a face only Stephen King (famous author of horror stories of the 20th Century) could have loved! A companion creature throwing a rock which I fortunately dodged, Hope putting an arrow into it as I dashed now for her, aware that if we didn't get out of here we would die in this horrid place!!! "Got us this `far'," I said, pulling the arrow out of Hope's unicorn, mine having died fighting as befitting a Warrioress' own mount. We'd made perhaps another mile before Hope's unicorn had "given out" on us, the animal now totally exhausted from carrying both of us. Those who had attacked us for the moment at least no longer in evidence, although I did not think we'd seen the "last" of them as yet. Hope standing there with a look in her eyes I've seen before only in battle, when one stands on a deck littered with the dead, "surprised" to still be alive after "everything"!! "Guess you're as `good' as you said you are," Hope spoke. In the distance beyond her like "heaven" I could now see Trella. "Not `good' enough for `this'," I breathed, looking at her. I was not a "young" woman anymore, and we couldn't run very far! "If they come..," she spoke, aware of our last mount's con- dition. Given time it would recover, but carrying double we had little hope now of ever escaping from these ruins, the thought going through my mind that none would ever know how we died here! "Go on ahead," I said, sheathing my sword and taking the bow I'd carried on my back in my hands, nocking an arrow on the string. I thought perhaps it was time I lived up to my reputa- tion of being a "Warlady". Carrying WAR back to these HORRORS!! "No, Lorraine, I won't let you die for me!" she wept back! Hope no doubt well aware of what I planned to do here. Delaying these HORRORS while she made her escape on the unicorn she had... "I'm just an old Warrioress with one last battle in her," I answered, knowing that here in this place Lorraine Richards, the Queen of Trelandar, Warlady of the Empire of California, would do what a Warrioress does when she knows there is no "retreat" left! Hope would live, someday become the Queen of this Trelandar, and I supposed perhaps in "legends" I would live on as the Warrioress who once stood in these ruins and fought a battle like no other!! "Then the daughter of Carol Simmons, once Warlady of Dularn, stands at your side!" Hope cried, driving off our last unicorn with the flat of her sword! The tears streaming down her cheeks! "We shall greet SHE as she's never been greeted before!" I laughed, thinking of the HORRORS we'd take with us to greet Her! "How many arrows do you have left?" I asked, Hope standing there in the shade of some building wet with sweat in the heat... We'd fought our way across these ruins for perhaps a mile or more, using both our bows and sometimes cold steel when the HOR- RORS came too close. Twice now my blade had taken "life", life of a sort far different from that it had ever taken before here! She was bleeding from a wound in her leg, my own bloody side only a further proof of the hopelessness of this fight against beings like nothing that had ever existed upon the Earth before. Soon she would shoot her last two arrows, Hope having used all of mine as she was the better archer by far of the two us here, I note. How many creatures we'd killed or wounded I didn't know, although I suspect from what Queen Joyce has told me that in the history of her entire people there has never been two "fighters" like us! "It will no doubt be `quick' when it comes," she said to me. I reached out, took her hand, cut it a bit with the edge of my sword, did the same to mine, and tasted of her blood while she did the same of me. Such is meaningful to "barbarians" like me. I did not need to explain to her the "meaning" of such an act... "Your mother would be `proud' of you," I said, remembering. "The Warrioress is selected by her caste," Hope said then, repeating one of the sayings that are a part of our own "Codes". We are not like other women, nor like the crybabies of the past! A Warrioress would laugh at the thought of "sexual harassment", at the sort of things the "feminists" of the past so wanted here! We are, I think, the sort of women that once stood beside their men long ago, in an age when cave bears and saber tooth tigers yet roamed the surface of the Earth. When Cro-Magnon man first painted on the walls of his caves, a "warrioress" might have been his companion, bearing his children, and standing at his side, a spear or bow in her capable hands when the need arose back then!! "Another one!" I hissed, stepping around the corner, driving my sword deep into it, and dodging the claws that reached for me! The "twang" of Hope's bow leaving no doubt "another" had bit the dust as I heard its howl of pain, the thought again going through my mind that this young nineteen year old woman had more "guts" than most Warrioresses that I had known back in the 26th Century! Hope "joining" me now, picking another off a pile of rubble, the creature dropping its crude bow to stumble down among the rocks!! "Cold steel now," Hope said to me, drawing her own sword. "The proper `companion' for a fighting woman," I smiled. |
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