Ammonite

She surveyed the silent women. Uaithne’s eyes glittered.

“You,say ‘Tribe before self,’ and mean ‘Tribe before anything’, because deep inside your selves you have a barren place that wails, ‘Nothing is real but the tribe, there is no one here but us.’ You are wrong.” She spoke directly to Aoife now, who was studying her intently. “Lift your eyes from the barren place and open your ears, see and hear the world I have made ready for you. You will find a place where your herds will grow sleek and fat, where your children’s hair will be glossy and their eyes bright, where you will not have to listen at night for the breath of the ice wind and the coming of the goth.”

Silence.

“It waits for you, if you but have the courage to face this greatest death of all. This death of change.”

Aoife frowned, and for one moment Marghe thought she had gotten through, that the tribeswoman had heard, but then Uaithne’s laughter splashed over them all like cold, bright water.

“Death,” she said lightly, “is no thing of doubt and struggle, but a thing of heat and bright and red glory.”

The wind rose again as Uaithne spoke, and stirred the hair on the back of Marghe’s neck. The air seemed to hum with it.

Uaithne laughed again and pointed behind Marghe. “And there is our death, come to greet us. We must ride to meet it.”

Marghe twisted quickly in her saddle. The hum was not the wind.

Forty or more Mirrors, visors glittering and black armor dusted with pollen like the exoskeletons of alien insects, crested the rise in a lazy, bunched swarm. Sleds hummed, one on each side of the closely packed Mirrors, one behind. In front of them, her back to Marghe, was a single rider. Thenike. When the Mirrors started forward, Thenike did not move. The Mirrors shifted direction; Thenike shifted to meet them. One woman facing down forty.

Thenike. Later.

“No,” Marghe said to Uaithne, “not this time.”

“Oh, yes,” Uaithne said, and couched her spear.

Marghe pulled the reins out from under her thigh and wrapped them around the pommel. The humming changed behind her but she did not dare turn. She breathed deeply, slowly, and sent oxygen fizzing through her arteries into her long muscles. This was not Tehuantepec. She would be ready this time. This time she would fight. She would never give in again.

But Uaithne was not charging. She lowered her spear, slid it into its sheath. For one dizzying moment, Marghe thought she had won after all. But then Uaithne laughed again, snatched out her knife, and in what seemed like one movement pulled White Moon’s horse toward her and slit the Mirror’s throat.

Blood gushed shockingly red. The Mirror’s mount whickered and sidled; blood pattered on the grass.

Uaithne clamped her red, red knife between her teeth and took up her spear in one hand, her reins in the other. Then she thumped her heels into her horse’s ribs and was charging across the grass, the tip of her spear coming up, up, pointing straight for Marghe’s throat.

Behind Uaithne, the tribal line rippled and tightened. Marghe could not spare a glance for the answering tightening she expected from the Mirrors.

She did not move. She had put everything into her words, and now all that was left were her hands, and it was all going to end in blood.

But then she saw movement behind Uaithne: Aoife, whirling something around her head, straightening her arm with a snap. For a moment nothing happened, and Marghe thought that Aoife, accurate to nine nines of paces with her sling, had missed.

Then Uaithne oofedas though someone had hit her in the back, and the creamy line of scalp showing through the part in her hair bloomed red, redder than her braids. But she managed to hang on and was still coming, and behind Marghe, muffled by the growing hiss of the wind, no doubt the Mirrors were readying their weapons; Aoife had left it too late. Nothing could stop the blood now.

Marghe watched as Uaithne’s horse came on, hooves thundering, foam flying from its muzzle. She tightened her thighs, ready to lean, to kick; felt capillaries opening in.her shoulders, ready for the strike and twist that would send the spear spi

But Uaithne’s knuckles were white, and she was slipping, slipping.

Two lengths from where Marghe sat her mount, Uaithne slid sideways and fell in a jumble of weapons and limbs. The riderless horse swerved, passing close enough to spatter Marghe with warm saliva. Uaithne tumbled loosely over the turf to the feet of Marghe’s mount.

Marghe jumped from her saddle, panting, trembling with the adrenaline and the effort of not smashing her heel into Uaithne’s unprotected throat. She knelt. Uaithne tried to lift her head.

“No. Shh. Keep still.”

But Uaithne blew a red bubble of laughter at Marghe’s concern, and died.

The grass was making Marghe’s knees itch, but she did not move. She did not know what to do. She had been ready and Uaithne had… She looked at the body before her. Uaithne had died. The woman who had been about to try to kill her could not hurt her anymore. She did not know how to feel. Everything seemed a long way off.

Something nudged her shoulder: Uaithne’s mount, come back for its rider. The grass hissed in the soft morning breeze, then stiffened as the breeze blew hotter and harder. The storm was coming.

Marghe blinked. Everything was quiet, too quiet. Was this shock? She climbed slowly to her feet, expecting the world to burst in on her with sound and fury and mayhem. Nothing happened. She looked around. The Mirrors were still bunched tightly, like a straining muscle. Thenike sat before them, as immovable as rock. The line of tribeswomen was stirring, the horses tossing their heads restlessly; some spears were couched, stone heads catching the sun, and some were held loosely. The tension in the air was thicker than the scent of olla. The wind rose. She breathed carefully; her trembling eased.

Marghe stood alone on the grass between the two hosts for what seemed like an age, while the wind flicked the manes and tails of the two horses and filled her mouth with rushing noise. Then Aoife swung down from her saddle and began to walk toward her, empty‑handed, alone. The Mirrors stirred, and a figure detached itself from the ranks, flipping up her visor as she walked. Da

When Da

They all stopped in the middle and looked at one another. The wind was hot and hard now, like the heat from a blast furnace. Thenike laid a hand briefly on Marghe’s shoulder.

They were waiting for her, Marghe realized, but her brain felt empty, numbed by the two sudden deaths and the driving wind.

In the end, it was Thenike who spoke first. “The storm’s coming. We need to take shelter. The grass is too dry.”

Wind. Singing Pastures. Marghe made the effort. “I know a place,” she said slowly. “All rocks and scree. There’s a cave, and a ravine. No danger of fire there. It’s big enough for all of us.”

Da

Aoife looked down at the loose tumble of hair and limbs and blood that was Uaithne, then back at the line of Echraidhe and Brioga

Da

Marghe felt sorry for both Da

She smiled. Uaithne was dead, and she had been ready. Everything seemed so clear and simple to her now: the tribes could do nothing while their Levarch treated with the enemy over the body of their dead kin; the Mirrors would not dare attack while their commander was in what appeared to be a hostage situation.