Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

'It's only jacks and hopscotch,' she said, delighted there was not a hint of quiver in her reply.

'Yes, I know, but her mother tells me that Broda's so exhausted these days, she falls asleep almost at once.' Salome's smile was as ingenuous as they come. 'I can see I'll have to give up dispensing medicines and open a gymnasium instead.'

'You'd still need your remedies,' Claudia retorted. 'Probably more so, after all those wrenched joints and torn muscles.'

'Then we'll have to go into business together. You mix 'em, I'll fix 'em — great Marduk, what's that?'

Her smile had frozen into a death rictus. Claudia followed her horrified gaze, just as screams filled the courtyard.

'It's burning,' someone cried.

'The whole farm's on fire!'

'The bastards!' Salome hissed. 'The absolute bastards. This time they're out to destroy me!'

But even as she spoke, she was racing off to organize chains of leather buckets to douse the flames, issuing orders for the release of the livestock from pens, telling her Amazons to forget the crops in the fields, look to drenching the hives, to protecting the grain store, to making sure they covered their hands to avoid burns, to putting damp cloths over their noses and mouths.

Now was the time. While the Histrian chauvinists told Salome what they thought of her practices once and for all by destroying everything on the farm in one sweep, this was the time to sneak out.

Claudia had already established her hideaway.

The earliest inhabitants of the Histrian peninsula were hunter-gatherers, who'd braved the preponderance of bears, lynx and wolves to make their homes in the hundreds of caverns that pitted the richly forested limestone hills. These caves afforded more than adequate protection from predators and the elements, penetrating the rock by anything from a hundred feet to as much as a mile, where dripping stalactites made strange shapes and the cavernous halls still echoed with the moans of their ghosts.

But as the hunter-gatherers became farmers, so the caves were abandoned as dwellings and used as animal pens or for storage. Over time, the magnificent paintings on the walls faded, pelts over the entrances shredded and fell, bones crumbled to dust, to be blown away on the wind.

But the farmers did not entirely forsake the past. The new homes they built for themselves in the valleys retained many of the hallmarks of their previous existence. They still used stone to protect themselves from the weather and carnivorous marauders. Great flat slabs of stone, laid in small, defensive circles which gradually narrowed as the walls grew until they ended up with a sturdy grey cone with a hole in the roof to let the light in and to let out the smoke from their hearth.

It was in one of these ancient, long-abandoned beehives that Claudia had desposited a basket of food, a couple of thick blankets and one very grumpy cat in a cage. This had necessitated a series of furtive manoeuvres because she'd needed to completely hoodwink her escort, but praise be to Juno, the fires wouldn't touch Drusilla out there.

Amazonia was in chaos. The whole farm had turned into a choking mass of swirling smoke, the flames leaping and dancing in joyful abandon as they crackled and spat and hitchhiked on the breeze, spreading new fires to new fields, new incendiaries to new buildings. Screams rang into the night, but worse still were the laughter and taunts in the Histrian tongue. Dark figures flitted about with torches, setting fire to whatever they could — goose grass, fodder stores, farm implements. Everything burned.

Amazonia has stirred up a lot of trouble round here, Mazares had said, the night he bumped into Salome. If she doesn't change her ways soon, something terrible is going to happen. I know it.

Claudia remembered the anguish behind his velvety eyes, and knew that the anguish was genuine. Bile rose in her throat. Suspicious of Salome and her farm, someone (the King? Pavan?) had sent a young slave girl undercover to learn what went on here. That girl had never returned. The anguish in Mazares's eyes had been genuine, sure — but only for his fellow conspirators. Claudia felt nothing but contempt for them all. Long may Amazonia burn.

She was halfway across the meadow when she noticed the pigsty. No longer fat, calm and contentedly pregnant, the spotted sow was squealing in terror as the thatch on her roof crackled and spat. The pig was new. The Amazons had dealt with situations like this before, although never on such a vicious and co-ordinated scale, and they were attacking the blazes the best that they could. But the pig was a recent arrival. No one, goddammit, had given a thought to the new sty

… 'Shit!'

Changing tack, Claudia raced across to the smouldering building, the screams of the trapped sow tearing talons into her heart. She could hear her crashing into the walls to escape flames that licked higher and higher, and knew that each collision meant a dead piglet. Terrified of not reaching her in time, Claudia's skin fused with the searing hot metal bolt that fastened the gate. She recoiled in pain and anger, and the pig charged past, shrieking in panic, her snout bloody and raw.

'Ey!'

From nowhere, a hand clamped round Claudia's waist. It smelled of cheap wine and stale sweat, tinged with arousal and smoke.

'Ja bim mir un Amazoni!'

'Get off me, you fat bastard!'

Too late she remembered Mazares's other complaint. That they were sick of burning rapists round here…

'Let go of me, you oaf!'

She thought she could shake him off. She honestly thought that, between her slum heritage and her dancer's training, she could shake her attacker off. Maybe she could. But he was calling out in his thick, guttural tongue words that she remembered from the crew on the galley. Some were what one might call basic. Another was the crew's term for Drusilla. Vildkatz. Wildcat. A second figure emerged from the swirling smoke. His laughter was deep as his arms lashed around her, forcing her to her knees.

'Dal Dom het un vildkatz heer, alfid!'

His erection pressed into her spine when the first monster ripped her tunic away with both hands. Squirming, kicking, writhing, twisting, the more Claudia struggled, the more the bulge on her spine jolted in arousal, but she was not giving up. They were not going to take her like this. Never!

'Ayiee!'

A head butt in the first monster's groin sent him retching on his knees into the ditch, but her spunk only fired the second man's hunger.

'Dom vetta spiel, vildkatzi?'

You want to play, little wildcat?

Gripping her neck in his elbow, he squeezed.

Hetta spiel!'

Then let's play.

He knew exactly how hard to press. Not hard enough that his victim passed out, there was no pleasure in that. He pressed on her windpipe with exactly the right amount of pressure, while he roared with laughter at her helpless flailing. Around her, screams and shouts filled the bitter night air, and the roof of the pigsty collapsed with a crash. With tears of frustration spurting down her cheeks, she felt him unbuckling his pantaloons. Gagged as his naked erection pressed against her. Smelled the stench of his sweat.

'You'll pay for this, you bastard,' she gurgled.

His reply was to hitch up her skirt.

'I'll find you. I'll hunt you down if it's the last thing I do, and you'll die screaming for mercy.'

'Da! Spiel, spiel, mir pritti vildkatz!'

Mighty Mars, Sacker of Cities, hear me! Make him writhe in the Pit of Eternal Fire for this. Make sure he never sails to the Lands of the Blessed to walk with his ancestors in the Elysian Fields. Let the Waters of Forgetfulness never be his to drink.

'Merr, merr, mir pritti vildkatz!'

His breath was hot in her ear as his hand yanked at her loin-cloth. Then…