The Maiden

  No one said a word but, silently, slicing through the darkness, came another figure and Jura was slapped across the mouth. It didn’t take much thought to realize she was to remain silent. She ate her bread, drank the musty-tasting beer, and she and Cilean were allowed to relieve themselves in the trees, then they were shoved back into the wagons.

  The motion of the wagon seemed to be endless and the days merged into one another. They stopped twice a day during the three-day journey and Jura and Cilean were given meager rations and a brief moment of privacy, then their bonds were retied and they were returned to the wagons.

  After the first day Jura and Cilean didn’t talk much, for their hunger, tiredness, and grief were almost too much to bear. Jura was plagued by remorse. If only she had had time to explain to Rowan what she had said. If she could have told him she could not bear the thought of his death. Perhaps she should have held him while he cried. Maybe that would have worked best. If only…

  “Do you think they killed the men?” Cilean whispered. Her eyes were sunken in her head and she looked as bad as Jura felt.

  Jura’s throat swelled closed and she could not speak.

  “No doubt they want women slaves,” Cilean said. “Brita was too old for their use, so they took us.”

  Jura swallowed but it didn’t help.

  “Yes,” Cilean continued, answering her own question, “I think they killed the men. They would have come after us and these Ultens could not fight our men.”

  Cilean waited for Jura’s answer, but when none came, she kept talking. “We did not hear the Ultens come into camp. Even the Fearens who guarded did not hear them.” She closed her eyes a moment. “Brocain will declare war on the Irials when he hears his son is dead. And who will lead the Irials now that both Rowan and Geralt are…gone?”

  Jura closed her eyes and envisioned Rowan’s blond hair. She remembered his smile. She remembered the way he tickled her the night they spent in his tent.

  “We will never unite the tribes now,” Cilean said. “The Vatells will have lost Brita, Yaine’s brother is dead, Brocain’s son is dead.” She also swallowed. “And our king is dead.”

  “Stop it!” Jura commanded. “I can bear no more.”

  Cilean looked at Jura in puzzlement. “Is it grief that makes you so strange? Is it Rowan’s death that…?”

  “No more, please,” Jura whispered.

  Cilean was silent for a moment.

  “We must keep our strength up,” she said, trying to get Jura’s attention back on the present. “We have to find a way to escape these slimy people and get home. We have to tell the rest of Lanconia what has happened. We will unite the other tribes to kill the Ultens. We will avenge Rowan’s death. We will—” She said no more as she heard the sound of tears coming from Jura. She had never seen Jura cry before.

  Jura tried to sleep but could not. Hour after hour passed slowly and painfully, and she had time to remember every moment since she had met Rowan. She thought of how she had reacted to him at their first meeting and later how angry she had been when she found out who he was. She had felt betrayed, as if he had lied to her and played with her feelings.

  And she had been afraid. She hated to admit it even to herself, but the force of her emotions concerning the man scared her. She had been afraid she would follow him and betray her country, betray everything she had ever believed in.

  “Oh Rowan,” she whispered into the darkness as hot tears rolled down the side of her face. “If only I could have told you.”

  At the beginning of the fourth day the wagons halted and Jura could hear the noise of people around them. Cilean opened her eyes and looked at Jura. Cilean was fighting fear, but Jura looked as if she had given up the battle. They had no idea what the Ultens planned for them, whether it was death or slavery, and Jura didn’t look as if she cared one way or the other.

  “We will escape soon,” Cilean reassured her friend and herself. “Perhaps we can arrange a ransom.”

  Jura didn’t answer.

  The women had time to say no more as they were pulled from the wagon and stood in the bright sunlight. As Cilean blinked to adjust her vision, she was surprised at what she saw. Based on the Ultens she had seen, she would have imagined their city to be filthy and poor, a place of squalor with the lazy Ultens lying in drunken heaps. So what she saw surprised her so much it left her wide-eyed and gaping.

  They were inside a walled city with neat, clean buildings against the inner wall. There were cleanly swept stone paths with no pigs or dogs running about. There were shops open in the bottom floor of the houses and people bustling here and there. Clean people, richly dressed people.

  No, she thought, not people but women. Everywhere there were women, adult women, very few children, and what children there were were girls.

  “Where are the men?” Cilean whispered to Jura.

  Cilean received no answer before one of the filthily clad guards shoved her forward and motioned to the bags inside the wagon. Jura could see now that the guard was a woman, a small woman nearly a foot shorter than Jura and thin to the point of frailty.

  “What have you done with our men?” Jura asked, showing her first signs of life.

  “They are dead,” the Ulten woman said in broken Irial. “We want no men here.” She shoved Jura and Cilean forward.

  Jura and Cilean were weak from the long days of being tied and the small amount of food, so they were slow in removing the heavy bags of goods from the four wagons and stacking them inside a long stone building. All the while they worked more of the little Ulten women stopped and watched them and talked to each other in their strange guttural language.

  Cilean glared at two women who were pointing at the tall women and nodding their heads.

  “I feel like an ox being judged for strength,” Cilean said to Jura. She didn’t say any more because one of the women held a whip under her nose and made her meaning clear.

  It took most of the day to unload the wagons and, exhausted, Jura and Cilean were led away to a tiny, empty stone building that contained nothing but two sleeping cots. The building was surrounded by at least a dozen of the little Ulten women.

  “Jura,” Cilean whispered from her cot.

  Jura sniffed in answer.

  “We must try to escape,” Cilean said. “We have to get home. We have to explain to people what happened before there is a war. We must get to Yaine and…Jura, are you listening to me? I see no way of escape and I am too tired to think.”

  “Why do you want to go to Yaine?”

  “To continue what Rowan started,” she said as if Jura should have known that. “We must find a way to unite the tribes. If for no other reason, we Irials will unite them to kill these Ultens who sneak about and kill the King of Lanconia.”

  To Cilean’s horror, Jura’s sniffles turned into full-fledged crying. Cilean had no idea what to do. Tears were not something one dealt with much in Lanconia. She turned on her side and tried to sleep. Perhaps tomorrow she could talk to Jura about escaping.

  Jura also tried to sleep but she couldn’t stop her tears. Lanconia didn’t seem to matter; Geralt didn’t matter; Yaine’s brother or Brocain’s son didn’t matter. All she cared about was having lost the man she loved.

  “And I didn’t even get to tell him,” she whispered into the darkness. “Oh God, if only I had another chance. I would be a real wife to him.” She cried herself to sleep.

  Geralt’s laughter split the air and reverberated off the white marble walls of the Ulten palace. The three beautiful women before him smiled in delight as they looked at the ebony and ivory gameboard.

  “You have won again, master,” one woman fairly purred. “Which of us do you choose tonight?”

  “All of you.” Geralt laughed. “Or perhaps I’ll take three new women tonight.”

  “We are yours to choose,” said a second woman.

  The beautiful, luxurious Ulten palace was a product of centuries of “borrowing.” The marble had been on its way to a
cathedral in England when the Ultens had silently attacked during the night, killing all the merchants and their hired guards, and had taken the wagonloads of marble through the mountains to their cities. They had even “borrowed” the stone masons, worked them to death, then tossed their bodies off a mountainside.

  The enormous room, long, narrow, tall, was walled with veined white marble and everywhere was evidence of the Ultens’ skill at “borrowing.” They were the scavengers of every battle. While the participants grieved over their dead, the Ultens moved about and took anything worth taking. They were like ants and could easily carry half again their body weight away with them. They raided cities without the cities knowing they were being invaded.

  And they brought whatever they took back to their king and their city, so the palace was filled with wealth that was already ancient: beautiful swords, shields, tapestries, hundreds of embroidered cushions, gold cups (none of which matched), plates, candlesticks, eating knives. There was little furniture as that was more difficult to carry without notice, but there were some low, crude, long tables hidden beneath beautiful Irish linen cloths. The guests sprawled on the cushions and watched the many women walk silently about the room in their soft slippers, hurrying without haste to do the bidding of each man. The three Fearens sat at one end of the room together, frowning slightly in disapproval. They ignored the ten or so women near them and ate sparingly of the food on their plates.

  Geralt leaned back from the gameboard and lounged against the pillows, one woman fanning him, another holding his feet in her lap and massaging them, two others gently massaging his calf muscles, another shelling almonds and feeding them to him. Four other women stood by in case Geralt should think of something else he wanted. He wore an expression of sublime happiness.

  Daire sat farther down, engaged in intense conversation with a splendidly lovely woman, and from his expression he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

  In stark contrast to the men behind the table, Rowan stood by the windows at the east end of the room, staring down at the people and buildings of the walled city.

  Daire excused himself from the woman and went to Rowan. “Still worried about Jura?” he asked.

  Rowan kept looking out the window and didn’t answer.

  “They said they left the women there,” Daire said in the tone of a man repeating something for the hundredth time. “The Ultens do not kill. They will steal anything, including the King of Lanconia if they want him, but they are not murderers. They drugged all of us, took us, and left the women there. Why do you doubt them? They have no need of women, as you can see.” Daire smiled at the pretty woman waiting at the table for him. “They want only the men.” He couldn’t control his smile. “We must give them what they want from us and be on our way. Perhaps we can take some of these women back with us.”

  Rowan gave Daire a cool look. “You are being seduced by them.”

  Daire’s eyes twinkled. “A time or two.”

  Rowan looked back out the window. “I do not trust this man Marek,” he said, referring to the man who called himself king of the Ultens. “And I do not like being held captive, no matter that the bonds are made of silk.”

  “You have said you wanted to unite the tribes. What better way to do that than to…”

  “To impregnate their women?” Rowan asked, frowning. “I believe I am better than to be used as a stud.” He turned his head away, and Daire, shrugging, went back to his table.

  Rowan continued to stare out the window, cursing his helplessness. How could he fight women, especially such lovely, small women as these? Six days ago he had awakened to find himself in the back of a silk-clad wagon with a raging headache. He had shoved open the locked door with a few thrusts of his shoulder and the wagon had halted. He was greeted by six pretty little women who begged him not to be angry. Rowan’s anger had calmed somewhat when he saw that the other men were unhurt, but it returned when neither Jura, Cilean, nor Brita stepped from the wagons. The Ulten women said they had left the Irial women at the campsite.

  It took most of a day to return to the campsite and it was indeed clean, as if the Irial women and Brita had packed and left. Rowan was still not satisfied. He didn’t like being drugged and locked in a wagon. He said he was going after the women.

  At that the Ulten women began to cry. They promised Rowan they would do anything if he would return with them. They said they had heard how he was uniting all of Lanconia but they knew he would not think of the Ultens, that everyone hated the Ultens, and they needed him more than any other tribe. They said they would even send a message to the Irials from Rowan if he would just return with them.

  Rowan the king and Rowan the man were torn apart. As king he wanted to see this elusive tribe but as a man he wanted Jura back. During the long journey Daire had told him that Jura had gone after him after Keon’s death, so Rowan knew she must have seen him crying. He knew Lanconians did not cry.

  Yet Jura, a Lanconian, had seen him cry and she had not ridiculed him or been disgusted with him. Instead, she had kicked him into once again believing in himself.

  And he had not realized at the time what she was doing. His own sense of failure had turned to a rage that he directed at her. Rowan ached for her and wanted to go find the women but Geralt had started yelling at Rowan and saying that if the Ultens needed them they should go with the Ulten women. Rowan said Geralt’s thoughts were below his belt, and that had nearly caused a fight. Daire had stepped in and his calm counsel had made Rowan the king win over Rowan the man. Daire said they were close to Yaine, and Jura and Cilean would no doubt take Brita to Yaine, and that Rowan wasn’t needed. Also, Rowan could not afford to insult the Ultens as he might never get another chance to enter their secluded mountain village peacefully.

  Reluctantly, Rowan went with the Ulten women.

  Over the next few days, he, the only man who spoke the Ulten language, talked to the women. He was disturbed by the promiscuous nature of the women and had he been in England he would have forbidden his men to consort with them, but the Fearens, Geralt, and even Daire slept with a different woman each night.

  It was while the others were cavorting in the bushes that Rowan got to talk to the two remaining unoccupied women and he heard some of the recent sad history of the Ultens.

  Fifteen years ago, a strange fever that was said to have come from the east struck nearly every person in the isolated Ulten villages. The women recovered quickly but man after man died, hundreds of men, in fact. When the fever was gone, only a quarter of the Ulten men were still alive and by the end of the next year it was found that these men could produce only girl children. So for many years now, the Ultens had been a city of women.

  “Why didn’t you go to the other tribes and ask for men?” Rowan asked. “Surely men would have come with you.”

  “But King Marek forbade it,” she answered simply.

  Rowan began to get a picture of the remaining Ulten men loving having a city full of women to themselves, any of whom would go to bed with them in order to get a child.

  When they arrived at the city, Rowan’s worst fears were reinforced when he saw Marek, a fat, slimy, toothless old man surrounded by beautiful young women. Rowan cursed himself for having been seduced into believing what the women had said, that they wanted him merely to give them children and that they wanted to unite with the other tribes. Perhaps the women believed that, but Rowan saw that greasy old Marek had no intention of sharing his private harem with other men. And Rowan thought that, perhaps, Marek meant for the foreign men to impregnate a few women, then Rowan and the others would be put to death.

  If only Jura had been with them, Rowan thought. Her skepticism and cynicism would have made him think twice about going with the Ulten women. He cursed himself for being a fool—just like Jura said he was. Now, the men with him thought only of how many women they could bed each night, but Rowan saw beyond that. What was planned for them when their usefulness was over? Rowan had to come up with a plan for e
scape because he sensed that the men would not be allowed to leave peacefully. Marek would not like the information that the Ultens were a city of women living near a palace containing great wealth to leave the Ulten boundaries. Marek had worked hard to make the Ultens seem poor. Whenever an Ulten left the border, she wore rags covered in filth. No one wanted to follow an Ulten to examine the city. And Marek no doubt wanted to keep it that way so he could not allow Rowan or his men to leave alive.

  Rowan kept staring out the window, and the more he thought, the more he worried. What had they done to Jura? Why had he been so trusting? Why had he believed the tears of some pretty women? If men had drugged him and locked him in a wagon and he had found out the women were not with them, he would have drawn a sword and removed a few limbs of the men and forced them to tell what they had done with Jura and Cilean and Brita. But like a sheep being led to slaughter he had docilely gone with the Ulten women and left Jura on her own.

  If she were on her own, he thought grimly. If they had not killed the women, for unlike Daire, he believed the Ultens capable of more than stealing. They wanted male children, so they captured a king and a couple of princes to use for stud service. They took whatever they wanted.

  His face turned hard. I will give these women to the Zerna men, he thought angrily. Let us see if the conniving she-devils can manipulate Brocain’s men.

  While he was thinking with so much fury, he became aware of some commotion in the street below. It was some distance away, across the rooftop of another building, but he could see some angry activity. One of the little Ulten women raised a whip and cracked it, hitting another person who was half hidden by the building.

  As Rowan watched, from the shadows came a third woman, a tall woman, with a black braid flying out behind her, who leaped onto the smaller woman with the whip.

  “Jura,” Rowan whispered, and almost climbed out the window to go after her, but some bit of sense made him stay where he was. With a pounding heart and his face showing his anguish, he watched silently as a dozen Ulten women leaped on Jura and knocked her to the ground. A moment later the Ultens led Jura and Cilean away, out of Rowan’s sight.