Alice Hoffman - The Foretelling (html) by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-11-14T20:59:30+00:00

IN THE HEART OF A WARRIOR QUEEN there can be no confusion. She must at all times know who she is and what is expected of her.

She is the fearless, the brave, the murderous if need be.

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When my mother's scouts told her that men from the east were moving toward our city, my mother prepared herself for battle. Sometimes the battle comes to you, but there are other times when you must go to battle before it can arrive at your door and destroy you where you live.

This time I would not ride with the prophecy women, but with the warriors. It was what I had always wanted, and yet I felt myself shiver, as though it was already winter. I felt something in my heart, a heaviness, a stone.

We rode for a single day, that's how close these people had come to us. We arrived before the sun came up, so many of us that the dust that arose behind our horses could be seen all the way from our city, or so the old women who'd been left behind later said. Perhaps the men from the east had heard of us and wanted wives; perhaps they'd only blundered into our land. It didn't matter what they intended or what they wanted. Our people wanted things, too.

Firstly, we wanted not to lose our own people. We were warriors, but there were many ways to fight a battle. We knew tactics men had not yet learned or even imagined. Our people waited on the steppe while Cybelle and her beekeeping women went forward in the dark. They smelled so sweet as they entered the village, no one from the eastern people awoke from their dreams. The enemy slept heavily, lulled by a buzzing sound. Carefully, Cybelle and her women used wooden funnels to let the bees enter beneath the tent flaps. No one noticed the bees at first; they slept on long enough for Cybelle and the women to come back to us, like shadows over the rocks, across the steppe, the log bee houses they carried now empty.

************************************

All at once, our enemies ran from their tents, shouting, confused, stung by our good neighbors. They had panicked, as warriors never should. The instant they did, we went forward. I could hear my mother's war cry, and I rode along with the women my age, Io's scythe at my knee. I was wearing the bear claws, pulled up to my elbows, so that my wrists were protected by Usha's claws and my hands were free.

Even my own people looked at me differently in this battle, as though I were a sister to the bear. I aimed my arrows and felled two of the enemy. I saw the way they went down into the dust out of the corner of my eye, yet I kept on seeing it. An arm lifted into the air, a thud on the earth, a cry that rose and then disappeared like snow in a fire.

But I was not proud of what I'd done.

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