«No!» she snapped. Her hand darted in under her robes and drew out a sword. The woman writhing on the ground looked up and nodded. The sword plunged into the woman's neck, and she heaved convulsively in a death spasm and lay still. It was a quicker death than Idrana would have given her, and now she could not be tortured into betraying them.
The five surviving women and Blade charged into the door at a dead run, drawing their swords as they did so. The underground chamber was full of cages of Senar and chained women. The guards were already on the alert from the uproar above. They raised their swords as Truja's party charged in.
«Out of my way!» she snapped. «Business of the House!» «Business of the House» meant the affairs of the House of Fertility. None in the city except the Guardians of Fertility and Mistress herself might question these words. The guards drew back, the massive door rumbled open, and Truja led the way out into the underground corridor.
«Business of the House!» got them past the other two guard posts under the arena and several parties of armed women who were rushing about in a frenzy like ants in a broken nest. None of them paid any attention to Blade, although it was impossible to conceal him.
Truja grinned at that. «With everything else they've got on their minds now, I don't think they'd notice if you were fourteen feet tall and had two heads and long purple fur.»
Then they were outside the Arena. The roar from inside was, if anything, growing louder. The women in the streets were staring toward it in curiosity and mounting fear. They were much too busy to notice the five women and the strange-looking Senar who slipped out of one of the underground passages.
Now the women stripped off their workers' robes. Under them they wore hunting costumes, complete with short, heavy bows and quivers. They tossed the robes to Blade, who made a rough cloak and loincloth out of them. Then all six headed for the gates of the city.
They covered the three miles at a dead run, without stopping once or slowing more often than the wretched streets underfoot required. After three weeks of confinement and nearly three hours in the arena, Blade found the run an ordeal. His heart seemed about to burst out through his ribs, and his lungs felt as if they were full of flaming-hot gas. Hot needles drove into the muscles of his legs. But from somewhere he found the strength to keep going.
The city gates were still open when Blade and the women came in sight of them. They promptly slowed down to a walk and tried to get their breathing back to normal.
The officer commanding the gate peered down out of the gatehouse at them as they approached. The uproar from the arena was beginning to be audible even here. And someone must have started setting fires. Several columns of black smoke were swirling up from the quarter of the city around the arena.
«What in the name of the Mother is happening?» the officer shouted.
«There's a riot at the arena,» Truja called back.
«The Greens and the Blues?» the officer asked.
Truja shrugged. «Who else?»
«Damn them!» said the officer. «Where are you going? «
«Out to warn the farms and the patrols,» Truja said. «The thing with us is a Senar the House of Fertility is sending out to a farm near Ufol Valley. He's an odd one, and they want to see how well he can work.»
«All right,» the officer said, and waved them on through.
Once out of sight of the gate; the six broke into a run again. This time they kept running until they did not have the breath left to run any farther, then slowed down to a fast walk. They did not stop until they had covered five or six miles and the city was only a patch of darkness on the horizon behind them. They took shelter in one of the ruined buildings of the old city and collapsed.
Eventually Blade found the breath to ask a few questions and Truja found the breath to answer them.
«How are things at the camp?»
«I wouldn't know. I left for the city only two days after you were captured. As much as we wanted to get you back, getting the sisters out of the city was more important.»
Blade shrugged. «I can't blame you. Nugun and I shouldn't have let ourselves get captured the way we did. Did you get the women out?»
«All but a handful, yes. Most of them will probably be at the camp by the time we get there.»
«How many fighters?»
«Four hundred or more.»
«Good. That may be the largest body of city fighting women left by the time the Blues and the Greens get through slaughtering each other.»
«I know. And Rilgon's army is less than a week from the walls.»
«Has any word of it come to the city?»
«Not that I heard. And would the Greens have struck if they had heard of Rilgon's approach?»
«I don't know,» said Blade. «Their war leader Idrana is an ambitious fanatic. I'm not sure it would have made any difference.»
«May Mother Kina curse her,» said Truja slowly, pounding her clenched fist on the ground.
An hour later they were all sufficiently rested to be able to move out again. They did not run or trot now, but Truja still set a brisk pace along the road.
They were about two hours farther on when they saw a cloud of dust on the road ahead. They stopped, and Truja told Blade to slip into the bushes that bordered the road. He obeyed, and from his hiding place he heard and saw what followed.
There were four women, each wearing a large yellow triangle on their tunics. They approached at a run, and as they did Blade could see that they had been running for a long time. Their faces were gray with fatigue and caked with dust, their eyes stared blindly, and their tongues protruded through cracked lips.
They slowed slightly as they saw Truja.
«Hail, Messengers! What news?»
One of the four took a deep breath. «There is an army of Senar in the land! Thousands of them, thousands! They are coming to the city. Mother Kina save us, for we are all lost!»
«Nonsense!» said Truja sharply. «Mother Kina watches over those who keep her Law-and sharpen their swords in good time. Go on to the city, and tell them that also!»
The women nodded and got into their stride again. They went pounding away down the road and soon were again a cloud of dust on the horizon. Blade stepped out into the road. Truja was standing there numbly, her face working and tears glistening in the corner of her eyes.
«Why couldn't they have come just a few hours earlier?» she groaned. «Brega is doomed, doomed!»
«As you yourself said-nonsense!» retorted Blade. «Right now the best thing we can do is get back to the camp as fast as possible. We can't do anything by ourselves.»
It took them barely two days to get back to the camp of the Purple River fighters by the War House. Truja kept Blade and the women moving on hour after hour, as if every extra step they took crushed one of Rilgon's Senar underfoot. Like the run through the city, the march was an ordeal for Blade. But again, he kept on going.
When they reached the camp on the morning of the third day, there were surprises on both sides. Himgar and the others had long since given up both Truja and Blade for dead, and were delighted to see them tramping out of the forest. On the other hand, they were far from delighted with the news that the women of the city had decided to fight a civil war just at the moment that Rilgon had decided to strike. Himgar, even more high-strung and nervous than usual, nearly burst into tears at that news.
For Blade and Truja, the surprise was to find that nearly five hundred farm women had joined the Purple River camp. And more were coming in every day. Some of them had been driven from their farms by Rilgon's army and lost everything but the desire for revenge. Others were simply the independent-minded. The women of the farms had never much trusted the city, always kept the Laws of Mother Kina according to their own lights, and tended to rely more on strong arms than on strong customs. As far as they could see, the Purple River people now had the strongest arms around.