Rounding a corner, I found myself on a particularly odious street. Not only were the cobblestones in severe disrepair, not only were the gutters strewn with garbage and less mentionable items, not only were the ramshackle buildings which loomed over the street the very epitome of tenements, but—
There—not twenty feet before me—a woman was being attacked by a mob of cutthroats!
I was taken completely off guard. Until I rounded the corner, I had heard not a hint of clamor. The struggle under way was being waged in complete silence, save the occasional hiss and grunt.
For a moment, I was paralyzed, like a statue, rooted to the spot. From horror, you would think. But no, it wasn’t that. I am an artist, with an artist’s eye, and it was the impossible drama of the scene which transfixed me—like a tableau from ancient legend.
The struggle bore little if any resemblance to the image which might normally come to mind when one hears of “a woman assaulted by a mob of cutthroats.” Think rather of “a lioness assaulted by a pack of hyenas.”
The woman was a striking figure. This, in three ways. First, she was—not beautiful; not, at least, in the normal sense of the term—but so fierce in her countenance as to burn every feature into my mind. More so, indeed, even in the first instant I saw her than any woman I had ever seen before, or have seen since. The regal poise, the nose with the pure curve of a hawk’s, the gleaming black eyes, the firm jaw and chin, the full lips, the great mass of kinky hair like midnight, the swarthy complexion now even more flushed with passion and fury. No, not exactly beautiful, but what has a goddess to do with earthly concepts of beauty?
Then, she was big. Not obese, you understand. To the contrary. Her every movement—and these were fierce and energetic even as I took in the scene—bespoke a body that was muscular and sinewy. Even shrouded as her body was in a plain and baggy set of tunic and trousers, there was no denying its quite evidently female nature. The woman seemed almost a giantess. She matched my six feet of height, if not exceeded it. And though I am considered a large and well-built man, I had no doubt that she weighed perhaps as much.
She certainly outsized her opponents! For these men, as I saw when I finally tore my gaze from this fantastic vision of a demi-goddess out of a desert nomad’s legend, were rather small and rattish in their every aspect. Yet they pressed their assault with great vigor, lunging at the woman from every side. They seemed actually in a frenzy, leaping at her with drawn knifes, attempting to stab and slash any portion of her body they could reach.
I said that the woman was striking in three ways. And the third of these ways was the unbelievable ferocity of her defense. With her right hand she would pluck an assailant out of the air—in mid-leap—and with her left hand, which clasped an immense butcher knife, she would remove her opponent’s head with one blow of the blade. For all the world like a farmer’s wife beheading chickens! Even as I watched, two heads joined the half dozen which—I now noticed—were lying about in the street like an urchin’s rag balls.
Despite her ferocity, she was vastly outnumbered. There were still a good dozen assailants remaining. And even with her back to the wall of a building, they could come at her from three sides. The end of such an uneven contest was inevitable, given a willingness on the part of her opposition to press the fight to its conclusion, disregarding their own casualties. And small though they might be, and rattish in their countenance, there was no denying that her assailants were possessed of a ferocity the equal of her own. As I watched, a knife blade slashed the woman’s hip. It was not a particularly deep cut, hardly more than a scratch, but she immediately hissed. A look of great pain came into her face. Her opponents squealed with triumph.
It was only then that I noticed the odd sheen of their knives. Poisoned blades!