Gloria looked over her shoulder. “Shut it, Marg,” she snapped. Then she caught Jak’s eyes as he studied her from behind.
Her tone softened as she said to him, “Whatever’s worrying you, sweets, don’t think about it until we reach camp.”
Jak looked away without answering.
They continued in silence for another twenty minutes before they came within sight of a clump of trees. It was a smaller wooded area than the forest the companions had traversed earlier in the day, and barely visible in the darkening sky were small tendrils of smoke from a campfire.
Gloria tsked. “Stupidworks men. They never learn, never. The only safety is in invisibility.”
“What do you expect?” Margia murmured. “Only good for two things.”
“Don’t be too harsh,” added the tall tribe member with the auburn curls, her voice fluting and melodious against the harsher tones of the blond armorer. “Petor and Jon are in trust with the fires, and they’re still only boys.”
“Tell that to us when we have our bastard throats cut,” Margia rejoined.
“Enough,” Gloria snapped as they approached the woods. “I’ll deal with it soon enough. Best just to get home first.”
They had reached the edge of the woods, and the warrior queen gave a sharp whistle that pitched up in tone toward the end of its duration. As it died away on the night air, two women appeared to materialize from the shadows, leaving their posts to acknowledge the return of their queen.
As the companions entered the wood and the relative safety of the Gate camp, each wondered in turn what they would find there.
Chapter Six
The camp was set within a clearing that had been hacked into the heart of the wooded area. Taking a naturally clear area, the Gate tribe had carefully enlarged it enough to form a space large enough for them to set up camp.
Apart from the few telltale wisps of pale smoke that curled into the black of the night sky, there was no indication of the camp until they were actually in it. The clearing was lit by oil lamps and blazing torches, but those were shielded on one side by small baffles of metal and foil that reflected light inward and also prevented it from leaking beyond the boundaries of the camp. In the same way, the fire that warmed the cold night air was protected by a series of canvas baffles that kept the heat within a small area and also directed the smoke into the woods rather than directly upward. For this reason, the fire was on the opposite side to where they entered the camp, allowing the baffling to form a chimney that twisted off to one side and over the lamps.
The Gate themselves were gathered near the fire, apart from those who were keeping watch. They were nowhere in view, but from the way the warrior women they had seen so far had melted in and out of the shadows, Ryan and his people all knew that there was a strong guard presence, invisible in the darkness outside the camp. All the women were dressed in the same way as those they had seen: brief and practical, but in such a way as to leave no doubt that they were all highly trained and fit, with rippling musculature and fine bone structures. Few women were over five and a half feet, and many of them showed the same fine bone structure and svelte petiteness of their queen. The men, on the other hand, looked of sturdier stock. There were, at first glance, about half as many men as women in the tribe, and all the males were heavily muscled, with well-developed leg and arm muscles from their tasks as the heavy workers. They seemed to have a wider gene pool than the women, as there were Slavic and Celtic features spread about the group, as well as dark Mediterranean types.
Observing this, Doc was formulating a few ideas about the tribe, which he imparted to Dean in a murmur.
“My dear boy, this is a lesson in practical survival among a nomadic people. From the look of the women, I would say that they have a common heritage. By rights, this should make them slavering inbreds by now. But when you examine the male makeup of the tribe, you will observe that they come from a wider range of racial types. I suspect that the women have always been dominant, and by some instinct of received knowledge have realized that they need to keep a wide range of types within the tribe, and so have picked up these men along the way to stop their race degenerating.