Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) Read Online Free PDF Page A

breaker of horses
gives who has bought a seemingly average mount of good appearance, only to
find, when astride it, a creature filled with wild, unbounded vitality—a horse
hard to break, but infinitely valuable once broken.   Tor Branthak spoke aloud to the empty
room—and his words were a cold, heavy music ringing in the silence:  
    “Now that
was a mistake, my captain, to show me that in you!”

CHAPTER SIX
     
    THE
ANCIENT Temple of Myrmi-Atla was a vast pile, very old and many times rebuilt
and enlarged.   There were chambers within
chambers, passages in the walls unknown even to the present occupants, and
secret chambers known only to the inner circle.  
    Within one
of these secret chambers stood now at attention a hundred young, strong
women—warrior women bearing weapon harnesses as if the leather grew upon
them.   Their eyes were fixed upon a
flaming-haired beauty who stood before their ranks
with hands outstretched in benediction.  
    “You go,
war maidens, not in fear or in flight, but only to make ready the way for your
return.   Our Mother needs time to meet
this new threat to the Matriarchy; but the rule of women will not perish from
Phira.   In every other world known to
mankind, the male is dominant, save on Mixar.   But it is here, and here alone, where woman
fills her proper place in life.   Here
alone is woman not a downtrodden chattel, not a plaything, not a decoration or
a mere bearer of children; but the end and aim of all of the race’s
existence.   You go to Alavaon, not to
hide, but to study our conqueror from far-off, and to learn his weaknesses; and
when he has forgotten the warrior-women of Myrmi-Atla, we will strike.   When all thoughts of peril from our ancient
power has vanished from his mind—we will strike, and once again the All-Mother
will rule in the same old way.   Go, my
sisters; go with love and without shame.   Shame will come only when you forget our purpose and become again but
fireside kittens purring at the feet of the dominant male.”  
    Her words
rang with a sincere and ardent determination.   On the faces of all the handsome war-maidens the same purpose lived and
shone from their eyes, glanced from the hardened muscles of their rosy jaws,
breathed with each lift of lovely, proudly swelling young breasts—made for love
yet hardened by teaching and encompassing steel to the taste for war and
struggle.   Red as new-shed blood were
their uniforms, slim, graceful legs clad in sleek, shining plasticord, weapon
belt, with dagger and needle-gun holster hugging each graceful hip, torso and
fair breasts covered with the brilliance of ray-proof flex-steel, shoulders
bearing proudly the folded glide-wings of the air-soldier, back wearing the
small triple cylinders of the standard atomic jet drive for all glidewings,
strong and graceful arms ringed about with the deadly lightning rings, that
Terran-forbidden device of prisoned electrons released only by the ray of the
needle gun on their hips.  
    They were
as well equipped, as well trained in appearance, as deadly a group of fighting
humans as could be found in the entire galaxy.   But for them to fight now, with the heavy weaponed ships of Tor
Branthak and his horde of Konaparians commanding the plateau overlooking the
city with their own fleet almost destroyed—was out of
the question.   So they saluted, filed
into the passage and down to the hidden tunnel, which would conduct them from
the city.   These were the temple guard,
and from all the city that day similar groups of
warrior women had been stealing away by secret ways to a rendezvous in hidden
Avalaon.  
    Avalaon
had served them in historic times more than once as a reservoir of hidden
strength in similar crises.   For the
rule of women in Phira had been challenged by the war fleets of a dozen powers
in times past, powers and empires now passed away and forgotten.   But the rule of Myrmi-Atla and her warrior
maids, of her teacher-priestesses, had