Esther M. Friesner - Chicks 01 - Chicks In Chainmail

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CHICKS IN CHAINMAIL

Edited By

Esther Friesner

CONTENTS

Introduction, Esther Friesner

Lady of Steel, Roger Zelazny

And Ladies of the Club, Elizabeth Moon

Exchange Program,Susan Shwartz

Goddess for a Day, Harry Turtledove

Armor-Ella, Holly Lisle

Career Day, Margaret Ball

Armor/Amore, David Vierling

The Stone of War and the Nightingale's Egg, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

The Growling, Jody Lynn Nye

The New Britomart, eluki bes shahar

On the Road of Silver, Mark Bourne

Bra Melting, Janni Lee Simner

The Old Grind, Laura Frankos

The Way to a Man's Heart,Esther Friesner

Whoops!, Nancy Springer

The Guardswoman, Lawrence Watt-Evans

Teacher's Pet, Josepha Sherman

Were-Wench. Jan Stirling

Blood Calls to Blood, Elisabeth Waters

Maureen Birnbaum in the MUD, George Alec Effinger

CHICKS IN CHAINMAIL

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box1403

Riverdale,N.Y.10471

ISBN: 0-671-87682-1

Cover art by Larry Elmore

Printed in theUnited States of America

Dedication

For Alice Lewis and forBellatrix

They know why

And a special round of thanks to Toni Weisskopf,

who girded on editorial armor and said,

"Yes. shecan use that title."

CHICKS IN CHAINMAIL

Esther Friesner

^»

EN GARDE.

I'll bet you're wondering about the title of this book. Well, I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear right

from the outset: It's all my fault.

When I told people the concept I wanted to use for this anthology, the reaction I got everywhere was

not just favorable, it was downright enthusiastic (viz: "Cool!").

When I mentioned thetitle I wanted to use, the reaction I got everywhere—from editor, publisher, and

potential contributors alike—was: "Are yousure you want to call it that?"

But we called it by that title anyway. All my fault. No one else to blame so don't try.

FEINT.

I've never been one to leave sleeping stereotypes lie. It's been my humble opinion for a while now that

the Woman Warrior in today's crop of fantasy literature has gone beyond stereotype all the way to

quadrophonic. She's strong, she's capable, she's independent, and she'sserious . She's more than a

match for any fighting man. But mostly, alas, she's got a posture problem, either from that chip on her

shoulder or from toting around the full weight of an Author's Message.

(Granted, this beats the heck out of her venerable Woman Warrior ancestresses, whose posture

problems all came from physiques that made them look like they'd been hit from the back by the

proverbial brace of torpedoes. You can still view this less-than-endangered species by opening the pages

ofSpandexina! Mutant Babe of the Parallel Universe.)

Now I'll be the first to admit, today's crop of Ladies Who Lunge (and Parry and Thrust) has it all over

their predecessoresses in one department: Wardrobe. In the olden days, when comics still cost a dime

and licorice whips wasn't the name of an X-rated movie, if you did have a Woman Warrior she would

almost invariably be clothed in some variation on the chain-mail bikini. Like the U.S. Postal Service,

neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night would be enough to get her to change into something

more sensible, less drafty, and less likely to cause certain strategic areas of the anatomy to freeze or fry

on contact. (To say nothing of the unjustly ignored problem of the armored wedgie.)

Indeed, the one advantage of the chainmail bikini was how easy it was to slither out of when the Woman

Warrior finally found the one Unspoiled Barbarian Swordsman who could make her areal woman.

(I think they sell the kit for that at Wal-Mart.)

It is this image of the Woman Warrior as bimbo-with-a-blade that has caused the stampede in the other

direction among fantasy writers. Ana a very nice stampede it has been, too, except for the fact that once

we chucked the chainmail bikini, we also chucked the chance to create a fighting woman who can let

down her guard once in a while and just be human instead of an Image.

THRUST.

When I pitched this book, the super-compact capsule description I used was Amazon Comedy.

Amazon Comedy. Yeah, right. What are you, Friesner, some kind of sexist? Oh sure,you can get away

with this because you're a woman, but just let some man try to write Amazon Comedy and watch him get

reduced to a puddle of Politically Incorrect puree!

(This is the same phenomenon that allows members of one ethnic group to tell Those Jokes and use

Those Words to one another, but heaven help the outsider who tries.)

Wake-up call time: Not all comedy needs to be cruel. Not all humor depends on ridicule. Most of the

best relies on holding up the mirror to our fallible human nature. It lets us laugh at ourselves without

making us feel belittled, hopeless, disenfranchised, or dumb. We make mistakes, we laugh at them, and

we learn.

All of us. Even strong women. Even Warrior Women.

PARRY.

I once met two dogs.

If you took the SundayNew York Times and dropped it on top of the first one, you could probably

squash him flat. If you heard how this tiny little flea-with-fur yapped his fool head off at a pitch and

volume guaranteed to raise the dead every time anyone trespassed on his Personal Space, you would go

right out and buytwo copies of the SundayNew York Times just to be sure you got him good.

The other dog was big and strong enough to play Australian rules football—as his own team—and win.

His teeth could punch holes in sheet metal. When his owner played Frisbee with him, this dog got

confused and fetched the hubcap off a Monster Truck. With the truck still attached.

This second dog lets babies massage strained peaches into his fur, allows little girls to use his hair and

nails when they play beauty parlor, and did not so much as say "Woof!" when his owner's child dressed

him up like a clown for Halloween. He really looked silly. Everyone laughed at him. He just sat there with

one of those big doggy grins on his face and laughed too.

Try to lay one hand on his food or his family and that's one hand you won't be seeing again in this life.

My point? We're secure enough to take a joke, we're smart enough to tell a joke from a jab, we're

human enough to enjoy a good laugh, and we're not going to kill you if you laugh along with us. But try to

walk all over us and you're history.

We being the real Women Warriors and our friends.

We do exist, you know. We may not have the chain-mail and the swords, but we've got the challenges

and the quests and the battles. We can handle them, too.

Remember: It takes a stout heart to hold off a horde of beer-crazed trolls in a dockside tavern, it

demands guts of steel to face hand-to-hand combat with the Dark Lord of the Really Ugly in his very

citadel. Still, that ain't nothin' compared to the raw courage it takes to be stuck in a car for a four-hour

drive with a two-year-old and her favorite Barney tape that she wants to hearagain or the sheer heroism

required to be trapped at an Official Family Function and cornered by a well-meaning relative who

demands to know "Why aren't yousettled down yet, dearie, is somethingwrong with you?"

Come to think of it, maybe wecould use those swords.

SALUTE.

Now, now, you know what good manners teach us:

Gentlemen first.

LADY OF STEEL

«^»

Uttering a curse in his well-practiced falsetto, Cora swung his blade and cut down the opposing

swords-woman. His contoured breastplate emphasized features which were not truly present.

Simultaneous then, attacks came from the right and the left. Beginning his battle-song, he parried to the

left, cut to the right, parried left again, cut through that warrior, parried right, and thrust. Both attackers

fell.

"Well done, sister!" shouted Edwina, the aging axe-woman, from where she stood embattled ten feet

away. High compliment from a veteran!

Smiling, Cora prepared for another onslaught, recalling when he had been Corak the cook but months

before. He had had a dream then, and now he was living it.

He had thought of being a great warrior, laying about him in battle, famed in song and story for his

prowess. How he had practiced with the blade! Until one day he realized he need also practice his walk

and his speech—as well as shaving closely and clandestinely every day—if he were ever to realize that

dream. So he did. And one day he disappeared, Cora appeared weeks later, and a legend was born.

Several months into the campaign now, and he was not only accepted but celebrated—Cora, Lady of

Steel.

But the enemy, too, had heard of him, and all seemed anxious to claim the glory of reaping his head.

Perspiration broke out on his brow as five warriors moved to engage him. The first he took out quickly

with a surprise rush. The others—more wary now—fought conservatively, seeking to wear him down.

His arms ached by the time he had dealt with the second. His battle-song broke as he dispatched the

third and took a cut deep in his right thigh from one of the others. He faltered.

"Courage, sister!" shouted Edwina, hacking her way toward him.

He could barely defend himself against the nearer warrior as Edwina took out the fourth. Finally, he

stumbled, knowing he could not rise in time to save himself from the death-blow.

At the last moment, however, an axe flashed and his final assailant's head rolled away in the directions of

her retreating sisters.

"Rest!" Edwina ordered, taking up a defensive position above him. "They flee! We have the field!"

He lay there, clutching his thigh and watching the retreat, fighting to retain consciousness. "Good," he

said. This was the closest it had ever been…

After a time, Edwina helped him to his feet. "Well-acquitted, Steel Lady," she said. "Lean on me. I'll

hero you back to camp."

Inside her tent, the fractured leg-armor removed, she bathed the wound. "This will not cripple you," she

said. "We'll have you good as new shortly."

But the wound extended higher. Suddenly, she had drawn aside his loincloth to continue her

ministrations. He heard her gasp.

"Yes," he said then. "You know my secret. It was the only way for me to distinguish myself—to show

that I could do the work as well or better than a woman."

"I must say that you have," Edwina admitted. "I remember your prowess at Oloprat, Tanquay, and Pord.

You are a most unusual man. I respect you for what you have done."

"You will help me keep my secret then?" he asked. "Let me complete the campaign? Let me make a

record to show the world a man can do this work, too?"

She studied him, then winked, pinched his fanny, and smiled.

"I'm sure we can work something out," she said.

And you thought you had tax problems…

AND LADIES OF THE CLUB

Elizabeth Moon

«^»

"But you don't tax jockstraps!" Mirabel Stonefist glared.

"No," said the king. "They're a necessity."

"For you, maybe. How do you expect me to fight without my bronze bra?"

"Men can fight without them," the king said "It's far more economical to hire men, anyway. Do you have

any idea what the extra armor for the women in my army costs? I commissioned a military

cost-containment study, and my advisors said women's uniforms were always running over budget." The

king smirked at the queen, on her throne a few feet away, and she smirked back. "I've always said the

costs to society are too high if women leave their family responsibilities—"

"We'll see about this," said Mirabel. She would like to have seen about it then and there, but the king's

personal guards—all male this morning, she noticed—looked too alert. No sense getting her nose broken

again for nothing. Probably it was the queen's fault anyway. Just because she'd been dumped on her

backside at the Harvest Tourney, when she tried to go up against Serena the Savage, expecting that

uncompromising warrior to pull her strokes… the queen gave Mirabel a curled lip, and Mirabel imagined

giving the queen a fat one. As the elected representative of the Ladies' Aid & Armor Society, she must

maintain her dignity, but she didn't have to control her imagination.

"Six silver pence per annum," said the king. "Payable by the Vernal Equinox."

Mirabel growled and stalked out, knocking over several minor barons on the way. In the courtyard,

other women in the royal army clustered around her.

"Well?"

"It's true," said Mirabel grimly. "He's taxing bronze bras." A perky blonde with an intolerably cute nose

(still unbroken) piped up.

"Just bronze? What about brass? Or iron? Or—"

"Shutup , Kristal! Bronze, brass, gold, silver… 'all such metal ornaments as ye female warrioresses are

wont to use—'"

"Warrioress!" A vast bosomy shape heaved upward, dark brows lowered. Bertha Broadbelt had strong

opinions on the dignity due women warriors.

"Shutup , Bertha!" Kristal squeaked, slapping Bertha on the arm with all the effect of a kitten swatting a

sabertooth.

"Warrioress is what the law says," Mirabel snapped. "I don't like it either. But there it is."

"What aboutleather ?" Kristal asked. "Chain mail? Linen with seashell embroidery?"

"KRISTAL!" The perky blonde wilted under the combined bellow.

"I was only thinking—"

"No, you weren't," Mirabel said. "You were fantasizing about those things in theDark Knights catalog

again. This is serious; I'm calling a meeting of the Ladies' Aid & Armor Society."

"And so," she explained that evening to the women who had gathered in the Ladies' Aid & Armor

Society meeting hall, "the king insists that the extra metal we require in our armor is a luxury, to be taxed

as such. He expects we'll all go tamely back to our hearths—or make him rich."

"I'll make him sing soprano," muttered Lissa Broadbelt, Bertha's sister. "The nerve of that man—"

"Now, now." A sweet soprano voice sliced through the babble as a sword through new butter. "Ladies,

please! Let's have no unseemly threats…" With a creak and jingle, the speaker stood… and stood. Tall

as an oak (the songs went), and tougher than bullhide (the songs went), clad in enough armor to outfit

most small mercenary companies, Sophora Segundiflora towered over her sister warriors. She had

arrived in town only that evening, from a successful contract. "Especially," Sophora said, "threats that

impugn sopranos."

"No, ma'am."

"He is, after all, the king."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Although it is a silly sort of tax."

"Yes, ma'am." A long pause, during which Sophora smiled lazily at the convocation, and the convocation

smiled nervously back. She was so big, for one thing, and she wore so much more armor than everyone

else, for another, and then everyone who had been to war with her knew that she smiled all the time.

Even when slicing hapless enemies in two or three or whatever number of chunks happened to be her

pleasure. Perhaps especially then.

"Uh… do you have any… er… suggestions?" asked Mirabel, in a tone very different from that she'd

used to the king.

"I think we should all sit down," Sophora said, and did so with another round of metallic clinkings and

leathery creakings. Everyone sat, in one obedient descent. Everyone waited, with varying degrees of

patience but absolute determination. One did not interrupt Sophora. One would not have the chance to

apologize. Whether she was slow, or merely deliberate, she always had a chance to speak her mind.

"What about other kinds of bras?" she asked at last.

Mirabel explained the new decree again. "Metal ornaments, it said, but that included armor. Said so.

Called us warrioresses, too." Sophora waved that away.

"He can call us what he likes, as long as we get paid and we don't have to pay this stupid tax. First things

first. So if it's not a metal bra, it's not taxed?"

"No—but what good is a bit of cloth against weapons?"

"I told you, leather—" Kristal put in quickly.

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CHICKSINCHAINMAILEditedByEstherFriesner CONTENTSIntroduction,EstherFriesnerLadyofSteel,RogerZelaznyAndLadiesoftheClub,ElizabethMoonExchangeProgram,SusanShwartzGoddessforaDay,HarryTurtledoveArmor-Ella,HollyLisleCareerDay,MargaretBallArmor/Amore,DavidVierlingTheStoneofWarandtheNightingale'sEgg,Elizabe...

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Esther M. Friesner - Chicks 01 - Chicks In Chainmail

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