Free Jane Carver of Waar by Nathan Long

way, fighting for their lives. It would look like Handsome had died in battle. One-Eye pulled his hunting knife from its sheath.
    I said before that my blood was up. Now it was boiling like a gumbo pot. I launched from the tent. I have a vague idea that Queenie shouted something, but it could have been me. Two tents away I hit dirt and sprang forward again like a kung-fu kangaroo.
    One-Eye was just laying his knife against Handsome’s helpless throat when he caught my motion out of the corner of his eye. He looked up, guilty. I hit him in the numbers with a cross body block.
    It didn’t go so well. The problem with living on a planet with less gravity than Earth is that, for the same reason I can leap ridiculous distances and not hurt myself much when I crash, I don’t make much of an impact when I hit something—particularly not something four times my size. So it was more surprise than power that knocked One-Eye back on his haunches.
    I careened past him into a rack of drying bird meat and was up and flying at him again before he could get his multi-purpose limbs back under him. The impact thing was a bust, so this time I hopped on his back and got him around the neck with a triangle choke.
    Now this was where that alien, strength/mass thing worked out. This wasn’t weight against weight. This was strength against strength. There we were an even match, and I was in the one place he couldn’t get a good grip on me.
    One-Eye’s eyes and tongue were popping out in seconds. He shredded my arms with his big, clawed paws. I took the pain. I didn’t even feel it. I had a mad on, blind, red, and roaring, and when I have a mad on, everything goes away—pain, cold, hunger, exhaustion.
    There was shouting in the distance. One-Eye’s squad was turning, winners of the rumble, just in time to see their leader getting punked by a pink midget. Someone clipped me on the head. The next thing I remember I was flat on my back, staring up at rising spear points and sword blades. I was dead. Then there was a shout, and a big body leaped over me, scattering the swords and spears.
    Queenie! There were growls of protest as she yanked me up and crushed me in a hug. For a second it was a stand off—One-Eye and his squad demanding that Queenie hand me over, and Queenie refusing, but then another gang of Barahir veered into view and One-Eye’s squad had to get busy again.
    Handsome, shaking off the cobwebs, was about to join them, but Queenie, an odd look on her face, called him back and ordered him to come with her. He didn’t put up much of a fight.
     
    ***
     
    We won. I mean they won. I mean the Hirrarah won. Barely. I didn’t see any more of the battle. Queenie kept me by her side until it was over—I wasn’t sure if she was worried about my safety or One-Eye’s—but I learned later that it had been a hell of a close call. The only reason we came out on top was that that big hunting party of ours that had gone out early had felt the rumble of the stampede through their feet and raced home, thinking more about meat on the hoof than danger. But when they saw the smoke from the burning tents rising from the ravine they breaknecked it down the trail, fresh as daisies, just as the Barahir thought they had us licked.
    After that it was all putting out fires, clearing wreckage, repairing tents, burning our dead and carting theirs away. Plus, there was the logistical nightmare of what to do with more dead krae-flesh than the tribe could eat in ten years. Most of the slaves helped out, but not me. Once the all-clear blew and the women came out from their hidey-hole, Queenie took me straight to her tent and tied me to the king post with leather thongs that I couldn’t have broke with twice my strength.
    I looked up at her. “I’m up shit creek here, ain’t I, Hur-Hranan?”
    “Hin?”
    “Trouble. I’m in trouble, right? Bad girl?”
    She looked me in the eye and stroked my cheek sadly. “You good girl. Good girl.”
    Then she