Free The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley

very savory.
    She was so stiff that when she tried to come forward to the fire, she tottered like an old woman. Charis began to laugh, but Penthesilea scowled at her.
    “Don’t mock the child; she hasn’t whimpered, and it was a long ride for one unused to horseback. You were no better when you came to us. Give her something to eat.”
    Charis dipped up a cup of stew and handed it to Kassandra in a wooden bowl.
    “Thank you,” she said, dipping the horn spoon they handed her into the mixture. “May I have a piece of bread, please?”
    “We have none,” Penthesilea said. “We grow no crops, living as we do with our tents and herds.” One of the women poured something white and foaming into her cup; Kassandra tasted it.
    “It is mare’s milk,” said the woman who had introduced herself as Elaria, Hecuba’s friend. Kassandra drank curiously, not sure that she liked either the taste or the idea; but the other women drank it, so she supposed it would not do her any harm.
    Elaria chuckled, watching the cautious look of suppressed disgust on Kassandra’s face. She said, “Drink it and you will grow as strong and free as our mares, and your mane as silky.” She stroked Kassandra’s long dark hair. “You are to be my foster-daughter as long as you dwell with us. In our village you will live in my tent: I have two daughters who will befriend you.”
    Kassandra looked a little wistfully at Penthesilea; but she supposed that if the woman was a Queen she would be too busy to care for a little girl, even her sister’s daughter. And Elaria looked kind and friendly.
    When the meal was finished, the women gathered around the campfire. Penthesilea appointed two of them to stand watch.
    Kassandra whispered, “Why do we post sentries? There is no war, is there?”
    “Not as they would use the word in Troy,” Elaria whispered back. “But we are still in the lands ruled by men; and women are always at war in such lands. Many—most men would treat us as lawful prizes, and our horses too.”
    One of the women had started a song; the others joined in. Kassandra listened, not knowing the tune or the dialect, but after a time she was humming along on the choruses. She felt tired and lay back to rest, looking up at the great white stars far above; and the next thing she knew she was being carried through the dark. She woke up, startled. “Where am I?”
    “You fell asleep at the campfire; I am taking you to my tent to sleep,” said Elaria’s voice softly, and Kassandra settled down and slept again, waking only when there was daylight in the tent. Someone had taken off her leather breeches, and her legs were chafed and sore. As she woke, Elaria came in. She smoothed some salve on the sore places and gave Kassandra a pair of linen drawers to wear under the leather, which helped a great deal. Then she took a comb carved of bone and began combing out the tangles in Kassandra’s long, silky hair; then she braided it tightly and gathered it up under a pointed leather cap like those all the women wore. Kassandra’s eyes watered as the comb jerked out the knots, but she did not cry, and Elaria patted her head approvingly.
    “Today you will ride behind me,” Elaria said, “and perhaps today we will reach our own grazing grounds, and we can find a mare for you and begin to teach you to ride. A day will come, and not too far from now, when you will be able to spend all day in the saddle without weariness.”
    Breakfast was a chunk of leathery dried meat, gnawed upon as she clung to the saddle behind Elaria. As they rode, the character of the land changed gradually from the fertile green of the riverbed to a barren windswept plain rising higher and higher from the low-lying fields. At the edge of the plain were round bald hills, brown all over, with great rocks jutting from their slopes, and beyond them sheer-rising cliffs. On the side of one of the hills she could see flecks moving, larger than sheep. Elaria turned and