“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” - Margaret Thatcher

Antigua reigned Argentum in beside the unconscious man.

The iron horse’s hooves threw up great clouds of dust as they tore into the parched surface. Antigua looked about at the predators that were circling warily around them. They were keeping their distance, pacing about a number of yards back from her, intensely curious yet apparently unable to come any closer. Every now and then one of them would lunge forward, but would pull back at the last moment, ears flattened, hissing and spitting.

She looked down at the man lying on the ground before her. There was little doubt that he was a man. Unmistakably so since he had a rather prominent erection. His dreams were apparently quite vivid, that or the trauma had a unique symptom.

Antigua had taken on the task of forward scout for the Gateway project because of her inherent thirst for adventure. She was the daughter of an influential member of one of the great Northland Prime families. This, and her keen interest in natural history, had made her an obvious fit for the role. Now, here she was, face to face with another member of her own species. The Northern and Southern hemispheres had been separated for many thousands of years, and there were clear cosmetic differences, gender aside, between them, but the fundamentals were the same. He was no less human than she was.

She studied him for a moment.

He was powerfully built. Tall with long athletic limbs. His skin was a dark umber brown which initially led her to assume that he was a descendant of one of the many Central African tribes that had populated this region before ‘The Purge.’ This assumption would later be proved incorrect when she analyzed his DNA. It turned out that genetically, he was more closely related to her own people than to any of the Central African tribes.

His right leg was horribly mutilated and would doubtless need to be amputated. He wore, to her mind, an unusual combination of rough metal and stiffened animal hide that she presumed was an attempt at body armor. The metal and hide had been roughly worked by hand, which was a clue that she was dealing with a non-industrial culture. It was, by all accounts, useless, versus the local wildlife though she had to concede that the wildlife in question would probably test her own armor to its practical limit. His hand clasped the hilt of a battered long sword. She doubted it held enough of an edge to be worth more than a club in the hand, though the pointy end looked serviceable enough.

His face was handsome, though he had a disgustingly matted beard, which masked his jaw-line. At some point his nose had been broken and left to heal without being reset. He was a deathly pale and was moaning softly as his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.

“Not sure you’re worth the trouble saving at this point.” She said to him, not expecting a response.

She dismounted swiftly.

A quick appraisal of his injuries confirmed her suspicions. She unsheathed her sword and set to work removing the remains of his leg with the calm disposition of one familiar and comfortable with butchers’ work. The blade cut cleanly through his flesh, the ultrasonic vibration neatly cauterizing the wound as it passed.

She set the leg to one side, grunting at the unexpected weight and sheathed her sword. With a twist of her wrist, she opened the med compartment of her gauntlet and pulled out a small field syringe gun. She loaded it with an anesthetic cartridge, knelt by his head and fired it into his neck. He stopped moaning and his eyes closed. He would be unconscious for around five hours, whether he lived that long remained to be seen.

There was a blood curdling screech as one of the circling beasts overcame its reticence and charged headlong at her. The animal looked like a monstrous cross between a giant honey badger and a cave lion. Head and shoulders covered with a long, thick, flowing mane of hair, while its short, stocky legs pumping furiously beneath it gave it the impression of a rabid barrel with teeth. It quickly covered the distance to her and when it was roughly ten feet away it leapt into the air, jaws wide and claws spread, ready to tear its prey apart. There was a hollow, metallic bong sound accompanied by a flat, meaty slap. Argentum’s hind leg connected neatly with the side of pouncing animal’s skull, crushing it flat on one side and causing a spray of teeth, eyeballs, skull and brains to explode out the other. The force of the strike and the creature’s momentum caused its head to snap around while the body cartwheeled away at a forty five degree angle from its initial vector. It crashed limply to the earth roughly ten yards from them, promptly becoming a source of interest to the other scavengers.

“Impressive.” Antigua muttered, nodding at Argentum.

The war-horse snorted derisively, nodding his head up and down and stamping the earth with his front hoof.

With some difficulty she managed to strap the man’s limp body behind Argentum’s saddle. Once she was happy that he was firmly secured she turned back to face the circling beasts. Keeping a watchful eye on their movements, she calmly replaced the spent anesthetic cartridge from her syringe gun with a stimulant. She lifted the gun up to her own neck, took a deep breath, closed her eyes and fired the trigger.

“OK.” She said to herself, “Time for some fun.”

She drew her sword again and planted her legs in a defensive stance, knees bent, weight rolling forward up onto the balls of her feet.

With a click she shut off the ultrasonic repellent. For the briefest of moments there was an eerie silence, as if the world was holding its breath.

Then there was violence.