A Journey of the Heart (30 page)

For the first time I understood that she was someone else, someone who was not a part of me. With the memory of that moment long ago vivid in my mind, I woke among the council stones.

That evening Maara went to see the Lady, to speak with her about my training.

"Your warrior is right," Merin told me, when I went to bid her good night. "I have taken advantage of your kind heart. It's time I let you go."

The next morning my warrior took me hunting. I wanted to do well. I wanted it so much that my arrows refused to find their target until doing well no longer mattered. Then I was able to bring down a fine, fat bird. We made a fire on the riverbank and set the bird on a spit to roast. It was still early morning. Tendrils of mist uncoiled themselves over the surface of the water, and dewdrops beaded Maara's hair. I smiled to myself with happiness.

Maara caught me watching her and raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

"I've missed this," I told her.

It was not what I had meant to say. I had meant to say that I had missed her, but at the last moment, shyness stopped me.

Maara grinned back at me. "You may change your mind before this day is over. You have a lot of catching up to do."

The summer was so uneventful that it was easy to forget the dangers that lurked just out of sight. Our warriors remained at the frontier. Although they saw very little of the northerners, Vintel continued to make a show of guarding our borders.

Midsummer's day came and went. Most of those who had completed their time of service to the Lady stayed on. The warriors she had sent for from Arnet's house had formed their own band, independent of Vintel. While everyone assumed that they too were guarding our frontier, sometimes Maara and I saw them camped not far from Merin's house, up in the hills.

We tended to stay close to home. When we did go out into the countryside, we stayed away no longer than overnight. My concern for Merin kept me near her, and both Maara and I felt safer in Merin's house.

Every day I practiced with the bow. Maara taught me how to make new arrows. We split shafts from billets of hazelwood, shaved them down with draw-knives, and smoothed them with sand from the river. We made flint arrowheads and fletching of goose feather. While we worked, Maara told me about battles she had heard of or witnessed herself. Before I had gone into battle, her accounts would have meant no more to me than all the other battle stories I'd ever heard. Now that I had experienced the battlefield myself, I listened with greater understanding.

One day Maara took me to the practice ground, where in more peaceful times the apprentices would have been sparring with one another. She handed me one of the wicker shields and waited until I had a good grip on it. Then she took up a wooden sword and without warning brought it down hard on my shield. The shock of the blow went up my arm to the shoulder and hot pain followed it.

"Fighting with swords is a trial of strength," she said. "Those who lack strength must make up for it with cleverness."

My arm still hurt, and I was too angry to pay attention to what she was saying. She ignored my anger.

"When the blow falls, don't try to stop it with the shield," she said. "Turn it aside. So."

Slowly she brought her sword down again, to show me. When the blow was about to land, she reached out with her other hand and tipped my shield, so that the sword glanced off it.

"Try again," she said.

She brought her sword down, a little harder. I turned the blow aside.

"Good," she said.

We practiced until I became bored and my mind wandered. The flat of her sword stung my thigh.

"Pay attention," she said.

Tears came to my eyes.

"I want your body to remember," she said. "Do you remember this?" She ran her hand down her thigh, over the scar she bore from the wound that almost killed her. "I was distracted for a moment, wondering where the others were. Before I knew it, the damage was done. I want your body to remember the sting of the blade, and to fear it."

For the next few weeks, we sparred a little every day, but Maara never put a wooden sword into my hand. Pain had made me cautious, and as I had no sword to strike back with, I concentrated on keeping her sword away from me.

"When will you teach me how to use a sword?" I asked her at last.

"Not for a while yet," she replied.

"Why not?"

"When people fight with swords, what are they trying to accomplish?"

The answer seemed so obvious to me that I knew it must be a trick question.

"Each one is trying to kill the other?" I replied cautiously.

As I expected, Maara shook her head. "Each one is trying to keep from being killed. Each one is trying to keep from being hurt. As long as you remain unhurt, you can keep on fighting, or you can run away. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you must fight with your sword, the most important thing will be to keep yourself in one piece."

She was teaching me, not how to win, but how to survive. While I was thinking that over, she lifted her sword. Without my having to think about it, my arm raised the shield to counter it, but while my attention was on her sword, she gave me a powerful shove with her shoulder, and I went down. In a moment the point of her sword was at my throat.

"Next we'll work on balance," she said.

Maara made a slight motion of her head toward one of the upstairs windows that overlooked the practice ground.

"Don't look now," she said, "but someone is watching us."

Of course I looked. Before I could make out who it was, the watcher stepped back into the shadows.

"Merin takes great pride in you," said Maara.

It could have been anyone. It could have been Namet or Tamar or one of the servants, but I believed Maara was right. When I asked the Lady that evening if she had been watching us, she didn't deny it.

"Why did you hide?" I asked her. "I wouldn't have minded."

"I didn't want you to think that I intended to interfere," she said, "although I do find her teaching methods unusual."

"She's teaching me how not to get myself killed," I said.

Merin nodded. "Very wise of her."

Harvest time came at last. Because of the late planting, little of the grain had ripened, but if the good weather held for another few weeks, we might not go hungry that winter. Just as we had begun to hope that we would be left in peace to bring in the harvest, the raids began again, and fear returned to Merin's house.

Reports reached us from the frontier of constant fighting. No sooner had our warriors driven one band of northerners away than more came to challenge them. While some of the raiders confronted our warriors, the others slipped past them and attacked our farms. They paid in blood for what they took. Our warriors bled too. The raids continued until all the grain had been brought in. Then the northerners went home.

It was a poor harvest, and the northerners had made off with a large share of it, but if we were careful, we would have enough, and we were grateful. That year at the harvest festival, when the Lady burned the Mother-sheaf, it felt more like a sacrifice than a celebration. In good years we offered the Mother a share of our bounty, because she was the source of it. This year I wondered if someone would starve to death who might have lived but for the sheaf of grain we'd given back.

On the last day of the harvest festival, Vintel and her warriors returned from the frontier. That evening Sparrow and I slipped away from the celebration and went down to sit by the river. Her safe return was the only thing I felt like celebrating.

When I first saw her, her appearance shocked me. Her face was gaunt, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

"What was it like?" I asked her.

"Relentless," she replied.

"You look exhausted."

She nodded. "I could sleep away the winter."

I felt guilty that I hadn't done my part. "I wish I'd been there."

"Me too," she said. "I've missed you."

Gently, almost shyly, she took my hand.

"I've missed you too," I said. "And I've been afraid for you."

"Have you?"

I nodded.

Sparrow smiled at me. Then she lay down and put her head in my lap.

"If I weren't so tired, I'd show you how much I missed you."

Before I could think of a reply, Sparrow was asleep.

A quarter of an hour went by. I heard no footfall, but I felt someone behind me. She knelt down and touched my shoulder.

When I turned to see who it was, my face was inches from Vintel's.

"May I have my apprentice back?" she whispered.

I nodded, too surprised to speak.

Vintel took Sparrow up in her arms, lifting her as she would have lifted a sleeping child, and carried her back to Merin's house.

Namet saw the difference right away.

"She has the confidence of undisputed command," she said.

Vintel's bullying ways were gone. She no longer had to call attention to herself. When she appeared in the great hall, heads turned and voices fell silent. Warriors who had led their own small bands the year before and who would have considered themselves her equals then, now deferred to her.

"All summer she has commanded them," said Namet. "She has had all that time to instill in them the habit of obedience. And she has had no opposition. Laris and her band are gone, and Arnet's warriors are too few to matter."

I had noticed too that many of the warriors who stayed closest to Vintel were new to Merin's house. They were the warriors she had sent for from her sister's house. They had joined her at the frontier, and no one now objected to their presence. Our warriors had fought beside them, and those whose safety had depended on them made them welcome.

"It may be just as well," said Namet. "If she feels her place here is secure, she may be more inclined to ignore you. Do nothing to provoke her, and she may leave you alone."

I had forgotten how noisy a houseful of warriors could be. There was hardly space in Merin's house for all of them. The great hall was always full. At night those who couldn't find room enough upstairs slept there.

When they were safe at home, our warriors usually showed their softer side. This year, after their long summer spent in harm's way, they were slow to shed their belligerence and gentle into the people I had come to know.

Both the warriors and their companions talked endlessly of the fighting they'd seen. Those who had lost friends kept their grievances fresh by telling them endlessly to anyone who would listen. No evening passed without threats made against the warriors of the northern tribes. The air itself had a bitter taste, poisoned by their hatred.

I wasn't looking forward to spending the winter cooped up with them in Merin's house. For as long as the good weather lasted, I was determined to stay out of doors, where I could feel some space around me and breathe clean air and hear only the quiet sounds of the countryside, where I could forget that I had seen the ugly side of people I cared for.

One evening I was late coming home. I was sitting on the riverbank, watching the golden light of the autumn afternoon fade into twilight, until my mind forgot to think of anything at all and I lost track of time.

Maara's voice startled me. "I was beginning to worry," she said.

She looked so troubled that I tried to make a joke. "Did you think I'd fallen into the river?"

"No," she said.

My unstrung bow and a quiver of arrows lay beside me.

"Do you always bring your bow with you?"

I nodded.

"Good," she said, "but keep it strung and ready."

A chill went down my spine. "Why? Is something going to happen?"

Her eyes avoided mine. "I don't know."

"Please," I said. "Tell me. I'd rather know the truth, even if it scares me."

"I know no more than you do, but I feel uneasy."

I patted the ground beside me, hoping she would sit with me a while.

"We should go home soon," she said. "Namet will worry."

But she sat down.

I gazed up at stars that had begun to show themselves against the darkening sky. With my friend beside me, I was content, and I didn't want to go anywhere.

"I don't like it there," I whispered.

Maara waited for me to explain.

"It's too loud and too crowded, and everyone seems so strange."

"They'll change," she said. "In a little while they'll let the wildness go."

The wildness.

"Has Vintel spoken to you?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"How is Merin?"

"She's fine. She says she's going to start taking her meals in the great hall, although the noise gives her a headache."

"That's good," said Maara.

There was no moon. The dark gathered around us. As the world vanished from my sight, night sounds filled my ears. I heard the river, flowing by on its way to places I would never see. Something splashed into the water, perhaps a fish, leaping at a star. In the grass a cricket made its scratching sound. I had my friend beside me. All was well.

A fortnight had gone by since our warriors' return, and I still hadn't had a chance to spend any time with Sparrow. Most nights she slept beside me in the companions' loft, but during the day Vintel seemed to have a great deal to do out in the countryside, and she always took Sparrow with her. Soon enough winter weather would keep us all indoors. Then perhaps Sparrow would have some time for me.

It was a fine autumn day. Maara took me to the practice ground and put a wooden sword into my hand. I felt awkward, and I was glad I had spent so much time working with the shield alone. Making both arms work together was more difficult than it looked.

An hour later we were both covered in sweat and dust. When Maara suggested we go for a swim in the river, I was more than ready to put my weapons down. After our swim, we lay in the soft grass of the riverbank to dry off. I was looking forward to a lazy afternoon and hoping I could persuade Maara to spend it with me.

Warmed by the sun, I fell asleep.

Someone whispered something in my ear. The echo of a dream faded before I could bring it into memory, but my body remembered it. The touch of love on my skin had warmed me in a way the sun could not. The touch returned, but now I was awake. I opened my eyes. Sparrow lay beside me.