The Steerswoman's Road (18 page)

“Bel?”

“You all sound foreign.”

Henra nodded. “Perhaps that will do, then. As she’ll be
traveling in the south, it may be sufficient to simply admit she’s from somewhere
in the north. Bel, take Rowan’s place for a moment.”

They exchanged places, Bel eyeing the group with suspicion.
Then she stood before them, a solid, wide-legged stance, strong arms relaxed,
hands comfortably by her sides. Her chin was tilted up in unvoiced challenge.

Rowan looked away briefly, filling her eyes with the gray of
stone walls, clearing her mind of preconceptions. Then she looked back, with a
fresh point of view.

She saw it immediately, and her voice and three others spoke
together. “A warrior.”

“Undeniably,” Henra admitted.

“A solitary warrior,” Hugo amended. “One not used to regimentation.”

“And she’ll be on the road,” Berry pointed out. “A traveling
warrior; that means a mercenary.”

Rowan took that information and tried to integrate it with
what had been said about her own appearance, feeling a touch of surprise, as if
she had expected all her steerswoman’s abilities to vanish with her ring and
chain. She speculated. What would bring two such people together? Why would
they travel? What would be their relationship?

It fell together with the perfection of a discovered truth.
So perfect, and yet so untrue; it was like an immense joke, and she laughed,
bitterly. The steerswomen looked at her in amazement.

Rowan spread her hands and addressed the group. “I’ve got
it.”

He had killed a man, his first week on the road.

He was a little surprised at how calmly he had done it. He
had killed him as simply as he would kill a wolf, and it was a wolf, really, a
bandit. The gods only knew what the man expected to gain from a boy like
Wiliam; just an easy victim, perhaps. Still, Willam had heard the sound, strung
his bow with a mindless speed, and let fly as soon as he saw the knife. He
actually had not felt afraid at all.

He was smart enough not to trust to a speed and
cold-bloodedness he had only felt the once. But he began to worry about the
wisdom of keeping to the deserted back trails. Close to his home village, he
had thought it best. He knew he was conspicuous: a big lad with red-blond hair,
brown eyes light enough to be called copper by most, and at fourteen years
well on his way to acquiring a blacksmith’s burly arms and shoulders. One
sentence was enough to identify him to anyone he knew, and he surely did not
want word to get back to his father. Not that he thought his father might
follow. Plenty of young people left home; Will had just left a bit sooner than
most.

He had been sorry to leave, and frightened, as well.
Strange, how one could be frightened of something big and vague, like leaving
home alone, and be calm face-to-face with a real bandit. Maybe that was how it
was in life. Willam didn’t know.

Those last few weeks at home had been too strange, too busy
to allow much time or space for worry: trying to go about his days as normal,
doing his work, then spending every spare moment in his shack in the yard, even
slipping out at night, to make his preparations. No one bothered him in his
shack. There had been enough accidents over the years that people had the sense
to stay away. If they wanted him, they always stood at a good distance and
called out. They were cautious.

He was cautious, too. He had not been, when he was very
young, but experience had taught him harshly—taught him to think carefully,
move slowly, control as much as possible. One had to take risks to learn, but
he discovered that if he was careful about everything else, then the one risk
he took would not hurt him. He could do almost the same thing, over and over,
taking just one different risk each time, and in the end he learned what he
wanted to know. And he knew it all the way down to its bones.

Other people didn’t think like that, he knew; they acted,
for the most part, on impulse and emotion. Perhaps that was why what he did was
so incomprehensible to them, and sometimes frightening. Still, when they needed
something special, it was to him that they came.

But magic did not help him on the road. His bow helped him.
And caution.

Caution told him to stay to the back trails as long as he
could, then caution told him when it was better to take a main road. Unfortunately,
by that time, he was lost.

Leaving his village, he had struck northeast, taking his
bearings from the Eastern Guidestar at night, doing the best he could by guesswork
during the day. Eventually he met the river Wulf. Actually, he thought he had
met it a dozen times; any river he crossed was the Wulf to him, until he
reached the next one. When he finally did come to its banks and stood gaping in
astonishment at its wild speed and impossible width, he felt more than a little
like an ignorant village boy. Bitterly, he reminded himself that that was
exactly what he was. However fantastic his mission, however high and mighty his
plans, it was best to keep that fact in mind.

A riverman took one of Willam’s small supply of coppers in return
for a trip across, and Will spent the passage carefully protecting his pack
from the spray slapped up from the windy water. On the other side, a careful
check proved that the contents were safe and dry.

From there he began to travel due east, and within the hour
he was hopelessly adrift in the trackless woody uplands. He beat his way
cross-country for a full day until he found a path. It went south, but he took
it.

But soon he was no longer traveling alone. He met a merchant
on the path, and she had a very good idea: travel south to the main road and
try to connect with an east-going caravan. Will did not have the fare, but no
one would stop him if he wanted to tag along. Naturally, he would not be under
their protection, but it would take quite an attack to really threaten a
caravan. Will was glad of the suggestion; perhaps a bit less glad at the
company.

As they walked along, the little donkey kicked up a bit, and
Willam danced to the left, out of the way of the hooves. Astride it, the
merchant struggled with the reins and cursed in quiet aggrieved tones. Will
smiled. He liked the donkey, and he didn’t like the merchant.

“Attise, can’t you control that beast?” the merchant’s bodyguard
complained. Attise sent back one of her flat glances and said nothing, still
maintaining her precious dignity. Willam hoped the donkey would throw her.

“I can’t see why he should complain,” the bodyguard
continued to Will. “Her master used to ride him, and from what I hear, Attise
is a feather by comparison.”

Willam spoke from the side of his mouth. “Give her time. She’ll
catch up.”

The bodyguard looked at Will in surprise, then threw back
her head and laughed. “Ho, Attise!” she called. “Why aren’t you fat, like the
other merchants?”

“I’m not a merchant,” Attise replied in a carefully
indifferent voice. “Technically.”

“She’s a clerk,” the bodyguard confided to Willam. “Technically.”

It was the bodyguard, Sala, who made the traveling
enjoyable. She was cheerful and absolutely straightforward. She said exactly
what she thought. Perhaps it was her skill at arms that gave her confidence,
but it seemed to be more than that; she was a woman who looked the world
straight in the eye.

She reminded Will of a cat who lived in a gristmill in his hometown.
The cat, small and solid, all efficient muscle, greeted visitors with benign
good nature and loved to be petted and entertained. But its greatest delight
was battle; it killed rats and thieving birds with heart-stopping speed and
precision, and it was always on watch for more opportunities for murder. Sala
was like that, Wiliam thought: cold-bloodedly amiable. He wondered with a trace
of boyish excitement if he would ever have the opportunity to see her in
action.

But remembering the cat made him remember his little sister.
She had loved that cat, and she would squeal with glee whenever she saw it,
toddling toward it on her chunky legs. The cat, perhaps wisely, stayed just out
of her reach, friendliness struggling against natural caution at the girl’s
awkwardness, and the pair would weave their way endlessly about the room, to
the amusement of onlookers. She was the only girl in the family, and so bright,
so mischievous, a constant amazement. Will’s love for the child was total,
unconditional.

He had often asked his father if they might find a kitten
for her, and he really believed his father was about to, just before that day
when two of Abremio’s men appeared. Then the girl was gone, kittens were
forgotten, and Will was left with only his ever more silent father, a brother
too old to feel close to—and a dark, obsessive hatred for the wizard who had
stolen the only person he truly loved, confiscating her as if she were some
object.

It occurred to Wiliam that if the people in The Crags and
the surrounding villages were more like cats, more like Sala, Abremio could
not simply do whatever he pleased.

The people in The Crags were like Attise, and perhaps that
was why he disliked her so immediately: he had the villager’s disdain for the
folk of the city proper. They never said anything directly but always danced
around the subject with flowery phrases, looking down their noses at a country
person as if he smelled bad but they were too polite to tell him. They were
more concerned with how they dressed and how they seemed, than with what they really
were, or what they could do.

Attise spoke plainly enough, when she spoke, but she had
that same way of seeming to watch and judge a person, and watch and judge
herself, as if matching her behavior with some rigid internal standard. It made
him uncomfortable. And she was never spontaneous; everything she did seemed
planned. Will had the feeling that it was all for show.

For instance, Attise had a map, and a good one. But whenever
they came to any crossroads absolutely nothing else would do but that they all
stop while she carefully dismounted, drew the map from its place in her
baggage, and laboriously consulted it. Why she did not keep it more convenient,
or why she did not try to memorize part of the route, Will had no idea. She
would study it at length, no trace of confusion or uncertainty tainting her
expression, pack it away, remount, and say, “This way,” in a voice of absolute
authority. The exercise soon became tedious, and Will became more and more
certain that she did it only to appear important.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on her.”

Will came back from his thoughts and found that Sala was
walking close beside him, Attise and the donkey some dozen feet ahead. “What?”
He had been watching the merchant, and his distaste must have been showing on
his face.

“Attise. She’s really not so terrible. She’s just in a bad
situation.” Will glowered at the merchant’s back again. “More like she carries
a bad situation around with her.”

Sala considered. “The problem,” she said carefully, “is that
she doesn’t know how to act.”

“You’d never guess it.”

She nodded. “That’s the idea. She’s really just a clerk, as
I said. She’s used to traveling around in her master’s wake, doing his figuring,
keeping his accounts. She knows about his business, but she’s never had to deal
with people, or decide anything. But when her master broke his leg, just when
he was about to expand his business—” She paused, looking confused at the
complexities of finance. “I don’t really understand how it works. Somehow, they
have the money now, and they won’t have it later ... I don’t see how that can
be ...” She gave it up and shrugged. “Well, Attise knew the right things, and
no one else did. So he sent her.”

“And you went along?”

Sala shifted her pack to a more comfortable position and
tested the convenience of her sword hilt. “I’m for hire. And a merchant doesn’t
travel alone. Not if she likes living.”

Up ahead, Attise was affectedly scanning the landscape, her
face carefully impassive. “Well, she doesn’t act as if she does,” Will said. “I
mean, she doesn’t seem to enjoy anything.”

“She doesn’t,” Sala conceded. “She’s too worried. If the new
customers thought she was inexperienced, they’d try to take advantage of her.
So she has to look as if she knows what she’s doing, and act like a merchant,
but she’s never had to consider that before. She doesn’t know how. And she
doesn’t like it, not at all. She likes numbers.”

Will thought about it. Sala’s explanation made sense, a little.
If the merchant acted as she naturally did, she would give herself away.

For a moment, the whole thing looked different, as if he had
a bird’s-eye view. Attise actually was watching herself and putting on a fake
manner. It showed, really, when he thought about it.

But did she have to make everyone else unhappy? “She’d
probably do better business if she let people like her,” Will grumbled.

The bodyguard tilted her head and gave him a lopsided grin. “She
has money. She doesn’t need friends.”

But Willam still did not like the way Attise looked at him.
At first, Will had tried to engage her in conversation, but finally gave it up;
not that she would not reply, but she didn’t seem to encourage it, answering
in the shortest phrases possible, with no proper opening for reply. And
sometimes she would give him a strange look, a slow calculating stare, as if
she were adding things up, then turn away silently. It was Sala with whom
Willam conversed.

When they first met, she had asked him where he was
traveling from, and he had replied in what he hoped was an offhand manner with
the name of one of the towns he had passed through. Over her shoulder Attise
gave him that look and then went back to blandly viewing the scenery, and the
conversation lagged, then limped in the wake of her brief attention. It was
nothing more than one look, but it acted on Willam like a bucket of water over
his head. Sala was amused.