The Steerswoman's Road (29 page)

“How many?” Rowan called as he came nearer. “What sort of
people?”

“It’s soldiers.” He hung from his hands and dropped to the
ground. He was disheveled and panting, with bits of twig and leaves caught on
his clothing.

Bel had dropped her pack. She stood with one hand resting as
if casually on the sword hilt by her right shoulder. Rowan unconsciously did
the same. “How many were they?”

“Six, lady,” Willam replied between gasps. “1 counted six.
And horses.”

“The soldiers were mounted?”

“No, only two horses, with packs.”

Bel was grim. “There’s a blessing. We’d have no chance at
all against six mounted soldiers.” The Outskirter took it for granted that the
strangers represented some threat.

“Have we a chance against six walking soldiers?” Rowan felt
momentarily disoriented. Was it mere coincidence? Or would their peace be
lost, so soon ... “How were they dressed?” she asked Willam. “What were their
weapons?”

“Swords, all. No spears. And cuirasses.”

“Did they wear sigils?” Bel asked.

“Too far to tell. But their surplices were red.”

Rowan calculated. “Shammer and Dhree, or possibly Olin; it
might be either.”

Bel’s dark eyes glittered. “They’re coming for us.”

“We can’t know until we see how they react.” But internally,
she was certain.

“That may be too late.”

Rowan scanned the area: rocky land, gnarled underbrush, and the
overhanging oaks. “How far away were they?”

“Half a mile, 1 make it,” the boy told her.

Bel nodded with satisfaction. “What’s our plan? It’ll be a
job to fight them. We might do well to avoid them, this time, and act when we’re
better prepared. We’re fewer, we’re forewarned, and we’re more mobile.” She
caught Willam’s astonished look. “Sometimes,” she told him, “it’s wiser to run.”

“I’ll follow whatever’s decided.” He turned to Rowan. “Lady?
Are we going to run?”

Abruptly Rowan discovered a strange fury in herself, and an
undeniable call, something that had built unnoticed during those short days of
peace. She inspected the anger as if it were a phenomenon of nature, amazed—and
then not amazed but comprehending, and finally agreeing with it in both logic
and emotion. She reached her decision.

“No,” she said, then looked down the path, eyes narrowed. “Not
this time. Not anymore.”

In the failing light, the smoky fire gave more heat than
illumination, and a single thin black line stretched straight up from it,
absolutely still in the unmoving air. The chart and papers spread before the
gray-cloaked, hooded shape were barely visible in the shadows of the trees,
the figure unmoving, as if lost in thought. Nearby, a little donkey was
tethered; the curious swiveling of its ears was the only motion in the camp.

Not a leaf rustled, not a sound was heard until a high voice
shouted, “Now!”

Three men ran forward past the camp, turned, and stood with
swords drawn, blocking the way back up the path. More soldiers, two women and a
man, jogged up to the fireside and ranged themselves behind the seated figure.

There was a pause; no one moved or spoke. Eyes narrowed in
suspicion, the squad sergeant stepped forward and prodded the figure gently
with the point of her sword.

Rowan pushed back her hood and turned to look up, backlit by
the fire, face shadowed. “Yes?”

The sergeant struck an arrogant pose, her sword point on the
ground, both hands braced on its hilt. “No good to resist us, lady. We’ve come
to get you.”

Rowan calmly glanced at the squad arranged around the clearing,
then nodded. “I see.” Adjusting her cloak about her, she rose and faced them.

“I think she has a weapon under there,” one soldier said.

The sergeant gestured her squad members closer, one of them pausing
to untie the donkey. “Pass it over, then, lady. You’ve got to come with us.”

There was no fear in Rowan’s face, only the calm alertness
of a steerswoman. She paused, then said carefully, “I’m sorry to hear you say
that.”

To the right, a tiny blaze flared, and the sergeant turned.
Suddenly bright flame ran hissing along the ground, ran like a wild living
thing, sped across the path, and twisted back behind Rowan. It shaped some
image that burned in the eyes, a mystic diagram, a work of magic. They were
surrounded by glowing, burning lines.

The sergeant’s throat sprouted a bright wet shaft. She staggered,
fell.

The donkey brayed and twisted, and the soldier grasping its
lead was tugged off-balance onto his knees. A second arrow appeared in the
ground, inches from his foot. Regaining his feet, he drew his sword, turning
just in time to see Rowan’s blade an instant before it struck across his eyes
and drove into his brain.

Bel ran from cover across the lines of fire, and her sword
met another with a sharp ring. Her opponent was confused by the eerie fire,
but at that familiar sound regained his reflexes and returned the attack with
terrified fury. The Outskirter laughed.

Rowan dodged an overhand blow and dashed to the far side of
the hexagram. A female soldier, eyes bright with reflected flame, turned on
her. Rowan parried once, then moved left to avoid a thrust coming from behind.

Bel’s man took two steps back, and Will’s arrow caught him
high inside the thigh. Bel moved forward and swung, striking at the same point.
Her blade reached bone, then she twisted it out. He fell, wailing, trying to
block the severed artery with one fist. She abandoned him.

And suddenly the numbers were even.

Rowan parried with all her strength, studying the woman’s
style, searching for some weakness, some opening. She sensed the movement
behind her again; the man was maneuvering, trying to keep her pinned between
two opponents. She dove, then pulled to the right. She knew Willam was behind
her in the shadows, and she heard him shifting to get clear of her. He tried
for the soldier beyond Rowan’s pair and missed.

That man was occupied with Bel. The Outskirter worked deftly,
almost nonchalantly.

Rowan scrambled back; heard Wiliam retreat. She feared that
her male opponent would turn and attack Bel from behind, but the Outskirter
found one spare instant and used the strategy herself. Her blade struck Rowan’s
man across the back. He was shielded by leather, so no blood was drawn, but
some bone broke and his right arm was disabled. He switched hands deftly and
turned on his attacker.

Rowan was alone again with the female soldier. She angled
right, and Wiliam ignored her and ran to the left around the now-guttering
hexagram.

The woman was huge, muscular, adept—and far too good. Rowan,
overmatched, constantly retreated before her, trying to angle her motion to
bring her foe around to Bel’s side.

Will was staying out of the action, as instructed. But he
watched desperately, looking for an opening.

As the hexagram faded, there was a fizzing flare beyond Bel;
the boy was providing more illumination. In the new light Bel shot a glance at
Rowan, and they exchanged one mote of information: the steerswoman shook her
head; the Outskirter nodded.

Under the distraction of the flare, each turned, moved
across five feet of open ground, and exchanged opponents.

Wiliam wavered, confused. He had been told to spare the soldier
Rowan fought, but now she was fighting two.

The swordswoman towered over Bel like a giantess, and Bel
had to double-step back to stay out of that long reach. She did not try to
match force for force, but dodged and twisted, using her own heavy sword
against her opponent’s as a fulcrum for her movement.

Rowan tried to concentrate her attentions on the injured
soldier, but found herself driven back by his partner. She had to prevent them
from separating to attack from two sides, and so kept stepping back and to the
left. When the injured man broke away to circle her, she recognized the moment
and shouted, “Wiliam!” She did not hear or see the arrow’s flight; she heard
the impact and a man’s cries, and saw him stagger back into her field of
vision. He had been struck but did not fall, the shaft protruding from his
chest. He clawed at it.

Bel’s adversary was undone by her own advantage. An overhand
blow at the length of her reach was met by Bel’s sword and left her the slightest
bit off-balance for a mere instant. Bel pivoted forward, dropped down under the
woman’s long arms and, with her back on the ground, drove her blade up beneath
the edge of the cuirass and into the soldier’s stomach. The giantess writhed
once, then toppled like a tree.

Will’s victim had stumbled, dazed, to the edge of the
clearing. He had three more shafts in him but stubbornly refused to die.

Rowan fought a simple holding action on her man. The rhythms
of movement came to her like a drill, and she doggedly followed it, while he
followed his own, in a dance of reflex and training.

But in a moment when she had circled right, he saw the whole
of the clearing before him, and there was panic in his eyes as he realized that
every one of his companions had fallen. He made half a dozen errors in his
fear. Rowan took advantage of none of them.

Wiliam finished his stubborn victim by simply stepping up
and slashing his throat with a hunting knife.

Bel pulled herself from beneath the body of the female
soldier. She wiped the blood from her eyes with her fingers. “What a mess,” she
commented in a mildly aggrieved tone.

Will moved closer to Rowan and her opponent, not interfering
but watching with interest. In the midst of parries, the soldier spared the boy
a glance of terrified incomprehension. Rowan continued the drill.

Bel retrieved her sword. Seeing her approach, the man turned
to break and run, but Rowan dropped and clutched his right leg, then scrambled
away from the wild sweep of his sword as he spun back.

Bel swung at him without aggression, and he reflexively met
the blow. Behind him, Rowan regained her feet, took careful aim, and struck the
side of his head with the flat of her sword. He sank to the ground.

She dropped her sword and leaned her hands against her
knees, breathing heavily.

A crashing and stumbling in the undergrowth told her where
the donkey had fled. In the distance could be heard the frightened cry of one of
the soldiers’ horses. Rowan gestured to Will, and he set off after the animals.

Bel inspected the soldier. Between gulps of air Rowan
called, “He’s not dead?” The plan had called for Rowan to identify and single
out one member of the attacking squad, the one possibly most tractable. Rowan
had frankly assumed that it would be a woman; fighting women tended to be
smaller than men, and so relied more on intelligence. The steerswoman had
hoped for someone more intelligent, more reasonable than the average soldier.
But that huge swordswoman had been beyond Rowan’s ability to hold.

“He’s alive.” The Outskirter rolled him over. “We’ll need
some rope.”

Rowan’s racing pulse recovered. “Yes. I believe we’ll find
that one of those horses is carrying some.”

When the soldier awoke he found himself hound, arms to his
sides, ankles together. He was propped up against a boulder by the rising edge
of the clearing.

The scene of the ambush lay before him, his comrades lying
in their blood—at Bel’s suggestion, they had not been moved, to create a
stronger effect upon the mind of the captive. Black lines showed where the
strange fire had run, and there was a thin acrid odor piercing the smell of
blood and dust and sweat.

Two women stood before him. One was small and sturdy, a brilliant
swordswoman who had felled the best fighter in the squad, a woman twice her
size. The second was unimpressive, mild-looking but for eyes that watched too
closely, saw too clearly, and seemed to understand too much.

The steerswoman squatted down beside him. “The first thing
we need to know,” she said, “is who sent you.”

He mustered a brave front. “You’re getting nothing from me.”

“Don’t be a fool!” She rose and gestured to the carnage in
the clearing. “None of this was our choice. We have no quarrel with you
personally. Answer our questions and you can go on your way.” At that Bel
glowered, but held her peace.

“I’m not stupid, so I’m not talking.”

“You’re stupid if you’d rather he dead than alive.”

“Going to kill me if I don’t talk? Lot of good it’ll do you.”
Rowan paused to consider the statement. “An interesting point.” Bel could
contain herself no longer. “You can’t mean to let him go!”

“No. Not after all this. He’d run straight for his master,
and we’d have the whole situation repeating. We can’t hope to ambush the next
lot.”

“If we can get him to talk,” the Outskirter pointed out, “he
won’t dare go back to his master.” She turned to the man. “Do you understand?
You can live if you choose to.”

He was a long time answering. “You don’t know wizards.”

“You’ll have a chance.”

He seemed about to reply, then stopped and shook his head.
Rowan tried again. “If you won’t tell us who, will you tell us why?” He glanced
at their faces, looked away, and said nothing. Willam arrived, leading two
restive, wild-eyed horses. He took in the scene with his wide coppery gaze but
did not interrupt. “And now we have a problem,” Rowan said dispiritedly.

Bel crossed her arms and tilted her head at the man. “I
think it’s obvious. If he won’t answer, we’ll have to make him answer.”

It took Rowan a moment to get Bel’s meaning. “You mean we should
force him to talk?” She felt her stomach twist. But the Outskirter was right;
it was, in fact, obvious.

Defending oneself against attack, attacking those who
planned harm—those were easy to justify, as direct and clear as killing an animal
for food, or protecting oneself from rain and cold.

But, interrogation enforced by pain ...

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Rowan said; but as soon as
it was spoken, she realized it was not true. A smattering of knowledge; a few
facts about anatomy arranged themselves of their own accord, and presented to
her a framework for action. It would be very easy, she realized, to cause the
man pain and damage, without endangering his life. She could do it. As a
steerswoman, she felt a moment’s incongruous pleasure in recognizing a field of
information she had already possessed, unknowing. But it was not information
that she was happy to discover.