The Steerswoman's Road (58 page)

Somewhat later, Jann spoke again. “Perhaps,” she said to her
son cheerfully, “the goblins got to Fletcher, as well.”

Jaffry’s reply was inarticulate, but seemed to contain a
hopeful note.

“And where was Fletcher in all this?”

Averryl was sitting propped against Bel’s pack, scooping handfuls
of gruel to his mouth from a wooden bowl with his good hand, Bel holding the
bowl off the ground before him. She eyed Jann at the question, then with a
glance warned Rowan to keep her curiosity to herself.

Rowan was annoyed. Bel had managed to impress upon her that
a stranger asking too many questions about details of a tribe’s defense might
be taken as a raid scout, and Rowan had successfully controlled her instincts
while traveling with Jann and Jaffry. But as much as she disliked not asking
questions, she liked less being constantly reminded of the necessity.

“I don’t know. We relayed at sunset. The goblins were
between us, so I tried to work toward Garvin’s position when I found myself surrounded.”
He studied the bowl as if it required all of his concentration to do so. “What is
this?”

“I don’t know,” Bel said.

“Maize,” Rowan provided. “It grows in the Inner Lands. A
tall greengrass with edible seeds. You grind the seeds and boil them in water
for this kind of gruel.”

He followed the explanation with pain-bleared difficulty. “It’s
good,” he said.

Jann seemed about to make peevish protest to his changing
the subject, then stopped herself and began again, patiently. “You didn’t find
Garvin.”

“There was no sign of him. Here’s something.” He indicated
Rowan. “That one.” He was slightly feverish, rambling. “Bel told me. If you ask
her a question, she has to answer.
Has
to.
It’s a rule.”

Jann spared Rowan a glance of perplexity. “That’s stupid,”
she said, and with no more consideration dismissed the steerswoman. “Fletcher,”
she began again. “Fletcher and Garvin both should have seen your fire from
their positions. They should have come to help you.”

“Then they’re dead. Fletcher’s in heaven and Garvin’s in
hell. Can’t help me from there.” Rowan had never heard Outskirters use Christer
religious terms; it struck her as odd. Apparently it had the same effect on
Averryl. “Funny way to think of it,” he said. He closed his eyes and leaned
back against Bel’s pack, abandoning the rest of the gruel. “I’m going to rest
now,” he declared.

Jann made an exasperated sound, but laid one hand on his
good shoulder sympathetically. “You do that.” She checked the sun’s position. “We’ll
stay here for another two hours,” she told the others, and rose. “We can try to
move after that. The tribe may move to meet us, but we can’t count on it. We
could be on our own for a week.” She took in Rowan, Bel, and Jaffry in a
sweeping glance of confident leadership. “How are our supplies?”

“Rowan and I have some dry food from the Inner Lands, like
that maize flour, and powdered beef. About twenty sticks of bread from the last
tribe we met ...”

“Some goat strips and a bit of rabbit that’s rancid by now,”
Rowan added.

Jann jerked her chin questioningly at Jaffry, who paused,
grinned a shy grin, and then from somewhere about his person extracted half a
smoked goat leg.

Jann showed mock admonishment. “Where did you get that?”

“Had it for days.”

She beamed. “What a clever boy.”

They settled in, Bel feeding the fire with lopsided squares
of peat. The remainder of the gruel was passed to Jann and Jaffry. The youth’s
eyes widened at the unfamiliar taste, and showed regret when the last of it was
gone.

When the meal was finished, Jann bundled her cloak into a cushion
for her back and settled against her pack to doze. Bel caught Rowan’s eye, then
leaned over and tapped the sole of Jann’s boot to get her attention. “When we
reach your tribe, we’re going to claim shelter.”

Jann sat up quickly, her dark brows knit. “I don’t know
about that.”

“It’s not for you to decide. Unless your tribe has taken to
sending its seyoh to work the outer circle.”

Jaffry was seated facing away from the group, watching the horizon.
He turned to give his mother a sidelong look of amusement, then turned away.
Jann said to Bel, “I can’t promise anything ...”

“We don’t need promises from you. We saved your man. And we
were wounded, as well. Show her your back, Rowan.”

The deep scratches itched madly. Rowan made to comply, with
some embarrassment, but Jann waved dismissal.

“I believe you,” she said to Bel. “Well, you know your code,
I suppose. I didn’t think so, from her.” She jerked her head in Rowan’s direction.
“She looks a bit out of place. It’s odd to see someone like you travel with
her.”

Rowan disliked being referred to in the third person. “We
work well together,” she said. “And I’ve learned a few things in the last
month. Enough, for example, to eliminate more goblins than I could count at the
time.”

Jann studied Rowan with a gaze that doubted her every statement.
“Well,” the warrior said reluctantly, “it’s a sure thing you’ll be given
shelter, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re part of us. So I’ll ask you—” She
became intent. “Didn’t you see any sign of other warriors when you found
Averryl?”

Bel shook her head. “Averryl and the goblins, that was all.”

“According to Averryl,” Rowan put in, “the nearest man was
due east of him, with another south by southwest. From the course your tribe
was following, if the goblins were as spread as Averryl described, the man to
the east must have met them first.”

“It seems like Averryl told you a lot.”

“Does it matter? If we’re to be given shelter, as you say?”

Bel was drawing concentric circles among the torn grass
roots. “He told me more after Rowan left.” She pointed to her sketch. “Garvin
at three, Averryl at four-thirty, and Fletcher trailing at six.”

Jaffry grumbled near-inaudibly. “Best place for him.” The
trailing position was considered safest for warriors of below-standard skill.

Jann ignored him, studying the circles on the ground. “Garvin
could have been driven north and outward. That doesn’t explain Fletcher.”

“He might have seen the fire,” Bel hazarded, “tried to approach,
and was felled himself before he could get close enough to Averryl.”

“Maybe,” Jann allowed with great reluctance.

“Or been driven back,” Rowan suggested.

“Or run,” muttered Jaffry.

“Enough,” Jann told him without heat. “We’re not trying to
prove cowardice.”

Rowan considered. “What are you trying to prove?” she wondered.
It was Bel who answered, head tilted and eyes narrowed speculatively at Jann. “Incompetence.”

“Perhaps.” Jann leaned back again, arms crossed on her
breast. She seemed to be following some inner thought, and her face lost its
animation in the motionless pursuit, her dark brows a straight black line
across her face, black eyes turning dull as chips of cold coal. The contrast
disturbed Rowan; something alive in this woman had drifted to icy stillness.
Jann looked, in her quietude, more remarkably like her son.

Bel watched in puzzlement, but did not interrupt, and Rowan
followed her example.

The silence seemed to settle and spread, and the hot east
wind faded, leaving the air cooler, but dull and heavy as iron. The cook-fire
snapped as bits of blackgrass in the peat flared minutely, and a tiny rustling
betrayed the presence of a ground bug, scavenging nearby. Far above, a hawkbug
dipped, rose, and hovered, its wings a blur of pale translucent pink against
massing clouds to the east.

The land to the east sloped and settled to a broad flat
plain, brown with redgrass cropped too close to survive. In the distance, lichen-towers
marked the banks of an unseen brook, and beyond them the piled clouds grew
grayer to the horizon. There, lightning flashed. Rowan counted the seconds for
the sound to reach her.

Eventually Jann remembered the travelers’ presence and
roused herself, with some difficulty. “No offense meant to you two,” she began,
then roused further, becoming herself, sounding cheerfully nonchalant. “But let’s
not talk of it. It wouldn’t help, and it might affect your opinions ...”

“Our opinions will matter,” Bel told Rowan, “if the tribe accepts
us for more than a short time.”

“Matter how?”

“If this Fletcher person is alive,” Bel said, “it sounds as
if you and I might help decide that he should die.”

“You kill incompetents?”

“If enough people die from their incompetence.”

They were making their way slowly across the land, moving
northeast to intersect with the tribe’s presumed course. Bel continued. “You
can’t keep an incompetent person in the tribe. And if he’s too stupid to see
that he’s incompetent as a warrior and chooses to cross the line by himself,
then he’s a danger.”

“Fletcher’s not incompetent.” Averryl spoke between steps;
his left arm was strapped close against his body, and a stiffness seemed to
have spread down his entire left side. He limped heavily, moved slowly. “He’s
different.” Another step. “Not a crime.” Step. “If he could help ... he would
have ... so he couldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t talk,” Rowan advised. “You need your breath
for walking.”

“Distracts me.”

Jaffry signaled back, and Jann and Averryl stopped in response,
Rowan and Bel following suit. The young man continued forward, then stopped and
made broad gestures with his arms to the distance. Far off, Rowan could discern
a tiny, gesturing figure. “Can you tell what he’s saying?” she asked Bel.

The Outskirter shook her head. “It’s different for each
tribe.”

“It’s a scout,” Averryl said. “Maud. Sent back to us.” A
pause as more signals were exchanged. “She has supplies, if we need them.” More
gestures. “Jaffry’s saying that we don’t.” The communications ended, and the
figure angled away. Jaffry beckoned, and the travel resumed.

Night fell none too soon, and dinner consisted of
breadsticks and slices of smoked meat. They soaked Averryl’s bread in water to
soften it, and he consumed only a little meat, lying down to eat.

He watched the darkening skies with eyes too bright. “Rain,”
he said. “The weather’s been strange, but I’m learning it. Heat lightning in
the east, that means rain.”

This was against Rowan’s native logic, but contradicted nothing
she had seen since entering the Outskirts. Jann was dubious, but to reassure
Averryl she permitted Rowan and Bel to pull their canvas rain fly from Bel’s
pack. Averryl was bedded down beneath the slanting fly, the others on bedrolls
nearby.

When the rain came at midnight, they gathered around the
open sides of the shelter. There was no room for all of them inside; instead
they sat on their folded bedrolls, facing inward. Cloaks were arranged so that
the hoods lay across the top of the canvas to seal out the rain, the rest of
the material draping to the ground down their backs. Averryl slept on, heavily;
neither the rain nor the maneuvering woke him.

Soon it was discovered that Rowan’s cloak repelled water
best, and was sufficiently wide to close the entire tall end of the shelter.
They used it for that purpose, and Rowan, cloakless, bedded down in the cramped
space next to Averryl’s sprawled form.

Bel and Jann sat in the two remaining open sides. Jaffry
found the remnants of a nearby tussock outside and, seating himself on it,
transformed himself into a one-man vertical tent by swaddling his cloak about
him and pulling the hood down across his chest.

Outside, chill rain came down in fine, hissing drops.
Inside, the air was warm with the heat of four bodies, one fevered. Rowan
curled on her bedroll and felt a bit guilty of her comfort. “I suppose,” she
said,

⁽⁽
you Outskirters can sleep sitting up.” The
sound of her voice seemed not to disturb the injured man.

The darkness was absolute, and when Jann indicated the invisible
Jaffry with a jerk of her head, Rowan understood it only by its sound and her
knowledge of Jann’s habits of movement. “On nights like this, away from the
tribe, we all sleep sitting up.” She provided the information grudgingly, as
if she felt any person ought to know this.

Bel sounded half-asleep already. “If I didn’t know better,”
she murmured, “I’d say it was Rendezvous weather.”

Jann was annoyed. “We had Rendezvous eight years ago.”

“Mmn. But the weather ...” Bel sighed a sleepy sigh.

Rowan couldn’t resist. “What’s Rendezvous?”

Bel stirred, then forced herself to wakefulness. “Rowan,
must you ask me now? I don’t mind your being a steerswoman, but must you make
me one, too?”

“What’s this?” Jann asked.

“She asked a question. By Inner Lands custom, you have to answer
a steerswoman’s questions. Otherwise, they won’t answer you when you ask, and
you might need to know.”

Rowan laughed quietly. “I’m sorry, Bel. Yes, I want an
answer, but no, it doesn’t have to be right now.”

Jann was quiet a moment, then answered, puzzlement in her
voice. “Rendezvous is when we meet,” she suppled hesitantly. Bel made a sound
of extreme disgruntlement, then noisily adjusted herself into a more
comfortable position.

Having found another source of information, Rowan decided to
bother Bel no more, and shifted closer to Jann, talking quietly so that her
friend might sleep. “By ‘we,’ you mean Outskirters? More than one tribe?”

“Yes.” Jann paused again. “Was Averryl right, do you
actually have to answer every question?”

“Yes.”

“From anyone at all?”

“Yes. Unless they refuse my questions, or lie to me.”

“Then,” Jann said, “what are you doing here?”

Rowan smiled in the dark. “We’re chasing a fallen star.” The
full explanation could well occupy her until daybreak. “But information is best
passed by finishing one subject before moving to another. I’ll tell all you
want, but if you don’t mind, can you tell me about the Rendezvous first?”