The Steerswoman's Road (62 page)

He seemed not to be musing idly, but studying something. She
tried to find what was holding his attention. The land around the camp was used
and barren, up the near hills, across them, up the farther hills. The tribe
had already passed this way, had only doubled back for Averryl’s sake. They
could not remain here long; perhaps this was Kammeryn’s concern.

Beyond the hills the land was lower, and not so visible.
Scouts would have told Kammeryn what lay there; perhaps he was making his
future plans.

In the farthest distance, at the limit of sight: an
irregular line, lit glowing pink from the light of the falling sun behind the
camp. It was too low to be mountains, too high to be part of these low hills,
and too nearby to be the distant Dust Ridge. No such feature was marked on
Rowan’s poor maps. She stepped forward unconsciously, fascinated, gaining no
better perspective.

When she reached Kammeryn’s side, she saw that he was not
looking out, but up. “The Eastern Guidestar,” she said.

He nodded, slowly, accepting her presence without surprise. “If
it fell, would it fall here?”

“On the camp? I don’t know, but it’s not very likely.”

He stood silent again, and the world grew darker as the sun
disappeared. More stars began to show: the Eye of the Bull, the Hound’s Nose,
and at the horizon, the Lion’s Heart.

The seyoh’s voice was very quiet. “If they both fell, how
would we know where we are, how would we know where to go?”

“By the true stars, and by the sun.” If the Guidestars fell,
she suspected that there would be greater and more urgent concerns than the
one he voiced. And yet she sympathized with him; loss of direction was
important to his life, and was the one result most easily comprehended. “Navigation
by the stars is complicated, and less accurate,” she told him, “but it can be
done. If you like, I can teach you, or one of your people. If you feel the
need.”

“Unseen Guidestars,” he said quietly, “and a Guidestar
falling, wizards coming to the Outskirts ... How can what you say be true?”
His face was no longer distinguishable in the gloom.

Rowan could find no further thing to say to lend greater
force to her knowledge. “It is true,” she told him. “And the things Bel said—I
hadn’t considered them before, but yes, I believe her. Sometime, I don’t know
when, but soon or later, these things will affect your people.”

“The council cannot reach consensus,” he said. “My word will
only permit you seven days.”

Her heart sank. “I’m sorry. I’ve come to like your people. I
almost feel at home here.”

He was a dim gray shape, his white braid falling across his
heart like a shaft of light. He spoke, not like a seyoh, but as a man, with reluctant,
disbelieving wonder. “How can Guidestars fall? They’ve been there forever.”

“They haven’t been there forever. Nothing has been anywhere
forever.” It seemed too large a statement; she doubted it herself, even as her
heart and mind both recognized its truth. “You yourself haven’t been here
forever,” she told him, “nor your people. Long ago, their lands lay west of
here; longer ago, farther west. And before? Who can say? But they must once
have had a home.”

Out of the gloom he answered, and it was in an altered
voice, soft, but with a slow subtle rhythm: the voice of a storyteller:

“‘They came at last upon a river, cool and deep, wide in silver
sunlight. Here to the banks, and north and south, ran redgrass, deep, and high
as the waist of a man, and the air was sweet and warm. The people said each to
the other: “Our wandering is ended, and now we will stay. This place is our
home.”

“‘But Einar said to them: “This is not your home.” And in
forty days, when the land was made barren, he led them across the river; and
they traveled for twenty days.

“ The people climbed long into a high land, where the sun
shone around them on every side. In endless winds the grasses danced and spoke,
and there were glittering stones upon the ground. The people looked up into
light, around into light, and down into shadows below, where they saw the peaks
and hills that rose from mist like stars from night. Every eye saw only beauty,
and the people said to each other: “We will not leave here, but remain in this
land. This is now our home.”

“‘But Einar said: “This is not your home.” And in thirty
days the redgrass was silent in its death, and Einar led his people down into
the valleys; and they traveled for twenty days.

“‘Around the valleys stood high hills like hands to shelter
the herds and the people. Small brooks fell far from above, to cross and cross
again the lands below. The goats climbed among the falls, finding rich
redgrass between, and shelter from the winds. Below were roots for the people,
and blossoms, and level ground for the camp.

“ The people then said: “We will stay here. This will be
our
home.” And every eye turned to Einar.

“‘Einar took up his weapon and flung it down onto the
ground. Spreading his arms wide, he cried out to his people in a voice of
anger: “This is not your home, and this is not your home, and this is not your
home!”

“‘And the people understood that he answered them for the future;
that they were never to have a home; and that, being answered, they must never
ask again.’”

The steerswoman heard him turn to her, invisible in darkness,
and she could not tell if he still spoke from the tale, or was now using his
own words: “We are the wanderers on the edge of the world. We are the warriors
of the land. We are the destroyers, and the seed.” He turned away. “You may
stay with us, both of you, for seven days, by my word. In seven days I will
give that word again, for another seven days, and again after that; and I will
continue for as long as I choose. If ever I tell you to go, you will go
immediately. If you ever betray my tribe, you will die.”

Rowan held her breath, then nodded at the dark, and the
stars, and the wind from the veldt. “Thank you,” she said.

In the morning, there was rain again. A velvet mist hovered
close to the ground, ghosting up the sides of the tents in the gray light, and
the soft pattering reminded Rowan of redgrass.

As she emerged from the tent, Rowan discovered a curious object
lying on the ground before the tent flap, half-buried in the dirt, as if a
passing foot had crushed it, casually or maliciously: a tangle of bright yarn,
blue, green, and white, looped about a pair of broken tangle-brush twigs. She
nudged it with the scarred toe of one boot and reconstructed it in her
imagination. It resembled the sort of hanging decoration called a “god’s eye”
in the Inner Lands, favored in poorer households. What its Outskirts
significance might be, Rowan had no clue; it might have been a child’s lost
toy, a lucky fetish, or, more disturbingly, a curse-object. Choosing the route
of caution, she left it undisturbed and went about her day.

As she was returning from the cessfield, a little girl came
dashing by. She stopped short at seeing Rowan, ran up to her, all thrill and urgency,
stopped again at the prospect of addressing a stranger, and finally lingered
in shy indecision, studying her toes.

“Yes?” Rowan prompted her.

The child replied with her chin tucked tight to her chest. “Kree,”
she began.

“What about her?”

“Looking for Kree” was the muffled reply.

“I haven’t seen her,” Rowan answered. And the girl was gone.

At the edge of camp, Rowan found a little crowd of some dozen
people: warriors, mertutials, and children, all chattering excitedly. Among
them, Rowan spotted a pair of long arms gesturing, heard a voice exclaiming
cheerfully, “Come on, back off, wait, I have to report to Kree first.”

Rowan joined the small crowd and asked a male warrior, “What’s
happening?”

He was more interested in the focus of the crowd’s
attention. “We figured you dead,” he called out.

The warrior addressed caught the man’s eye with a gaze of
deep disappointment. Then, with a preliminary outfling of arms, he assumed a
broad, theatrical, clasp-handed pose of gratitude, a pained expression of
piety, and directed both at the sky above, as if this constituted reply. The
man beside Rowan snorted in derision, but more others laughed, and some clapped
the newcomer on the back. He pretended to stagger from the force of the blows. “So,
do I have to wade through you to get to my chief, or is someone going to fetch
her?”

“I sent Sith with a message,” a mertutial told him.

“Ah. Wonderful. And by now Sithy’s at the cessfield,
torturing a tumblebug.” He was a long man, with long bones in a long body, less
muscular than the average warrior; his piebald cloak flapped to the action of
angular elbows, an effect faintly ridiculous. His dank hair was decidedly
yellow, his beard woefully sparse, and his long face showed his emotions
clearly, emphatically, so that as he winced in indecision the expression was so
extreme as to become the very archetype of indecisiveness. He visibly rocked,
as if brains and gawky body were at odds with each other. This was Fletcher,
Rowan realized. The missing warrior.

“Well,” he said, “well ...” He kicked a knotted bundle that
lay at his feet. “Take a look at this.” He dropped to the ground, folding his
legs beneath him like a nesting crane, opened the bundle, and spread it and its
contents for display:

A number of crusted, uncured goatskins; a tangle of knotted
strips of the same material; an oddly chipped stone the size and approximate
shape of a flattened hand; and two lengths of tanglebrush root, apparently
split from one piece, showing a number of gouges along their lengths ...

Rowan came closer, maneuvering around others who were now
stooping or sitting beside the items. One woman held up the collection of
skins, revealing them to be attached to each other clumsily with thongs, to
form an object like an irregular gappy blanket, singed and blackened down one
edge. The steerswoman reached between two observers and came back with one of
the root segments. It was nicked and chipped along one side only, and the splintered
end began at a particularly deep cut.

“It makes a poor weapon,” she remarked.

Fletcher nodded appreciatively to the crowd at large. “And
that”—he pointed—“makes a poor party suit.” The woman had slipped the skins over
her head, and the whole arrangement flopped ludicrously about her body as she
undertook a series of poses, as if displaying finery.

“Someone wore that?” Rowan asked.

“Wore it to his own funeral,” Fletcher replied, catching Rowan’s
eye; and abruptly, he stopped short, his mobile features stilled in amazement.

To Rowan’s own surprise, his gaze quickly tracked a route familiar
to her in the Inner Lands, never seen yet in the Outskirts: from her face to
the gold chain at her throat, to the silver ring on the middle finger of her
left hand, and back to her face. “A steerswoman.”

Rowan was bemused. “That’s right.”

Sky-blue eyes stared at her dumbly; then suddenly he
snatched the chipped stone from the hand of a man who was examining it and
thrust it at Rowan, all excitement. “What do you make of this?”

She took it; and seemingly of itself, it shifted in her grip
into a comfortable, balanced position. “A hand-axe.”

He watched her face, fascinated, then made a wide,
questioning gesture that included all of the accoutrements.

Rowan added them together in her mind. “One of the Face
People.”

“‘Face People’?”

“Primitive people, living on the eastern edge of the
inhabited Outskirts,” she provided. “They’re not normally seen this far in.”

He nodded, slowly, and seemed to lose himself to thought for
a long moment. Then he broke his trance and threw up his arms. “A steerswoman
said it, it must be true,” he declared, then addressed the crowd. “Did you
catch that? Primitive people. Not normally seen this far in.” He turned back to
Rowan. “And you can add to your information that they’re nasty little
fighters, slick as a snake, quick as a weasel. I’d rather face a troop of
goblins.”

“You nearly did.” It was Kree, approaching with the girl
Sithy in tow.

Fletcher rose to his feet to meet his chief. “How’s that?”
he asked. “Averryl was caught by a mating mob.”

And all the wild energy vanished from his body, all the life
faded from his face, until only blank shock remained. He stood, head tipped
back as if from a blow, wry mouth slack, long hands dropped, his stance so limp
that Rowan feared he might fall.

He drew a shallow breath as if to speak, but then did not.
Kree watched him, saying nothing more, permitting him to suffer. He waited,
helplessly silent, acknowledging her right to do so.

At last she answered the unspoken question, and the jerk of
her chin gave both direction and dismissal. “He’s alive. Mander has him.” And
Fletcher sped away, damp cloak flapping wildly about him.

Rowan watched him depart. “So that’s the missing Fletcher,”
she commented.

“Yes,” Kree said, looking after him. “And he’d better have a
good reason for having been out of his assigned position.”

Rowan looked down. The chipped stone was still in one hand,
the broken club in the other. “I think he does,” she said, and passed them to
Kree.

Later, as she was dragging a trainful of waterskins up from the
creek, Rowan encountered Bel, returning from a stroll among the flocks. The
Outskirter fell in beside her, amused. “Have you decided to be a mertutial?”

“I must do something,” Rowan said. “I can’t simply lounge
about like a guest.” She had received her assignment from the cook, wanting
some simple physical activity, something that would occupy her body while
leaving her mind free. But she had overestimated her strength and made the
train too heavy; furthermore, the wheel tended to stick unexpectedly, and her
absorbing analysis of Inner Lands regional accents was constantly interrupted.