The Steerswoman's Road (64 page)

“Or assist?”

“If your partner rescues you, it means you fail the test.”

Rowan began to ask what it meant if one failed to rescue one’s
partner; she stopped herself. Beside her, once again immobile, sat Fletcher: an
energetic, expressive man reduced to quiet and stillness. His walkabout partner
had not been summoned to add his or her information to Fletcher’s. Fletcher’s
partner had not survived.

Rowan forced herself back to her map. “This helps us a great
deal. We can follow most of Fletcher’s route, swinging north here”—avoiding
the deadly swamp—“and turning southeast here, where you went north. It’s not
the most direct line, but at the least we’ll know what to expect. After that,
we’ll simply strike out across the land,” and she unconsciously quoted Bel, “and
deal with whatever we meet.”

Bel leaned forward to study the result, then nodded with
satisfaction. The chart had begun to resemble a true traveler’s map, and the
gap between known route and goal was suddenly, miraculously, manageable.
Success seemed less a hope, and more a likelihood.

“Good.” Kammeryn made a gesture, and Rowan passed him the
map. When the seyoh took it, he turned it around, but not to read the
notations—he was illiterate. Rowan saw that he had adjusted its directions to
correspond with reality: Kammeryn was seated facing south, and held the map
with south on top.

His gnarled finger moved, indicated. “The tribe,” he said, “will
stay with you to this point, and continue, so.” The tribe’s route continued due
east as the travelers’ wended southeast. “We’ll try to pause here ... and later
here; all depending, of course, on whether the grass is good. We’ll move
further north here”—far above the swamp—

“there will be too much blackgrass and not enough red. You
should be able to rejoin us near,” and he traced a circle, “this area.”

Mastering her surprise, Rowan hurried to mark the tribe’s projected
positions.

Fletcher was astonished. “We’re changing our route for the
steers-woman?”

Kammeryn’s glance denied him the right to question his seyoh;
Fletcher managed to suppress what should have been a splay-armed gesture of
acquiescence into a mere flutter of fingers on his knees.

Bel was delighted. “That’s good! We can travel lighter, and
harder, if we know we have people to return to.”

Amazed, Rowan shook her head. “I hardly know how to thank
you,” she told Kammeryn.

His eyes were thoughtful. “Don’t,” he said. “When you
return, our tribe will see you first, and hear first what you found.”

“But—” It was Fletcher, his confusion overcoming his etiquette.
With a nod, Kammeryn gave permission for his question, and Fletcher fairly
burst out, “But why are they going? What’s there?”

Kammeryn leaned back, considering, and Kree’s sidelong expression
told Rowan that Fletcher would receive no answer. But the seyoh surprised her. “We
are finished here,” he said. “Ask that question of the steerswoman when you
leave.”

Rowan gathered her materials, and Bel and Fletcher rose to
go; but Kree stopped them and turned back to Kammeryn, small bright eyes
intent. “That’s not a good idea.”

He made a show of surprise. “How so?”

She was hesitant to explain in front of the strangers; but
the seyoh waited. “You’ve circumvented the council’s choice,” Kree finally
said, “and they won’t like it if you throw your own decision in their faces. It’s
better the tribe doesn’t know. They don’t need to be told why you choose to
send us where you do.”

“I don’t see how we can prevent it. The steerswoman is sworn
to tell the truth, if she’s asked.”

Kree knit her brows. “She should do as you tell her.”

Rowan remained half-risen, one knee on the ground, pen and
ink stone in one hand, charts in the other. “I can’t. If he tells me to be
silent, or to lie, I can’t do it.”

Kree addressed the steerswoman. “Understand, I’m in favor of
your being here. Mine was one of the voices that spoke for you in the council.
But it’s important that the council show unity to the tribe. If you go about
telling everything, it will come out that some of the council did not want to
accept you.”

“I can’t help that. And if it’s true, how can it hurt for it
to be known?”

“The tribe doesn’t want to see its leaders divided.”

“It’s better to see what is, rather than what one wishes
were so.” Rowan became very aware that one side of the tent was completely
open, that any passing person could overhear everything that Kree wished to
keep secret. She was also aware that no person had passed by since the meeting
began. Apparently, custom or law prevented eavesdropping. Fletcher himself
seemed both appalled to be privy to such dissension, and avidly interested.

Kammeryn raised one hand. “I cannot force the steerswoman to
be silent; and I will not try to. The tribe has one leader: the seyoh. I am not
divided. You may leave.”

Fletcher and Rowan were seated on a rugbefore Kree’s tent.
Bel had decided to walk the area between the camp and the inner circle of
defenders; she was composing a poem, she explained, and walking helped her to
think.

The morning had passed, and the noon meal. Rowan and
Fletcher’s food, however, still sat before them: Rowan’s because she could not
speak and eat at the same time, Fletcher’s because partway through the tale he
had forgotten that it was there.

He shook his head slowly, blinking as he gazed about, as if
Rowan’s story had transported him to the far lands where the events had occurred,
then abruptly dropped him back into the Outskirts. “Falling Guidestars, and
intrigue, murder, and wizards ...”

“Yes. It’s hard to believe.” Told in words, the events
seemed hardly credible.

But Fletcher was deeply disturbed. He turned to her. “Do you
really think this wizard, this Slado, has some interest in the Outskirts?”

“I don’t know.” She picked up the bowl of stew that sat
before her; it was long cold. “Perhaps he hasn’t, yet. But everything Bel said
makes a great deal of sense to me. If he keeps expanding his power in the Inner
Lands, then yes, he’ll turn this way someday.”

“I don’t know ... The wizards, they don’t only do bad
things, do they? They help, too. I’ve heard that the people in The Crags live
very high, thanks to their wizard. And that woman wizard, does something with
the crops ...”

“Isara, in the upper Wulf valley. And Jannik in Donner keeps
the dragons under control. Or doesn’t, if he takes a disliking to you.” She
used a piece of sour flatbread to scoop the thick stew. “And they have their
little wars; not so little if you find yourself conscripted into one. I think
you’d find all this likelier if you knew wizards as I do.” She studied him a
moment. “There’s no wizard in Alemeth,” she observed.

“Alemeth?” Fletcher came back to his surroundings quickly
and shot her a bright, amused glance. “Now, what made you say Alemeth?”

She smiled. “Your accent.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Never. And I’ve never heard an accent quite like yours, either.”
Fletcher’s consonants were slurred and soft, his intonation light and mobile,
far different from the clearer rhythms and flatter tones of the Outskirters. “I
tried to place it, and I couldn’t. I thought it might be The Crags, because of
the lilt; but the pattern is too different. That left only accents I’ve never
heard at all, and that left the western mountains, or southeast, around
Alemeth; Alemeth seemed likelier. And now,” she said, settling back with her
bowl and bread, “now I want your story. What’s a silk-weaver doing in the
Outskirts?” Alemeth was famous across the Inner Lands for the quality of its
fabrics.

“Weaver? Ha! as we Outskirters say. Never touched a bobbin
in my life.” He adopted a haughty demeanor and held it just long enough to
impress it upon her. “We were bakers. My family, that is.”

She coughed stew. “Bakers?” She could hardly imagine a more
unlikely profession for a man become a wild barbarian.

He shook a finger at her. “I can make a custard tart you
wouldn’t believe.”

She laughed, long and freely. “Do you know, I could use a custard
tart just now.” After long traveling through strange, grim lands, she found
Fletcher’s foolishness refreshing.

“Ah, well, there you are, you see. No likely chance of that
out here.” And he glanced about disparagingly; but the glance turned into a
long gaze of pleasure, at the tents, the veldt, the windy white sky. He seemed
to forget her and sat looking at his world with deep satisfaction.

“You like it,” Rowan observed.

“No place I’d rather be.” Fletcher took a deep breath, blew
it out, then gave an embarrassed wince. “I guess you’d have to blame youth,” he
said, “or adventurousness, or a sense of romance ... I don’t know. But my
grandfather was an Outskirter, and from the time I had enough words to ask him
to tell me, he’d tell me. The most astonishing tales—do you know, half the
town thought he was a born liar, made it up as he went along. But I knew,
because I listened all the time, put it all together, until I felt like I could
pick out of a crowd all those people I’d never seen”—he indicated spaces in the
empty air—“his family, his war band, tribemates, all those fierce women he
loved ...

“It was so much bigger than the way I lived. Nobody’s life
depended on what my family did. If we didn’t bake, well, someone else would—not
so well, perhaps, but no one would starve. But you see, everything he did
mattered. Life and death. I wanted—” He looked sheepish. “I wanted to do
something big.”

“Why did your grandfather leave here?”

He shrugged. “Hard times drove his tribe inward, they raided
a village and lost, he lost a leg, a village girl nursed him, one thing led to
another.”

Rowan noted again the object he wore on a thong around his
neck: a cross, some four inches tall, made of Inner Lands wood. “Are Christers
so forgiving that they’ll help a man who attacked their town?”

He gave her a mock-pious look. “It’s true. My grandmother
was a Christer, and once my grandfather was hurt, he was helpless. We don’t
kill a helpless man.”

Rowan was both interested and dubious. “Can you be a Christer
and an Outskirter at the same time? Isn’t there some conflict?”

“Not so far.” He pursed his lips. “We’ve nothing against defending
ourselves; I can manage to do my duty to the tribe. All I ask is privacy to say
my prayers, and a chance to render a little kindness now and again.” He
laughed. “You watch, I’ll have all these barbarians converted, eventually.” He
assumed a sudden expression of panic, glanced about as if expecting attack, and
showed relief at finding none. “Well, perhaps not,” he conceded.

“Anyway,” he went on, gesturing with one hand, to paint the
picture, “so there I am, young weed of a boy, head full of tales. I try the
family business, and it’s, let’s say, less than fascinating. And the little boy
grows into a very bored man, head still full of dreams.

“So eventually I figure out that I can damn well do as I
please, and what I please is to become an Outskirter. Told the parents and the
uncles and the aunts, and you can believe I didn’t hear the end of it until I’d
walked off out of earshot, and over the horizon.” His hand made an arrow to
that direction.

“And what did your grandfather think?”

“Well, he was gone by then. But he’d helped me before, learning
swordplay and such. I guess I must’ve had the idea before I knew I had it. It
was already somewhere in my head that I’d see the Outskirts someday.

“And, do you know, it’s exactly like I thought it would
be—and not.”

“How so?”

He thought long, several varieties of puzzlement crossing
his face. “Well ... I expected it to be exciting, and it is. And I expected
there to be monsters, and enemies, and comrades, and there are. And I expected
to love all that, and I do ..” He struggled to find an explanation, his brows
knit so tightly that his entire face became a single squint of concentration.

Then the answer came to him. Abruptly, he grabbed a fistful
of the patterned carpet and held it up to show her. “I didn’t expect to love
this.”

She was bemused. “You love the rug?”

“Yes! Look at it, someone made it;
Deely
made it! And
that!” He pointed to the neighboring tent. “See that patch, on the left? Last winter,
it was so cold, and the coals were left too high under the tent floor; that
whole corner got singed. That’s Orranyn’s tent. And that.” A train. “The wheel
sticks on that one, you have to give it a solid kick before you pull first
time, then it’s fine all day. And look at this.” He picked up the rough pottery
bowl that held the remains of his stew. “The clay; I found that, in the banks
of a stream we passed six months ago. I had to tear out the lichen-towers over
it. Now it’s a bowl.” He put it down slowly, puzzling over it, puzzling over
himself. “It’s strange. I do love these things: little things, daily life ..”
He looked up and pointed. “See how the sun comes over the tent?” They were
sitting in its dim, peaked shadow. “And there’s a hawkbug.” Above. “And Chess!”
The mertutial was stumping along between the tents, gathering empty bowls.
Fletcher flung himself to his feet, throwing his arms out dramatically. “Chess,”
he declared, “I love you!”

The old woman grunted. “Ha. It’s all talk. Come to my tent
at sundown. Bring a present.” Taking the remains of their meal, she wandered
off.

Fletcher watched her, with a smile of affection and
something like pride. He looked down at Rowan from his gangling height. “Am I a
lunatic?”

“No ...” She gazed around, at the world he had come to see
and had learned to care for more than he expected. “I feel that way sometimes,
as well. It’s the large things in life that drive us, that we measure ourselves
by; but it’s the small things, the daily things that—that become precious to
us.”