The Steerswoman's Road (65 page)

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Authors: Rosemary Kirstein

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Fantasy

BOOK: The Steerswoman's Road
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“That’s it.” He dropped to sit beside her, quieter now. “That’s
the very word; they’re precious.” He cupped his hands, a tiny, cherishing
gesture. “I want to hold on to them, somehow. I want them safe. I want them to
be this way forever.” He shook his head, amazed at himself, and opened his
hands to free their contents. “And it wasn’t for the small things that I came
to the Outskirts.”

“Was it the small things that brought you back to this
tribe?” Rowan asked him. He turned to her, suddenly blank. “In Kammeryn’s tent,”
Rowan went on, “you said that you weren’t sure you wanted to come back from walkabout.”

The expression remained, identical to the one he had worn
while helping with her charts; a wordless emptiness lying immediately behind
his eyes.

She instantly, deeply regretted broaching the subject. She
found it hurt her to see Fletcher so, to see someone so alive and lively driven
to sudden stillness. Fletcher did not speak, but nodded infinitesimally.

“I’m sorry,” Rowan said sincerely, “I can see that’s a bad
memory. If it’s nothing I need to know, I won’t ask of it again.”

He sat motionless, expressionless. Eventually words found
their way back to him. “Thank you,” he said.

After evening meal, as the falling sun faded the western sky to
pale pink, faint green, clear blue, Bel recited her poem to the tribe.

It was a tale of wizards and magic in the distant Inner
Lands, of small people standing against mighty ones; of a woman who held to
truth against the lies of the powerful; of another who set cunning and violent
skill against cruel force; of a boy with a secret talent and a need for
justice—all three brought together by glittering chips of blue that had fallen
from the sky ...

Rowan listened, fascinated, hardly recognizing herself in
the tale. Bel depicted the steerswoman as different than she felt herself to
be: more innocent, more intransigent, purer, perhaps, and certainly wiser.
Young Willam seemed darker than he had been, suffused with fate, choosing
danger for the sake of honor. And Bel, as the speaker of the tale, was never
described, and so only seen by her actions: she became an elemental force, a
wind from the wildlands driving its way to its goal.

There was nothing in the story that was not true. Rowan
could match each event to memory. But Rowan had not seen herself like this at
the time; had not, she realized, seen herself at all. She had seen only the
things she needed to do, and how to do them; the things she needed to know, and
what kept them hidden; and, in the end, a small piece of the truth.

When Bel spoke of the Guidestars, the tribe looked up, although
the sky was too light to see them. When she spoke of the steers-woman, faces
turned toward Rowan, speculative, then nodding. Through the art of her words,
Bel caused Outskirters to understand a steerswoman.

And when Bel told of the deceit and cruelty of the wizards,
some brows were knit in thought, and some eyes were wide in astonishment; but
by the end of the poem, Rowan found in the faces of many of the warriors a
mirror of her own anger and resolve.

“I was wrong.”

Rowan turned around. Kree was sitting behind her, with young
Hari asleep across her lap, his arms and legs sprawled with a child’s disregard
of comfort.

“If those evil people are going to come here,” Kree told Rowan,
“everyone needs to know. We’ll need to act together.”

“Can different tribes learn to act together?”

Kree was definite. “Yes. They’ll follow their seyohs, and stupid
people don’t become seyohs. They know a threat when they see it. When
something threatens a tribe, the warriors fight. If something came to threaten
all tribes, we’d all fight. We attack. We protect.” She ran one callused hand
down her son’s back, and he stirred in his dreams, shifting into a position
even less likely. “Kammeryn is very wise,” Kree said.

There was another sleeping face among the people: Averryl’s.
He had emerged, shakily, from Mander’s tent just after the meal. Sometime
during Bel’s poem, exhaustion had overtaken him, and he had leaned back briefly
to support himself against Fletcher, there to fall asleep against Fletcher’s
chest. Fletcher had moved only once, locking his long arms in front of his
friend’s body, to prevent him from falling, and had remained in that
uncomfortable, protective position for the rest of the long evening.

When darkness approached, the fire tenders hurried to bury
the flames. People began to disperse, several pausing at the far side of the
fire pit to exchange a few words with Bel, whose every reply seemed to include
a definite, affirming nod. Yes, Rowan imagined her saying, everything I said
was true.

Rowan pulled Bel aside as they were entering Kree’s tent for the
night. “What is it?” Bel asked.

Rowan waited a moment, permitting the members of the war
band to finish entering, before she spoke. “I have a question.”

Bel glanced once at the disappearing warriors. “Yes?” They
stepped farther from the entrance.

“If you’re on walkabout and your partner gets in trouble, it’s
your duty to rescue him, correct?”

“That’s right.”

Stars were appearing above. The breeze whispered. “If you
fail, are you held responsible for his death?”

Bel raised her brows, an action barely visible in the gloom.
“It happens fairly often. If people suspect you failed through incompetence,
yes. You might face a blood duel when you return. Or if you refuse to help
through cowardice, then that’s the same as murder, and you can be executed. But
those things are hard to prove; it’s just the two of you, out there alone.
Usually, no one’s held to blame.” Bel shifted uncomfortably, and Rowan
suspected that she would not like what she heard next. “Remember, the candidates
are children.”

“Children?”

“Around thirteen years of age is usual. Some go earlier,
some later.” Rowan found the idea appalling. “But Fletcher went last year, and
he wasn’t a child.”

“No, he was.” Bel shook her head broadly. “It’s a passage:
if you’re an Outskirter, then you’re a child until you go walkabout, and a warrior
after. Formally, as far as the tribe was concerned, Fletcher was a child.”

“And his partner was some thirteen years old.”

“Yes. It’s sad.”

Rowan was thinking of Fletcher’s expression when, against
his will, his thoughts were forced to dwell upon his journey. And she remembered
another face that carried a look that was as quiet, as dark, as deep. “Is
Jaffry the only child Jann has?”

Bel looked up at her with interest. “I don’t know.”

In the morning, Rowan was again the last in Kree’s tent to rise.
As she stepped into the cool sunlight, something crackled under her foot. She
looked, and then stooped down to examine it.

It was a statue, some eight inches tall, cleverly
constructed of split and woven redgrass reeds and blades, depicting a goat
rearing on its hind legs. The artist had used the variations in grass color to
good effect, creating the shadows of musculature, suggesting the sweep and
swirl of long hair in the wind, outlining wild eyes.

But it had been destroyed: torn, crushed, ground into the
dirt. Rowan looked about for someone to question, then hesitated. The condition
of the statue was ominous, suggesting a malicious ritual. If this was the case,
she suspected that any question asked of a casual passerby might be refused.
She had been careful to avoid testing the Outskirters’ acceptance of her
steerswoman’s privilege. Should she now be required to place one or another
tribe member under her ban, the tribe as a whole would be less comfortable with
her presence among them.

Rowan rankled at the necessity of limiting her natural scope
of questions; but she needed to travel among these Outskirters. Until she was
certain of the tribe’s indulgence, she must bend to any suspected requirements.

Bel, Rowan decided, was the safest source of either explanation
or explication of limits to investigation. Rowan decided that the next time she
could find a quiet moment alone with her companion, she would ask, at the very
least, whether asking was permitted.

23

It was a long time before any such quiet moment was found;
the following morning, the tribe moved again. In the space of an hour, the
cloth-and-leather city vanished. Tents became trains, possessions became packs.
Excited children and complaining goats were ushered into flocks. The unseen
outer circle of defenders drew invisibly closer. Scouts scattered beyond, and
the inner circle was doubled, its nearer members close enough to hail with a
shout.

There were no shouts. Wide-armed signals were passed back
and forth, inward and out. Rowan wanted to ask their meaning, but restrained
herself, and set to the task of deciphering them by context.

Kammeryn’s arm swept an arc in the air, crossed it, then arrowed
to the horizon. The signal echoed its way through the herders, to the inner
circle, to the outer, to the distant scouts: a visible, silent reverberation.
The tribe moved: walkers, train-draggers, herders, and goats, all tracking
across the barren land toward new pastures to the east.

Rowan and Bel traveled among a contingent of pack-carrying
warriors: Orranyn’s band, which included Jann, Jaffry, Merryk, and Garvin. Bel
was instantly at ease, trudging along companionably, chatting to Merryk about
the usefulness of his assorted weaponry.

Rowan, by contrast, felt very peculiar indeed. She was accustomed
to solitude; but here were no less than one hundred and fifty people moving
together through the wilderness.

Kammeryn led: a tall and dignified old man, striding at an
easy pace, his aide two steps behind him. Flung far to the seyoh’s left and
right were two persons assigned to the signal relay, one a mertutial, the other
a warrior—the job was appropriate for either category. Behind Kammeryn were
warriors with heavy packs, followed by warriors and mertutials dragging train.

Rowan and Bel traveled behind this group, within a second
contingent of pack-carrying warriors. Behind them walked persons carrying
much lighter packs, including two war bands, whose chiefs occasionally checked
over their shoulders for signals from the rear relay, posted alone far behind.

The morning was clear and windy, cold air cutting down from
the sky, so that the surrounding walkers provided no shield for persons
traveling in the heart of the tribe. Rowan bundled herself into her cloak,
listening with curiosity to the conversations around her: family discussions,
wry observations, and a few flirtatious comments tossed back and forth from
various positions within the tribe. This was no army, Rowan told herself;
despite its defensive configuration, it remained in motion, as it had been in
stillness, a community.

At noon, Chess and her assistants distributed meat and
bread, and the tribe ate as it walked. Children began to tire, and some of the
smallest were loaded onto trains, there to doze, oblivious. After the meal,
conversation lagged, and Jann, Garvin, and Orranyn began to amuse themselves by
singing as they walked.

When the tribe stopped for the night, arrangements were casual.
The evening was fair, though chilly, and only three tents were erected: the
seyoh’s, the healer’s, which also served as a dormitory for the least hardy
elders, and a group tent for the fourteen children. Some children, Hari among
them, complained at being consigned to the tent, and two of them, Hari and a
gangly girl near walkabout age, were permitted to remain with the adults.

To Rowan’s surprise, Hari did not choose to sleep with his
mother’s war band. He arranged his bedroll among Orranyn’s people, next to

Garvin, who accepted the boy’s presence without complaint. “Garvin
is his mentor,” Kree replied to Rowan’s question. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Bel put in as she approached, carrying two bowls
of food, “that Garvin is the person in charge of Hari’s education. Every child
gets a mentor, at about Hari’s age.” She handed one bowl to Rowan and settled
down beside her.

Rowan looked at the contents: a thin slice of goat meat,
tightly rolled and crusted with an unidentifiable substance, arranged on top of
toasted cubes of what proved to be crunchy bread. All were cold. “No hot food?”

“Not tonight.”

Fletcher arrived, with his dinner and Kree’s. He sat down
with such a wild splaying of joints that Rowan expected nearby persons to be
scattered like twigs. Miraculously, he avoided bumping anyone; the effect was
incongruously graceful, after the fact.

Rowan continued to Kree: “You’re not teaching Hari yourself?”
She noticed Fletcher watching her closely.

“No,” Kree replied. “Mothers don’t mentor their children. We
tend to be biased. It’s easy to become slack.”

“My mother was my mentor,” Bel said, taking a bite of meat. “Well,
that’s rare.”

Rowan crunched some of the bread cubes. They had a sweet,
smoky flavor. “Who decides who is whose mentor?” She tried the meat.

She did not hear Kree’s reply, as all her concentration was
suddenly occupied with preventing herself from gagging. It was the flavor of decay,
dried decay, that coated her tongue with cloying dust. She sat very still and
slowly exhaled through her nose. The odor of her own breath was like rotted,
oozing redgrass.

She saw Fletcher watching her with a wide, close-lipped
smile of pure enjoyment. She forced herself to swallow. “You were waiting for
that,” she accused him. Her teeth felt dry.

“Oh, yes.”

Kree and Bel exchanged puzzled glances.

“What is it?” Rowan asked.

He set to his own dinner with apparent pleasure. “You take
red-grass stalks, and toast them over a fire. Then you grind them and roll the
meat in it. I don’t think there’s any real food to it—people can’t digest
redgrass, it just goes through the same. It’s done purely for the flavor.”

Rowan looked at her dinner and grimaced. “I wonder why they
bother?”

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