The Steerswoman's Road (68 page)

Zo finished the steerswoman’s statement for her. “Jann is a
very good warrior,” she said, with a wry mouth and eyes that understood what
Rowan had not said. “But she’s not good at recognizing valuable things that
come in odd packages.”

“That’s a good way to put it.” In itself, the statement
explained much. But Zo’s frankness impelled Rowan to add, “Fletcher is an odd
package, in his way.”

Zo’s reply was buried by Deely’s. “Fletcher is back?” The
prospect gave him joy.

“No,” Zo told him carefully. “Kree’s band went out to the
first circle, remember?”

He nodded his disappointment, and his hands found their work
again.

Rowan watched him a moment; Zo did the same.

“Fletcher’s become a good friend to Deely,” Zo said. “He
wasn’t, at first. He was well, he was a sillier person, when he first arrived.”
Rowan chuckled. “Sillier than he is now?”

Zo’s dark eyes caught the steerswoman’s. “If you think Fletcher
is really a fool, you’re not very clever.”

“I don’t know him well enough to tell, for certain,” Rowan
replied with perfect honesty. “But his presence here does surprise me. I’ve
learned that it’s difficult to approach an Outskirter tribe. How is it that you
let him in?”

“If you render a service, you can ask for a service in
return,” Zo responded. She shifted back a bit to give Deely more room; he had
reached the center of one thin braid, stretching it out behind his body to
work. “And if you can give the name of a tribe member, you can’t be refused.”

“Whose name did he have?”

“Emmary, Karinson, Gena.”

Rowan hunted among her collection of names. “Merryk’s
brother?” Another connection emerged. “And Kammeryn’s line name is Gena.”

Zo nodded, her dark hair sifting forward and back with the motion.
“Kammeryn’s nephew.”

Rowan laughed. “That’s a good name to have.”

Zo winced. “But a sad way to get it.”

Deely had stopped braiding, becoming fascinated by the looping
flight of a hunting hawkbug overhead. He laughed, found a stone on the ground,
and tossed it clumsily into the air. It went nowhere near its mark; but astonishingly,
the hawkbug dove for it, contacted it, then fluttered to the ground among the
flock. Goats shied from the thrashing in the grass.

Zo caught Rowan’s expression of distress and laughed. “Don’t
worry, it isn’t hurt. It thinks it’s caught something too heavy to carry. When
it figures out it’s just a stone, it will let go and fly away.” It did so as
Rowan watched. It was near enough for her to hear its voice for the first time:
a high, exasperated chirring.

“A little over a year ago,” Zo told Rowan, as Deely resumed
braiding, “our tribe had a clash with another, over pasturage. We couldn’t
back off, there was another tribe too nearby, and nowhere else to go. We had to
fight, and we did, and won.

“But Emmary had vanished in the fighting.” She paused. “He
was a warrior, but he had been planning to cross over soon. He had trouble
with his eyes, and it was becoming worse. When the time came to move, Emmary
was still missing, and assumed dead. We left.” Deely had completed five thin
braids and began weaving them close to his scalp.

“We learned later,” Zo continued, “that during the fighting,
Emmary had been cut off from our tribe. When the other tribe fled, he was
forced to move ahead of them, in hiding. By the time he could get free of them,
he had lost our position. He was wandering for weeks and never found us.

“He tried to steal a goat from the other tribe and was wounded,
though he escaped. The wound turned bad, and a rot set in. He had almost
nothing to eat for days. When Fletcher found him, he was dying.”

“Fletcher couldn’t help him?” Rowan tried to imagine it:
alone, starving, sick, then found in the wilderness by a kindly stranger.

“Too late.” Zo was silent for a moment. “He should have
crossed before, really. I don’t know what Berrion was thinking, keeping him on.

“Well. Fletcher gave him food and tended him as best he
could. Before he died, Emmary told Fletcher how to conduct a proper Outskirter
funeral.”

Rowan’s stomach gave a twist. “Casting?” She recalled Bel’s
description.

“That’s right. And he brought back part to the tribe, for
his war band to cast; that’s proper. So, when Fletcher appeared with a tale of aid
given, with Emmary’s names, and with Emmary’s own hand in a sack made of his
cloak—no one could deny him. Fletcher asked to stay permanently, and the
council was so moved that they gave consensus immediately.” She stopped,
blinked, and, astonishingly, began to laugh. “And they were sorry afterward!”
Tragedy and hilarity wrestled on Zo’s face; she quelled her laughter into
breathy chuckles and struggled against the grin on her face. “Oh, Rowan,” she
said, “if you could have seen him! He was such an Inner Lander!”

Scouts habitually ranged beyond the outer circle: a group of
loosely knit individuals, belonging to no war band, and answerable only to the
seyoh himself. It was a position highly respected, owing to the degree of skill
required.

Yet it was a strangely isolate respect; on matters internal
to the tribe, the opinions of the scouts were rarely solicited. The scouts
themselves seemed to prefer it so. All their skill, and all their attention,
was directed outward to the wilderness. When required to remain in camp, a
scout often seemed out of place, a visitor. He or she might wander the grounds
as if observing the actions of strangers, or fall into long periods of musing
that other tribe members rarely interrupted.

Only Zo, with her love for Deely, maintained what might be
considered a normal connection in the tribe’s social life. When not on duty,
Zo traveled by Deely’s side, on the edge of the small herd of children.

On one such occasion, one drizzling morning a week later, Bel
and Rowan were walking with them, Bel and Zo discussing the geography of an
area to the north, which Zo had scouted some days earlier; it had been passed
over by Kammeryn, in favor of possibly better pastures farther east.

Rowan had begun the questioning, planning to add the information
to her charts. But as Bel began to contribute questions of her own, Rowan asked
less and less, and listened more. Bel, better informed on the nature of the Outskirts,
found questions that were more astute, more revealing. By listening only, the
steerswoman gained twice as much information: first from the question, then
from the reply.

“There were plenty of brooks, but shallow,” Zo replied to
one of Bel’s queries.

“Too much blackgrass, then?” Blackgrass thrived on damper
land.

“It was a mix. If we’d camped there, we couldn’t stay long.”
Goats could not digest blackgrass. What redgrass there was would be consumed
too quickly to warrant a long stay.

“And hard work for the herdmasters.” Goats enjoyed the
flavor of blackgrass and would eat it despite its lack of nutrition. Herdmasters
would need to watch the flock closely and discourage foraging in blackgrass
patches.

“But safe from goblins. I didn’t see a single sign of them,
or their eggs.” Goblins preferred dryness, and warmth; Rowan considered that
their fascination with fire might constitute an extreme expression of
instinctive preference.

Rowan was slowly learning the interconnections between the
Outskirts wildlife and vegetation, beginning to see, through her incomplete
information, that they followed the same rules of interdependence shown by life
in the Inner Lands. “What eats goblins?” she asked.

She had been so long silent that Zo and Bel looked at her in
surprise, as if she had just arrived. They considered the question. “Flesh termites,”
Bel supplied.

Zo nodded. “And nothing else.”

Flesh termites ate any living creature—except goats and humans.
Humans ate goats. “What eats humans?” In the Inner Lands it was wolves, and
sometimes bears.

Zo made an indifferent gesture. “Nothing.”

“Except where the Face People live,” Bel amended. “There
they eat each other.”

They resumed their conversation; but Rowan had stopped listening.
She was constructing in her mind a diagram of rising, interlocking lines: what
preyed upon what, what needed which type of resource. There were too many empty
spaces, where her lack of knowledge forced her to assume unknown
interdependencies. And yet, even so, one side-branch seemed to stand almost
isolated. Goats ate redgrass, humans ate goats and redgrass—“What else eats
red-grass?”

She had interrupted Zo speaking, on a completely different
subject, and received a perplexed look. “Other than humans and goats,” Rowan
amplified.

“Humans don’t eat redgrass,” Zo pointed out.

“They must do; where does your grain come from?”

Bel looked at her sidelong. “Humans can’t eat redgrass
grain.”

“But from what else is bread made?” Every meal she had had
in the

Outskirts consisted of some combination of goat products and
bread. Zo found her ignorance puzzling. “Redgrass roots.”

Rowan spread her hands. “But that’s a part of redgrass ...”

“Humans can’t eat redgrass root,” Bel said. “Not directly.”

The Outskirter had spoken with such uncharacteristic
delicacy that Rowan turned her a suspicious gaze. “Am I,” she asked slowly, “about
to hear something that I won’t enjoy?”

Bel grinned, and explained how bread was made.

Redgrass roots were peeled and boiled in water, at least
four times, using fresh water each time. A number of goats were killed, and the
first stomach chamber of each, the rumen, was set aside. Next, the cook, cook’s
assistants, and anyone else who cared to help, took the roots, chewed them
without swallowing, and spit the results directly into the severed rumens.
When each was filled, it was submerged in cold water. The following day it was
cut open, and the resulting paste and fluid was removed. The fluid was discarded,
and the paste was washed and then prepared in any number of ways to become the
various types of Outskirter bread with which Rowan had become so familiar.

The steerswoman listened silently. “Then,” she said slowly, “all
this time, I’ve been eating other people’s saliva.”

Bel was ostentatiously matter-of-fact. “That’s right.”

Rowan considered, then heaved a sigh of resignation. “It
hasn’t harmed me so far.”

“The rumens are cooked, as well,” Zo put in. She mused on
the resulting dish with open longing. “There’s never enough for everyone.”

Outskirter culinary delights. Rowan rubbed her forehead. “I
see.”

But the information only rendered her analyses more perplexing:
humans and goats were even more isolated from the interdependencies of
Outskirter life than she had thought. The goats, she thought; the goats are the
link. “What else, of itself, eats redgrass?” she asked, then answered herself
from the knowledge she had accumulated: “Nothing.”

The tribe found a usable campsite two days later, and Rowan observed
and participated in the same astonishing camp construction she had witnessed
before. The finished camp struck her even more completely as a mobile village:
the streets were the same, the courtyards and gathering areas exactly where
they had been before. Rowan knew where each war band lived, and where to find
her own adopted home.

Inside Kree’s tent, Rowan and Bel assisted in laying the
bright carpet and arranging the various bedrolls. A train-dragger paused
outside while Kree’s people retrieved a number of boxes of stiffened, patterned
fabric, which they placed at the foot of each bedroll. These contained the
personal possessions of each member of the band, those objects not carried
while on duty; few, small, treasured.

The tent was empty when Rowan and Bel awoke the following morning;
Kree’s band had left before dawn, to serve on the inner circle. The two women
rose at their leisure, risking the loss of a hot breakfast for the luxury of
rest from the weeks of travel.

When they finally decided to rise, Rowan stepped out of the
tent briefly to gauge the weather. As she gazed at the slanting sunlight and
the hazy blue above, she felt something beneath her bare left foot and stooped
to pick it up.

It was a long, woven band, such as was sometimes used to decorate
camp clothing. Bright red, pale blue, and white, it showed a complicated
pattern of squares overlaid with interlocking waves. The design was crisp, bold,
and lovely to see, but by some difference of style Rowan knew it was not Deely’s
work. Unlike the other mysterious objects that had been left by the tent, this
one had not been harmed.

She tied the tent flap open to admit the light and brought
the band to Bel, framing a cautious question, designed to permit Bel to
indicate whether or not the subject was one open to discussion.

Seeing the object, Bel spoke quickly. “Where did you find
that?”

“By the door. And back at the old camp—”

“Did anyone see you take it?” the Outskirter demanded.

“I don’t think so ...”

Bel hurried to the entrance and cautiously peered outside. “No
one in sight. Now, quick, put it back.”

Rowan placed the band on the ground again just as Chess wandered
into view, accompanied by Mander, deep in discussion. As Rowan stood by, Bel
gazed about nonchalantly, pretended to notice the band for the first time, studied
it with evident indifference, and then, amazingly, ground it into the dirt
under her foot. The two Outskirters paused in their conversation long enough
to watch the performance, then continued on their way.

Rowan waited until they had departed to speak. She abandoned
any attempt at circumlocution. “And exactly what was that in aid of?”

“I should have warned you. But from now on, if you’re the
last person out of the tent and you find something left by the entrance, destroy
it.”

“What was it?”

“A courting gift.”

It was the last explanation Rowan might have imagined. “A
courting gift?” All her concerns became ridiculous. “Left by the tent door? Is
that the custom?”