The Steerswoman's Road (72 page)

“Let’s just say,” Fletcher told her, “that we’re going to
take very good care of you, until your friend returns.” He began walking again.
Rowan took half again as many steps as his, to catch up.

“I suppose it’s to reassure the people who are bothered by
Kammeryn endlessly extending your stay,” he continued. “But if you really want
to talk to the next tribe yourself, you could probably reverse things, next
time. Bel could stay here.”

“I don’t know. I think Bel will do the best job of
convincing other Outskirters. This is her work, really, and not mine.” She
watched her feet for a moment. “But I’d like to help her.”

“From the sound of it, you have.” He was momentarily distracted,
as the man at ten signaled inward to the relay, then continued. “She wouldn’t
he doing anything at all, if it weren’t for you. She wouldn’t have found out
about the Guidestars, or the wizards ...” He acquired an uncomfortable
expression.

“You still don’t quite believe it.”

“Rowan, there’s nothing for a wizard here,” he said, then
thought. “Nothing I know about,” he amended.

A small incongruous shuddering in the redgrass caught Rowan’s
attention: a handful of reeds, showing color out of pattern. She angled toward
it.

Reaching the spot, she parted the grass and at first saw
nothing, then saw a motionless irregular lump, brown, gray, and black. As she
watched, the object shifted jerkily, then teetered.

Fletcher was stooping beside her. “What is it?” It was a
mound, apparently consisting entirely of dead insects. Fletcher prodded it
with one shaggy boot. “Stuck together?” The mass shifted, then suddenly
trundled itself away, in a panicky amble. Fletcher laughed out loud,
recognizing it.

Rowan stepped into its path, causing it to halt. “Is it a
harvester? It seems too big.” It bulked to half the height of her knee.

“Greedy fellow!” Fletcher stooped down to address his admonishment
to the living insect buried beneath the dead. “Think you can get all that home?
Think you can
eat
it all?” The load tilted up; a tiny black-and-white
head turned glittering red eyes first on Rowan, then on Fletcher, then
vanished; the entire mass rotated in place; and the ambling escape resumed,
somewhat accelerated.

Fletcher noted the direction it took. “Ho, watch out,” he advised
the harvester. “That way’s the cessfield!”

“I should think he’d find plenty of bugs to harvest there,”
Rowan said, as the grass closed behind the clumsily fleeing insect; then she
abruptly realized that that was not the case. In retrospect, she could not
recall ever having seen any insects in the tribe’s waste area. “Insects, as
well?” she questioned herself, aloud. In the Outskirts, human presence seemed
to result in an inordinate amount of destruction. She turned to Fletcher.

She made to speak, then saw his head go up, like a listening
dog’s. He began to rise, stopped.

“What?” Rowan looked where he was looking, rising herself to
see over the grass tops.

The guard at ten had just completed a signal and had turned
away. Rowan prompted Fletcher again. “Motion on the veldt” was his distracted
reply.

“Outside the circles?”

The guard signaled outward, turned, then signaled inward.
Fletcher stood and looked back to camp for the reply. “‘Has it stopped?’” he
read, then turned to see the guard again. A pause. “ “

“That’s good,” Rowan said.

He knit his brows, watching. “No ... no, it isn’t ..” He
startled; his hand made a movement toward the sword hilt at his shoulder, then
paused.

“What?”

“The scout is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Maud. She may have dropped into hiding.” He stood quivering,
head high, all attention outward. Rowan looked around. Nothing visible had
changed.

The wind was from the north. A scout in hiding must move to
remain concealed, else the grass waves would break around her, showing her position
to possible enemies. Maud would be approaching the tribe.

In the windy quiet of the veldt, Rowan’s heart beat hard,
twice. She watched the guard at ten. There were no signals; he stood in
Fletcher’s pose, waiting. She watched Fletcher’s face and learned more. A dozen
possibilities were passing through his mind; his face showed each. His body
wanted to move.

He made a sudden, quiet sound of shock, then a choked cry.
His long arm flailed up to his sword.

“What is it?”

“Outer nine is down!”

“Down?”

“It’s an attack!” And he took two loping strides away.

Rowan moved without thinking and found herself back at his
side, her sword in hand. “Where do we go?”

“We—” He spared her a glance, then stopped so suddenly that
he stumbled; he recovered, and stood staring at her, aghast.

Rowan grabbed his free arm and pulled. It was like trying to
move a tree. “Come on! What do we do?”

He was a moment finding his voice. “Nothing.”

“We have to help!”

“I have to stay with you.” Then a motion back at camp caught
his eye, and he spun, throwing out one fist in helpless rage. “Outer ten is
down!”

Rowan looked back. The camp was unchanged, but for three warriors
approaching at a run. She turned to Fletcher. “If I can’t go to the outer
circle, then you go.” He looked down at her, speechless. “Go on, do what you
need to,” she reassured him. “I can take care of myself.”

His mouth worked twice, and he made a small sound, almost a
laugh. “I’m not here to protect you. I’m here to protect us—from you!”

Rowan said nothing. The approaching warriors passed, fanning
out into separate directions.

Fletcher drew a shuddering breath and expelled it with
difficulty. “You’ll have to sheathe your weapon,” he told Rowan. His eyes were
wild, his voice was forced flat, and he trembled from the need to run to his
comrades’ aid. “Either that, or give it to me.”

She looked at the sword in her hand, then looked up. “I don’t
understand.” But he had stopped watching her; he was reading the relay, and
she read its message mirrored on his face: that out on the veldt warriors were
fighting and failing, and that enemies were working their way inward, toward
the heart of the tribe. “What are they saying?”

He kept his gaze on the signals. “Lady, please don’t ask me
that.” He slipped into the form, and the deference, of an Inner Lander.

“Fletcher—”

“I’m not supposed to tell you!”

She forced him around, violently. “Bel is out there somewhere!”

“I know. That’s the problem.”

A scout had found signs of strangers. Bel had gone out to
talk to them. Now the tribe was under attack. “No,” Rowan said. “No, she didn’t
bring them here.”

“I know. I believe you.” He could not meet her eyes. “But it
doesn’t matter. Put your sword away.”

She did so. “If the enemy comes this far in,” she said
stiffly, “I hope you’ll tell me in time to defend my own life.”

“If they come this far in, I’m supposed to kill you myself.”

They had been walking most of the morning, sharing observations,
jokes, reminiscences. She stared up at him, appalled. “Would you actually do
it?”

His pose shattered. “God, I don’t know!” he cried out. “Don’t
ask me, Rowan, I don’t know!” And behind him the wavering ripples of redgrass
tops suddenly evolved three straight lines of motion, approaching fast.

“Eight, six, and five by you!” Rowan shouted, and shoved
past him, running toward the endpoint of the nearest line, drawing her weapon.
The line on the grass vanished.

She stopped. Shaking with urgency, she stood. She thought.
Wind from the north; if the enemy was moving, it was at the wind’s pace, in its
direction. Angling now to the right.

She shifted, ran. There were sounds of pursuit behind:
Fletcher, coming either to aid, or to carry out his duty.

Another line changed direction, doubling back toward her. A
trap. They thought she would go for the visible target.

Fletcher called to her, cursing in the name of his strange
god. There was a dip in the grass tops to her left: she spun, struck. The impact
of her blade on bone sent a shock through her arm. The approaching second line
arrived, and a figure burst from the redgrass, reeds chattering. She swept with
her sword, high: a tanglewood club fell to the ground. The enemy dove for it.
She struck down at his skull, sliced down his scalp, severed his neck.

She turned back to the first man. Her metal sword met metal
and wood. She had wounded him before; he fought with his body angled away, his
left side glittering red in the sunlight.

Nearby, Fletcher made a sound—a choked cry of battle. He was
about to kill someone. She wondered if it was herself.

Her adversary fought with vicious speed, but clumsily. He
gave her a dozen openings, recovering each time too quickly for her to use
them. Fletcher had not killed her yet. Someone else, then.

She disengaged, pivoted, took two steps, and struck again at
her enemy’s wounded side. He took the blow without a sound as her sword cut
deep into him. He writhed and made a desperate sweep at her own undefended
left, then changed direction to meet a second blade: Fletcher’s. Sword stopped
sword. He stood a moment so, with Fletcher’s blade against his blade, and Rowan’s
inside his chest. Death overtook any further moves.

Fletcher turned away as the man fell, scanning the veldt for
more action. Rowan pulled her sword from the corpse and did the same. Instinctively
they halved the duty and found themselves back-to-back.

“At four by you, I’ve got three of ours against two of
theirs, right by Sim’s tent. And one more approaching from eight.”

“I have five approaching at ten by me, some heavy engagement
at twelve, too far to see clearly.”

“Anyone heading for that five?”

“No.”

“Let’s go.”

The enemy was making no effort at concealment; that time was
past. Rowan did not know how to conceal herself like an Outskirter, did not
know if Fletcher had that skill. They approached in the open. The two nearest
adversaries first sped to flee, then wheeled about to engage.

Rowan’s man had a club he hefted high to swing down; she
struck beneath it, two-handed, waist-level, left to right, with as much speed
and force as she could muster.

He dodged back, she dodged aside; both blows missed. She
swung up to the left, grazed his head. He brought the club up, a weak move that
struck her right forearm. Her arms were thrown back, right hand free of her
hilt. With her left she swung down on the side of his neck. Her enemy choked,
spraying blood from mouth and wound, and collapsed.

Fletcher was fighting against a metal sword, with
difficulty. His enemy was half his size, twice his speed. Fletcher dodged back,
trying to use his longer reach and greater weight. His opponent escaped each
blow nimbly, recovered ferociously. Rowan moved to assist, but found a new
enemy; she downed him with a fast low stab to the abdomen, then took on the
next man who rose behind him.

He was less quick than the others; Rowan entered into Bel’s
drill. She slid her sword up his, twisted, pulled back, struck, slid, twisted.
He lost his rhythm for the briefest moment when he saw what was happening to
his weapon. She took the instant to gather force for one great blow that
shattered his sword at the root. He stepped back in shock, staring at the hilt.

He was smaller than Rowan, wiry, his brown hair short as a
woman’s. His clothing was a tattered fur motley, his legs bare. He looked up in
helpless horror. She drove her sword into his blue eyes, and his face became a
thing of blood and bone.

She turned toward the ringing sounds of Fletcher’s fight,
found his enemy with his back toward her. She struck below one shoulder. Ribs
broke; then she saw Fletcher’s point swing high, trailing an arc of blood as
the man fell back, his stomach and chest opened to his throat.

In the lull, the redgrass roared like surf. Fletcher and
Rowan exchanged one wild glance, went back-to-back beside the corpse.

She was facing the camp, he the veldt. “There’s something
going on in camp, I can’t tell what. Nothing between here and there.” He did
not reply. “Fletcher?” Silence. “Fletcher!” She turned to him.

He stood looking out. “Sweet Christ ...”

A troop of figures, at least a dozen: a full war band
approaching fast, with no other defenders between them and Rowan and Fletcher.
And beyond, the rippling grass showed a complexity of contrary motion, lines
too confused to be counted: a second wave moving below the grass tops, hard
behind the first.

“We’ll have to fall back,” she said, then knew that there
was no time. “We’ll have to stand.” They were two, alone. “Fletcher?” She
looked up at him.

He had not moved. He stood with his body slack in shock,
hilt held loose in his left hand, the point of his sword dropped to the ground,
forgotten. His right hand gripped the Christer symbol on its thong, fingers
white with strain. A dozen emotions crossed his face, each a separate variety
of terror; then Rowan saw them all vanish, fall into a pit behind Fletcher’s
eyes, and he stood expressionless, empty, blank.

“Fletcher!” His face was the same as when he thought of his
walkabout, of Mai, of death. “Fletcher, not now!” She pulled at his arm. He
resisted. She tried again, harder, and swung him around.

He looked at her with dead eyes, then looked at her again; Rowan
saw him see her twice. He saw, and Rowan felt herself being seen: a woman alone
under blue sky, standing on crushed redgrass, a corpse at her feet, blood on
her clothing and her sword, the home of Fletcher’s people behind her, the
enemies of Fletcher’s tribe approaching, now near

And it was in that direction that he turned, suddenly, and
if he had not released his cross it would have been flung into the redgrass by
the wild swing of his arm as he threw his body forward. He ran ten long strides
and was on the first enemy, spun with his sword double-handed at the end of his
long reach, and the first of the attackers dropped like a tree, the second fell
back spilling entrails, the third stood howling with a sword deep in his
abdomen