The Steerswoman's Road (76 page)

Halfway to the horizon, she saw a lone guard manning the inner
circle. The warrior did not watch or acknowledge her, but attended to his or
her own assignment.

Rowan opened the little bag cautiously. It contained small objects
among the ashes: bones, she assumed, likely finger bones that had not had time
or enough heat to incinerate. Through the bag’s sides the ashes were cool, the
bones slightly warm.

The steerswoman held the bag in both hands with the opening
away from her, and put her back to the wind.

She passed the bag across the air; a fine white mist blew
from it, caught by the breeze, vanishing instantly. “Maud ...” she began, and
tried to remember who Maud had been. Rowan had never met the scout, had only
glimpsed her once, in the distance. She had no face, no form in Rowan’s mind. A
stranger.

Rowan moved her hands again. “Brinsdotter ...” She looked
among remembered faces for a woman, a mertutial or older warrior, named Brin.
She found none. There was no living mother to weep for this warrior child.

A third time: “Haviva ...” It was necessary to upend the bag
to empty it completely. The small bones fell from the opening, disappearing
among the chattering grass at Rowan’s feet. Rowan knew of no other person in Kammeryn’s
tribe who carried the line name Haviva.

The steerswoman felt cold, empty. She looked about the endless
wilderness: at the shimmering blades, at the cloud-crowded evening sky, and at
the camp itself, lost on the veldt among its own shadows. The only sound was
the voice of the grass.

Then she heard words. “Who is Maud?” She had spoken the
words herself.

And she answered herself: Maud was no one; Maud was no face,
no voice, no person; Maud was a road stopped before its destination. Maud,
Brinsdotter, Haviva was three names, white mist, bones on the ground.

The steerswoman was tired by death. She did not know how to
mourn enough for all the dead. But here was only one dead, one person gone,
sent into the wind by Rowan’s own hands.

Rowan felt she could mourn for one person; but she could not
mourn for Maud.

She dropped the woolen bag, stepped over it, and walked back
to camp.

She could not rest that night.

Eventually she rose and threaded her way in darkness through
the sleeping warriors: past Bel, Averryl, Fletcher, who stirred uneasily in his
sleep; past Chai, Cassander, Ria, and at last Kree in her position by the
entrance. The chief sat up, instantly awake, asking softly, “Is that Rowan?”

How Kree had identified her in the dark Rowan had no idea. “Yes,”
the steerswoman said. “I can’t sleep. I need to walk.”

“The circles are undermanned. There may be more Face People
out there.”

“I’ll stay in camp.”

Outside, the night was cool and clear. Rowan walked down the
alley between Kree’s tent and Orranyn’s toward the center of camp. The tents
were faint shapes, difficult to discern; their black star-shadows seemed to
hold more substance than they themselves did. Rowan passed in and out of those
shadows, half expecting to feel their edges on her skin, like the touch of the
water’s surface on a rising swimmer’s face.

The fire pit was cold, with the ancient, deserted smell of dead
ashes. In the open center of the camp, Rowan looked up. Above were scores of
bright stars; but she did not link them into their patterns, or give them their
names. She left them solitary, each alone in the cold air. Among them, nearer
to the zenith than ever she had seen it, stood the Eastern Guidestar. A wizards’
thing, hung in the sky, she thought, and tried to be angry for the fact. She
failed. Timekeeper, traveler’s friend, she tried again; the terms had no
meaning. Her beacon, urging her eastward forever, toward the place where its
own fallen mate lay dead in the wilderness; the matter now seemed abstract,
illusory.

As she watched, the earth’s shadow overtook the Guidestar,
and it vanished from sight.

Between two tents, in a patch of sky toward the edge of
camp, five little stars, a canted parallelogram with a dipped tail: the tiny
constellation of the Dolphin, caught in a joyous leap from the horizon into
the sky. And because it was a dolphin, because it was of the sea that she
loved, and because it named itself to her without her asking, she walked toward
it.

From the edge of camp to the hills in the distance, the
redgrass, bleached silver-gray by darkness, wavered and rippled like a sea that
reflected more starlight than shone upon it. The night rattled sweetly with the
voices of the grass. Stretched along the horizon, the Milky Way was a cold and
glorious banner of light. Rowan rested her eyes on the sight.

During a lull in the light breeze, another sound came to
her; not far to her left, someone was weeping, alone. Rowan turned to walk
away, then turned back, because the voice was a child’s.

Rowan found the child crouched among a stack of trains: a
small form, ghost-pale in starlight. “Who is that?” A tangle of dark hair above
a blurred, shadowy face. “Sithy?” The girl tried to compose her sobs into
words, but failed.

The steerswoman came closer, hesitant. She had never learned
how to comfort the sorrows of children. Stooping down, she put one hand on the
small shoulder, then withdrew it instantly. The touch was faintly shocking; the
child had seemed insubstantial before, only her voice real.

Sithy was clutching something to her chest: large, square,
its woven pattern visible despite the dimness. It was a box, such as Outskirters
kept by their beds to store small possessions, but too large to belong to a
child. “Sithy,” Rowan said again.

The girl’s voice resolved into a word; but it was only her
own name. “Sith ...” Inside the box, something shifted quietly from a high
corner to a low one.

With nothing else to say, Rowan said, “Yes ...”

The sobbing ceased, held back for a long moment by sheer
force of will; then words came from the girl, half-choked, half-shouted. “Sith,
Maudsdotter, Haviva!”

Solitary Maud had had one small connection with the living
tribe.

The weeping resumed, but silent, Sithy’s little body
shuddering violently. Rowan raised her head and looked past the child, at nothing.
“I see,” she said at last. And she sat down in the star-shadows beside the
child, and remained until the sun rose.

“Zo gives it as a brook with a sharp bend around a big rock
at four, a field of tanglebrush at twelve, three big hills in a line at seven,
and the tribe back somewhere at nine.”

“This with Zo facing north?”

“So she says.”

“Good.” Rowan took a sip of broth, blew on her chilled
fingers, and took up her pen and calipers.

The tribe had been ten days on the move again, in the
routine with which Rowan had become so familiar. By day: hours of travel,
carrying packs, dragging trains, the changing of guard on the circles, the
voices of the flock rising over the hiss and rattle of the veldt. By night:
close quarters, in the warmth of buried coals rising from below the carpet.
With the weather growing colder, Rowan had become an accepted fixture at each
evening’s fireside, using its warmth to offset the chill of sitting still,
updating her logbook, amending her charts from the information relayed from the
wide-ranging scouts.

She found the landmarks mentioned, triangulated from them,
and noted Zo’s position. “And Quinnan?”

The second relay squinted in thought, his old face becoming
a wild mass of wrinkled skin, bright eyes glinting. “Facing east, he’s got the
land growing flat to the horizon at two, a brook running straight at his feet
from ten to four, and at eight, three hills in a line.”

The steerswoman repeated the procedure and found the second
scout’s location. From both sets of information, she calculated the location
of the tribe itself, considered the significance of her results, then leaned
back in deep satisfaction. “That’s it then.” She began to organize her
materials. “Thank you both, and send my thanks to Zo and Quinnan at the next
report. Is Kammeryn in his tent, do you know?”

“Consulting with the flockmasters, yes.”

“And Bel?”

“Helping Jaffry guard the children; they’re clearing lichen-towers.”

“I’ll tell her first, then.”

Both relays were interested. “Tell what?”

Rowan slipped her charts into their case and capped the end.
“It’s time we were leaving the tribe.”

“At its next move,” Rowan told Bel as they watched the four children
destroying lichen-towers, “the tribe will swing northeast. We should start
moving southeast from this point. Now, or within the next few d
_ays.
^,,

“We’ll need to prepare our supplies. Dried food, light, and
probably as much as we can carry. How many days to the Guidestar?”

Hearing it said in words, Rowan felt her happiness transform
into a thrill of anticipation. The fallen Guidestar was near; this would be the
last leg of the travelers’ journey. “Traveling hard, three weeks at the best.
But we can’t count on that; we have to skirt that swamp. And there’s at least
one large river to cross. If we can’t find a ford, we’ll need to build a raft.”
Rowan had tested and found that tanglewood did float. “And Outskirts weather
isn’t trustworthy. Call it five weeks.”

Bel winced. “Short rations. Hardbread. Dried meat.”

“A small price to pay.”

The eldest child, Dane, emitted a warning cry. Creaking and
crackling, a fifteen-foot lichen-tower arced across the sky. The wind of its
approach blew the redgrass flat beneath it as it fell, changing the grass’s
constant rattle into a sudden roar, then into abrupt silence an instant before
the crash. The tower settled, twice: once as its outer surface touched the
ground, again when that surface collapsed to the accompaniment of a thousand
tiny inner snaps. The breeze became damp and faintly sweet.

“What’s that word Dane is shouting?”

“‘Timber.’ It’s what you say when you knock down something
tall.”

“I’ve never heard it used in that way.”

Two people approached from camp, one of them dragging an
empty train: Fletcher, easily identifiable from a distance by his height and
his lope. When they arrived, the second person proved to be Parandys, come to
collect lichen-tower pulp to make blue dye. “I hear you’ll be leaving us,” he
commented, as the children attacked a fallen tower with their knives, competing
to excavate the largest spine-free lump.

“The news has traveled fast,” Rowan replied. “I was hoping
to tell Kammeryn first.”

“Well, he already knows. He’s set Chess to making your
travel provisions.” Parandys examined one of Hari’s offerings, chided the boy
for leaving a spine in place, and stumped over to study the tower himself.

Fletcher cleared his throat tentatively. “I asked Kree if I
could go along with you.”

Bel was less than pleased. “Why? I thought you didn’t
believe in the fallen Guidestar.”

“Maybe that’s why. If I saw it, I’d have to believe.” He
gave a shrug, a gesture atypically small. “Kree said no.”

“I think that’s for the best,” Rowan said, and on Fletcher’s
long face disappointment became so evident that she continued, apologetically, “because
Bel and I are used to traveling together. We understand each other’s
limitations, and our natural paces are well matched. It’s going to be hard
travel, and we’ll do it faster with only the two of us.”

“I know,” he admitted. “I just wish I could help somehow.
But Kree said you don’t need any help. She’s right, I expect.” He quietly
watched the children at work for some moments. “But, look,” he began, then
seemed to think better of speaking, then decided to speak after all. “But look,
Rowan, when you come back, Bel’s going to leave you, isn’t she? To talk to the
other tribes?”

Bel replied before the steerswoman could. “That’s right.”
She studied Fletcher. “But I’ll bring her to a place she can reach her home
from, first.”

“Well ...” He spread his hands, but without his usual
flamboyance. “Suppose I do that?”

Bel did not quite approve. “You?”

“Well, me and Averryl, if you like. That way he and I would
have each other for company, coming back to the tribe.”

Rowan disliked the idea of parting with Bel at all, but recognized
its necessity. She had hoped to delay their farewells as long as possible.
However, she had come to respect Fletcher’s skills, as unlikely and unexpected
they might seem. “You would be free to begin spreading your message sooner,”
she pointed out to Bel.

“I was going to tell it to any tribe we meet, on our way to
the Inner Lands. It won’t delay anything if I go with you. And Jaffry wants to
learn the poem, as well. He’ll try to tell it to any tribe Kammeryn’s meets.
Word will be moving in two directions.”

Fletcher’s astonishment was extreme, and he became more
natural. “Jaffry? On the other hand, what a good idea. It’ll train him to say
more than one sentence in a day.” Then he thought. “Teach it to Averryl, as
well. He’ll do anything you or Rowan ask of him. Jaffry will spread the story
east, Averryl and I will take it west on our way out, and you can go north.”

Rowan became impressed. “That will cover a lot of territory.”

Bel was still reluctant, but began to find the idea
interesting. She looked up at Rowan. “You decide.”

Rowan preferred not to. “No, you. I don’t want to lose you;
but it’s to your own mission that this will make a difference.”

Bel knit her brows, annoyed. “Not very much.”

Exasperated, Fletcher threw up his hands. “Will one of you
please decide to decide?”

Both women laughed; but afterward, Bel continued to wait.

“I decide,” Rowan finally announced, “to think more about
it. I’ll tell you after we see the Guidestar. I don’t yet know what I’ll learn
there; perhaps it will change my plans altogether.”

Fletcher was satisfied. “Can’t say fairer.”