Orain had wanted her - at least while he still believed her to be a boy. And . . . deliberately facing something she had not even clearly understood at the time . . . she had wanted him. Although, when it was happening, she had not realized what her own strange feelings meant. Even so, she would rather have had Orain as a friend than a lover; she had been willing to accept him as a lover, when she thought he knew her a woman and wanted her, in order to keep him as a friend. But had she never seriously thought of any man in that way? Certainly none of the boys she had grown up knowing, her brothers' friends - she could no more envision them as lovers than as husbands, and a husband was the last thing she would have wanted.
I think I could have married one like Alderic. He spoke to me as a human being, not only as his friend Darren's silly little sister. Nor was he the kind of man who would feel he must control me every moment, fearing I would fly away like an untamed hawk if he let go of the jesses for a moment.
Not that I wanted him as a husband, so much. But perhaps I could make up my mind to marry if the husband had first been my friend.
All during that day and the next, whenever she took her eyes from the trail, she could see, at the furthest range of her vision, that Preciosa still hovered there, and feel the precarious thread of communication from the hawk, strange divided sight, seeing the trail under her feet, aware of her own body in the saddle, and yet some indefinable part of her flying free with the hawk, far above the land and hillside slopes. Jandria had told her that they were travelling now in what was called he Kilghard Hills.
They were not like her home mountains - bleak and hare with great rock cliffs and poor soil of which every arable scrap must be carefully reclaimed and put under cultivation for food; and even less were they like the broad and fertile Plains of Valeron which they had crossed enroute to Hali. These were hills, high and steep and with great deserted tracts of wild country set with virgin forest and sometimes overgrown in thick brush-tangles so that they must cut their way through or, sometimes, retrace their steps tediously and go round. But there was no lack of hunting. Sometimes, before sunset, drowsing in her saddle, Romilly would feel something of her fly free with the hawk, stoop down and feel, sharing with Preciosa, the startle of the victim, the quick killing stroke and the burst of fresh blood in her own veins. . . . Yet every time it came freshly to her as a new experience, uniquely satisfying.
Once, she thought it was the sixth day of their journey, she was flying in mind with the hawk when her horse stepped into a mudrabbit-burrow and stumbled, fell; lay thrashing and screaming, and Romilly, thrown clear of the stirrups, lay gasping, bruised and jarred to the bone. By the time she was conscious enough to sit up, Jandria had dismounted and was helping her to rise.
In the name of Zandru's frozen hells, where was your mind, you who are so good a horseman, not to see that burrow?" she demanded crossly. Romilly, shocked by the horse's screams, went to kneel by his side. His eyes were red, his mouth flecked with the foam of agony, and, quickly sliding into rapport with him, she felt the tearing pain in her own leg, and saw the bare, white, shattered bone protruding through the skin. There was nothing to be done; weeping with horror and grief, she fumbled at her belt for her knife and swiftly found where the great artery was under the flesh; she thrust with one fast, deep stroke. A final, convulsive struggle, a moment of deathly pain and fear - then it was quiet, all around her stunned and quiet, and the horse, with his fear, was simply gone, gone from her, leaving her empty and cold.
Stunned, fumbling, Romilly wiped her knife on a clump of. grass and put it again into its sheath. She could not look up and meet Jandria's eyes. Her damned laran had cost the horse his life, for had she been attending to her riding, she would surely have seen the burrow....
Jandria said, at last, "Was it necessary?"
"Yes." Romilly did not elaborate. Jandria did not have laran enough to understand, and there was no reason to burden her with all Romilly's own feelings of guilt, the rage at her own Gift which had tempted her to forget the horse beneath her in straining for the hawk above. Swallowing hard against the tears still rising and making a lump in her throat, she cursed the Gift. "I am sorry, Janni. I - I should have been more careful-"
Jandria sighed. "I was not reproaching you, chiya; it is ill fortune, that is all. For here we are shy of a horse in the deepest part of the hills, and I had hoped we could reach Serrais by tomorrow's nightfall."
"Is that where we are going? And why?"
"I did not tell you, in case we were followed; what you did not know, you could not tell-"
So Jandria does not trust me. Well enough; it seems I am not trustworthy . . . certainly my poor horse did not find me so.... yet she protested. "I would not betray you-"
Gently, Jandria said, "I never thought of that, love. I meant only what you did not know could not be wrung from you by torture, or ravished from your mind by a leronis armed with one of their starstones. They could find out quickly that you knew nothing. But now you would know in a day or two, anyhow."
She knelt beside Romilly and began to tug at the saddle straps. "You can ride one of the pack chervines; they cannot travel at the speed of your horse, but we can put both the packs on the back of the other. We will travel less swiftly by chervine-pace than we would with two good horses, but it can't be helped."
She began to off-load the nearer of the chervines, saw Romilly standing stone-still and snapped, "Come and help me with this."
Romilly was staring at the dead horse. Insects were already beginning to move in the clotted blood around the smashed leg. "Can't we bury him?"
Jandria shook her head. "No time, no tools. Leave him to feed the wild things." At Romilly's look of shock she said gently, "Dear child, I know what your horse meant to you-"
No you don't, Romilly thought fiercely, you never could.
"Do you think it matters even a little to him whether his body is left to feed the other wild things, or whether he has a funeral fit for a Hastur-lord? He is not in his body any more."
Romilly swallowed hard. "I know it makes sense when you say it like that, but-" she broke off, gulping. Jandria laid a gentle hand on her arm.
"There are beasts in this forest who depend on the bodies of the dead things for their food. Must they go hungry, Romy? This is only sentiment You feel no pain when your hawk kills for her food."
To Romilly's sore senses it seemed that Jandria was taunting her with her inattention, that she was away somewhere sharing the kill with her hawk and thus leading her horse to its death. She wrenched her arm free of Jandria's and said bitterly, "I don't have any choice, do I? A ves ordres, mestra," and began wrenching at the pack-loads of the other chervine. In her mind, aching, accusing, was the memory of the sentry-birds for whom she had spied out carrion. Now her horse would fall prey to the kyorebni, and perhaps that was as it should be, but she felt she could not bear to see it, knowing her own carelessness had cost the faithful creature his life.
As if for comfort she looked into the sky, but Preciosa was nowhere in sight.
Perhaps she too has left me...
Toward nightfall the land changed; the green fields gave way to sandy plateaus, and the roads were hard-baked clay. The chervines were forest and hill creatures, and walked laggingly, little rivulets of sweat tracing vertical lines down their thick coats. Romilly wiped her forehead with her sleeve and took off her thick cloak and tied it in a bundle on her saddle. The sun was stronger here, it seemed, and blazed with cloudless intensity from a clear, pale sky. Twilight was beginning to fall when Jandria pointed.
"There lies Serrais," she said, "and the hostel of the Sisterhood where we shall sleep tonight, and perhaps for a span of tendays. I shall be glad to sleep in a proper bed again - won't you?"
Romilly agreed, but secretly she was sorry that the long journey was coming to an end. She had grown fond of Jandria, and the thought of living in a houseful of strange women really frightened her. Furthermore, she supposed, now she was in a regular dwelling-p
lace of the Sisterhood, she would be required to go back to the frightening lessons in swordplay and unarmed combat, and she dreaded it.
Well, she had chosen to swear to the Sisterhood, she must do her best in that place in life to which she had been guided by providence. Bearer of Burdens, help me to bear mine then as you bear the world's weight! And then she felt surprised at herself. She could not remember, before this, thinking much about prayer, and now it seemed that she was forever turning to such little prayers. I wonder, is this what the Book of Burdens calls Dhe shaya, a grace of God, or is it only a kind of weakness, a sense born of loneliness, that I have nowhere else to turn? Jandria was her friend, she thought, but she would not share her fears, Janni enjoyed the life of the Sisterhood and was not terrified at the very thought of wars and battles; such things as the village blighted with bonewater-dust enraged and horrified her, but they did not fill her with that kind of terror; Janni seemed quite free of that kind of personal fear!
They rode into the city when dusk had already fallen, and made their way through the strange wide street, the old houses of bleached stone that shone with pallid luminescence in the moonlight. Romilly was almost asleep in her saddle, trusting the path to the steady plodding pace of her chervine. She roused up a little when Jandria stopped before a great arched gate with a rope and bell hanging from it, and pulled on it. Far away inside, she heard the sound, and after a time a drowsy voice inquired, "Who is it?"
"Two women of the Sisterhood come from Hali," Janni called, "Jandria, Swordswoman, and Romilly, apprentice Swordswoman, oathbound and seeking shelter here."
The door creaked open, and a woman peered out into the street
"Come in, Sisters," she said. "Lead the beasts into the stable there, you can throw them some fodder if you wish. We are all at supper." She pointed to a stable inside the enclosure, and they dismounted, leading the tired animals into the barn. Romilly blinked when she saw the place by the faint lanternlight; it was not large, but in a couple of loose-boxes at the back she saw crowded horses, some of the finest horses she had ever seen. What was this place, and why did they crowd so many horses into so small a stable? She felt full of questions, but was too shy to speak any of them. She put her chervine into one of the smaller stalls, led Jandria's horse into another, then shouldered her pack and followed the strange woman into the house.
There was a good smell of fresh-baked bread, and the spicy, unfamiliar smells of some kind of cooking food. In a long room just off the hall where they left their packs, at a couple of long tables, what looked like four or five dozen women were crowded together, eating soup out of wooden bowls, and there was such a noise of rattling bowls and crockery, so much shouting conversation from one table to another and from one end to the other of the dining tables that Romilly involuntarily flinched - after the silence of the trails through forest and desert, the noise was almost deafening.
"There are a couple of seats down there," said the woman who had admitted them. "I am Tina; after supper I will take you to the housemother and she can find you beds somewhere, but we are a little crowded, as you can see; they have quartered half the Sisterhood upon us here, it seems, though I must say they're good about sending army rations here to feed them. Otherwise we'd all be living on last year's nuts! You can go and sit down and eat - you must be wanting it after that long ride."
It did not seem that there was any room at all at the table she indicated, but Jandria managed to find a place where the crowding was a little less intense, and by dint of some good-natured pushing and squeezing, they managed to wriggle into seats on the benches, and a woman, making the rounds of the tables with a jug and ladle, poured some soup into their bowls and indicated a couple of cut loaves of bread. Romilly pulled her knife from her belt and sawed off a couple of hunks, and the girl squeezed in next to her - a good-natured smiling woman with freckles and dark hair tied back at her waist -shoved a pot of fruit spread at her. "Butter's short just now, but this goes pretty good on your bread. Leave the spoon in the jar."
The spread tasted like spiced apples, boiled down to a paste. The soup was filled with unidentifiable chunks of meat and strange vegetables, but Romilly was hungry and ate without really caring what it was made of.
As she finished her soup, the woman next to her said, "My name is Ysabet; most people call me Betta. I came here from the Tendara hostel. And you?"
"We were in Hali, and before that, in Caer Donn," Romilly said, and Betta's eyes widened. "Where the king fled? Did you see his army there?"
Romilly nodded, remembering Orain and a banner in a strange street.
"I heard Carolin was camped north of Serrais," Betta said, "and that they will march, before snow falls, on Hali again. The camp is full of rumors, but this one is stronger than most. What is your skill?"
Romilly shook her head. "Nothing special. I train horses and sometimes hawks, and I have handled sentry-birds."
Betta said, "They told us that an expert in horse-training was to come from Hali! Why, you must be the one, then, unless it is your friend there - what is her name?"
"She is Jandria," Romilly said, and Betta's eyes widened.
"Lady Jandria! Why, I have heard of her, if it is the same one, they said she is cousin to Carolin himself - I know we are not supposed to think of rank, but yes, I see she has red hair and a look of the Hasturs - well, they said they would send a Swordswoman from Hali, and a woman adept at horse-training. We will need it - did you see all the horses in the stable? And there are as many more in the paddock, and they were taken as a levy from the Alton country in the Kilghard Hills . . . and now they are to be broken for Carolin's armies, so that the Sisterhood will ride to battle for Carolin, our true king . . ." Then she looked at Romilly suspiciously. "You are for Carolin, are you not?"
"I have ridden from before daylight till after dark, today and for the last seven days," Romilly said, "By now I hardly know my own name, let alone that of the king." It seemed very hot in the room, and she could hardly keep her eyes open. But then, remembering that they had fled from the possibility of being followed by Lyondri Hastur, she added, "Yes; we are for Carolin."
"As I said, half the Sisterhood seems to be quartered on us here," Betta said, "and there are so many rumors in this place. Two nights ago we had women sleeping on the tables in here, and even under them, even though we who live here in the hostel slept two to a bed and gave up the emptied beds to the newcomers."
"I have slept on the ground often enough;" Romilly said, "I can sleep somewhere on the floor." At least this was out of the rain, and under a roof.
"Oh, I am sure that for the Lady Jandria they can find a bed somewhere," Betta said. "Are you her lover?"
Romilly was too tired and confused even to know for certain what Betta meant. "No, no, certainly not." Although, she supposed, the question was reasonable. Why would a woman seek the life of a Swordswoman, when she could just as well marry? There had been a time or two, since she had come among the Sisterhood, when she had begun to wonder if her constant rejection of the idea of marriage meant that at heart she was a lover of women. She felt no particular revulsion at the thought, but no particular attraction to it either. Fond as she had grown of Jandria during these days, it would never have occurred to her to seek her out as she had sought Orain. But now her attention had been forcibly drawn to the subject, she wondered again. Is this why I have never really wanted it man, and even with Orain, it was a matter of liking and kindness, not any real desire?
I am too tired to think clearly about anything, let alone anything as important as that! But she knew she must consider it some day, especially if her life was to be spent among the Sisterhood.
One by one, or in little groups of three and four, the women of the Sisterhood were leaving the table and going to seek their various beds. Blanket rolls stowed in a corner of the big room were unrolled on the floor, with some good-natured bickering for places near the log-fire; Tina came and found them and led them to a room with three beds, two of wh
ich were already occupied.
"You can sleep there," she told them, "And the Housemother wants to see you, Lady Jandria."
Janni said to Romilly, "Go to bed and sleep; I will be along later." Romilly was so tired that, although she told herself it would be difficult to sleep in a room with four other women, some of whom were certain to snore, she was fast asleep even before her head hit the pillow, and did not remember, afterward, at what hour Jandria had come in.
But the next morning, when they were dressing, she said to Jandria, "They seemed to know who you were, and to be expecting us. How could you send a message that would come faster than we did ourselves?"
Jandria looked up, a stocking in her hand. She said, "There is a leronis of my acquaintance with Carolin's army; this is why I dared not fall into the hands of Lyondri. I know too much. I sent word, and asked that news be sent to the hostel of the Sisterhood; so that they were ready to admit us. Do you really think they would open their doors after dark in a city full of soldiers, and readying for war?"
It seemed to Romilly that every day she learned something new about Jandria. So she had laran too? Laran of that curious kind which could link to send messages over the trackless miles? She felt shy and confused again - could Janni read what she was thinking, know all her rebellion, her fears? She kept her mind away from the implications of that.
"If I am to break horses here," she said, "I suppose I should go at once to the stables and begin."
Jandria laughed. "I think there will be time to have breakfast first," she said, "The Housemother told me to sleep as long as I could after the long ride; and I think we have slept long enough that we can find someplace to eat in the dining-room without kicking the sleepers off tables. That was the only reason I did not want to sleep on the floor there - I knew the cooks and servers for this tenday would come in and rouse us at daybreak so they could get to their breakfast kettles!"
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