When Women Were Warriors Book I

by Catherine M. Wilson

  “Two boats came across close together,” Taia said. “Vintel and Eramet took the first one. They didn’t see the other so close behind it, and there was an archer in that boat. We heard the sound of the arrow as it left the bow. Then Eramet fell.”

  “Where was Sparrow?” I asked.

  “Right beside Eramet,” said Taia.

  “Sparrow caught Eramet as she fell,” said Bec, “or Eramet might have drowned, even in the shallow water by the shore.”

  No one else was eager now to add to the story. Only Bec still relished the telling.

  “Vintel waded into the water up to her waist,” she said. “The archer shot half a dozen arrows at her before she reached his boat, but she caught them all on her shield. She put her sword through the oxhide cover of the boat. When it capsized, she seized the archer and dragged him ashore.”

  Bec stopped and looked around at the others to make sure she had their attention. Gnata’s eyes slid away from her, as if by not looking she could avoid hearing what Bec would say next.

  Bec lowered her voice to a whisper. “Then Vintel struck off his hand.”

  The thought of it made me queasy.

  “Where is Sparrow?” Taia asked me.

  “She’s feverish with winter sickness. She’s in Eramet’s room, asleep.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “As all right as she can be.”

  They all knew, as I did, that Sparrow loved Eramet.

  “How many of the northerners were killed?” I asked.

  “Only the one, that I know of,” Taia said. “The one who tried to run.”

  “What about the man who lost his hand?”

  “Still alive, I suppose.”

  I thought about the pain that man must be suffering and wondered if the northerners had brought with them any medicines to ease it.

  “Did any get away?” I asked.

  “Vintel didn’t think so,” said Taia. “By midafternoon the mist lifted enough that we could search up and down the riverbank for several miles. There was no sign that anyone else had come ashore.”

  “Will they try again?” I asked.

  “They might,” said Taia. “A score of our warriors are still at the ravine. When the river starts to freeze, they’ll come back home.”

  “What if the northerners walk across the ice?”

  Several of the girls laughed.

  “When the lakes at home freeze,” I said, “we can travel over the ice more easily than we could walk through the snowdrifts on land.”

  Taia was patient with me. “Mountain lakes are calm,” she said, “and the water freezes smooth and solid. The river is always moving. Only the water along the shore freezes. The swifter water in the middle breaks off chunks of ice from the edges and carries them along. Even the solid ice is always moving. It opens and closes and the cracks can lie unseen under the snow. Once the river starts to freeze, no one can cross it.”

  I thought of the ragged men who had dared to cross that river.

  “What will happen to the prisoners?” I asked.

  Taia shrugged. “That’s the Lady’s business.”

  “If there had been a fight, we wouldn’t have the trouble of keeping so many,” said Bec.

  “If there had been a fight,” Taia replied, “we would mourn more than Eramet.” She turned back to me. “We might ransom them back to their people, I suppose.”

  “Their people have nothing. That’s why they came here.”

  “We could sell them as slaves,” said Bec.

  “We could,” Taia said, “but then we’d have to feed them all winter before we could get rid of them.”

  “The Lady will think of something,” said Bec.

  The fate of the prisoners held less interest for them than the part each girl had played in their capture. I stayed and listened to their stories for a while longer. The more I heard, the more relieved I was that I had stayed at home. At first the thought of warriors from the north invading Merin’s land had frightened me, but once I’d seen them, they looked so thin and ragged that I was moved with pity for them. Even the death of Eramet couldn’t make me hate them. I felt troubled in my spirit for what they had to risk just to live. Why couldn’t the Mother keep us all?

  Late that afternoon, the household assembled for Eramet’s burial. The healer closed her wound, so that she would be whole again. Namet and Vintel prepared her body. They washed her and wrapped her in a shroud of white woolen cloth. Then they tied her onto a small sled, so that we wouldn’t have to carry a litter through the snow. Vintel sent me up to Eramet’s room to get what personal belongings I could find. Sparrow was awake.

  “What would Eramet want to have with her?” I asked.

  “Are they taking her for burial?”

  I nodded.

  “Where are my clothes?” She started to get out of bed.

  I had burned the bloody clothes she came home in. The rest of her things were in the companions’ loft, but I had no intention of letting her get dressed.

  “You can’t go outside,” I told her. “You have a fever. You’ll catch your death.”

  Sparrow paid no attention to me. She wrapped herself in a blanket and reached for a tunic of Eramet’s that hung from a peg on the wall.

  “If you go down, Vintel will only send you back to bed.”

  She stood still for a moment, undecided, then left the tunic where it was and opened the chest that held Eramet’s belongings. She took from it the things Eramet would need, wrapped them all in a piece of linen cloth, and handed them to me.

  “Will you take my gift for her?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  She took a token from around her neck. It was a dark stone, caught in a copper cage that hung on a leather thong. The stone held a flash of fire deep inside it. It was the only thing of value Sparrow owned. She had worn it the whole time I’d known her.

  Before I took it from her, I asked her, “Are you sure?”

  “If I could,” she said, “I would give you my heart to lay beside her.”

  Because I had brought Sparrow’s gift, Vintel let me go with her and a few others into the barrow. There was hardly room for a handful of people inside, so the rest of the household waited by the entrance.

  I had been inside the barrow once before, for Maerel’s burial. Maerel’s body had been put into the large, central chamber with many others, but Eramet was a warrior, and she would lie by herself in a small chamber with her weapons and her grave goods.

  From the outside, the barrow looked like any other hill. Only the ditch around it and the stone that sealed the entrance marked it as a burial place. The walls of the passageways inside were lined with roughly cut stone, and great slabs of stone lay across them to keep the roof from falling in. The air inside was warm, compared to the wintry air outside, but it was heavy and hard to breathe. We carried oil lamps with us. Torches would not stay lit inside a barrow. Torchlight is too bright for the eyes of the dead.

  Vintel and Laris, Taia’s warrior, carried Eramet into the barrow and laid her in the place they had prepared for her. The rest of us gathered at the entrance to the chamber. Vintel laid Eramet’s sword and shield beside her. Whatever her grave gift was, she must already have given it. One by one, the rest of us gave our gifts. I laid Sparrow’s token on Eramet’s breast, over her heart. Namet was the last to give her gift. She knelt by her child’s body and began to sing. It was a cradle song.

  13. Sparrow

  Late that night, after I had seen my warrior to bed, I went to say good night to Sparrow. Her fever was gone. Her grief was not, but she was no longer inconsolable. She was wearing a sleeping shirt that was too big for her. Maara had put her naked into bed. The shirt must have been Eramet’s.

  “Will it upset you if I talk about it?” Sparrow asked me.

  “No,” I said. “Won’t it upset you?”

  She shook her head. “I want to.”

  I sat at the foot of the bed and wrapped myself in a blanket, while Sparro
w snuggled down under the covers. After the snowfall, the weather had turned very cold.

  “Did you hear about the battle?” she asked me.

  I nodded. “The companions talk of nothing else.”

  “I was carrying her shield. I had it slung over my shoulder. If I had been between Eramet and the other boat, she would still be alive.”

  “If you had been between Eramet and the other boat,” I said, “the archer would have waited until you were not or chosen you as his target.”

  She looked up at me, surprised. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Don’t make it worse than it is.”

  I was thinking of my mother, who sometimes blamed herself for the death of her sisters. She would say to me, “If only I had been stronger,” or, “If only I had been more skillful.” She meant that if she had been a warrior, if she had been beside them on the battlefield, they might not have died.

  Then I would remind her that they might all have died, and neither my sister nor I would have been born.

  Sparrow wiped her eyes with a corner of her blanket.

  “I know,” she said. “There’s no putting spilled blood back.”

  I had heard my grandmother say the same thing many times. Now it was no longer just a figure of speech to me. No matter how many ways one might think of for things to have happened differently, nothing could change what had already happened.

  I thought of the blood on Sparrow’s clothing, the clothing I had burned. I thought of Sparrow’s words to me at the harvest festival, when she first showed me her love for Eramet, and of her words to me earlier that day, that she would have given me her heart to lay beside her warrior. I thought of the people I loved, of my mother and my sister and my warrior, and the shadow of grief fell upon my own heart. It was a grief that waited for me, as grief waits for everyone who loves. I was in no hurry for it to find me. I regarded Sparrow with a new compassion. While she would live on to love someone else, she would always carry this grief with her.

  I didn’t know what else to say to her. I saw that her hair was in a wild tangle.

  “Shall I comb your hair?” I asked her.

  She touched it absentmindedly and nodded. She sat up and reached into the chest by the bed for a comb.

  “This was Eramet’s,” she said. “Do you think Eramet would mind if I kept some of her things?”

  “Of course not,” I replied. “She would want you to have anything of hers you wished to keep.”

  “Everything will be different now,” she said.

  I took the comb from her and had her sit up, to make room for me behind her at the head of the bed. Her hair was so tangled that I had to work the knots loose with my fingers before I could get the comb through it. Though I had no words that might help to ease her pain, I believe my touch did comfort her. When I finished with her hair, I put my arms around her. She leaned back against me, and I held her for a while. I felt her breathing change. She was crying.

  I began to rock her and to make the little comforting noises my mother used to make to me when something had hurt me. She stiffened a little, as she tried not to give in to her tears. Then she turned in my arms and put her arms around my neck and cried. Some of her pain must have spilled into my own heart, because an ache began in my breast as I held her, and I took comfort from her body in my arms, even as I tried to comfort her.

  I held her and rocked her and stroked her back until she was quiet. Then I worried that she was getting cold.

  “Get under the covers,” I said. I lifted up the blankets for her.

  She did as I told her, but when I started to get up, she took hold of my hand. “Stay with me,” she said.

  I got into the bed with her, and she came into my arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right.”

  “I miss her.”

  “I know.”

  I stroked her back lightly with the tips of my fingers and felt her relax against me.

  “That feels good,” she said.

  She lay so quietly in my arms that after a few minutes I thought she had fallen asleep, but when I tried to shift her weight off of me so that I could get up, she reached for me, and her fingers brushed my cheek.

  “Stay,” she whispered.

  She pressed her body against me. I felt her breath on the side of my neck just before her lips touched me there. Her fingers stroked my face, then pressed against my cheek to turn my face toward her. Her thumb brushed my lips, and her lips found the corner of my mouth.

  A sweet ache began at the top of my spine and spread over the back of my head and down my neck. Her touch on my face made my skin tingle. When her fingers drifted down the side of my neck, I heard myself take a quick breath. It took me a moment to understand what she was doing, and when I did, my body had already taken me beyond a boundary I didn’t know existed until then. Her lips found mine. This time it was not the light and teasing kiss she had given me at the harvest festival. This kiss had fire in it. It caught the tinder around my heart. The aching grief that lingered there began to burn.

  I must have responded. I know I didn’t pull away. The tenderness in her touch made me want to cry. Every disappointment, every fear that had cast its shadow over me, she drove away. Only the feelings she created in me mattered. I felt her lips on me, and her hands, and every place she touched began to burn, until my body moved with her, wanting more of the sweet fire.

  She began to rock against me. She slipped her leg between my legs and pressed against me until I felt the fire begin there too. Nothing about this feeling was familiar.

  “Touch me,” she whispered.

  She took my hand in hers and brought it under her shirt, between her legs. When I touched her, she sighed softly and opened to me. I had never touched anyone but myself like that, but she was not made much differently from the way I was made, and she showed me what she needed by the way she moved. As I touched her, I felt the echoes of the pleasure I gave her in my own body. At last her body stiffened, and she put her hand over mine and pressed my fingers hard against her. Even when it was over, she kept my hand where it was for a while. Then she reached for my belt.

  I almost stopped her. If I could comfort Sparrow’s heart by comforting her body, I was glad to do it, but I remembered that not long before, she had lain in this bed with Eramet, and I could never be Eramet to her.

  Sparrow felt me hesitate. “Please. Let me touch you.”

  “I’m not the one you want.”

  “You’re my friend,” she said. “Eramet is dead. Tonight you are the one I want.”

  I let her slip my trousers down. She touched me gently, too gently, but when I tried to press myself against her hand, she pulled away from me.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry,” she whispered into my ear.

  I heard the smile in her voice. Her breath on my face sent a shiver of pleasure down my spine.

  Sparrow understood pleasure. She knew it was my first time, and she was careful with me. If she wished for Eramet, I never knew it. She took her time. She gave me time to get used to feelings that were new to me. She took me to the brink and let me fall, willing to let me find my own way, in my own time. With Sparrow I was safe, as I would be with no one else, because I didn’t love her, and she didn’t love me.

  Afterwards we lay quietly together. My feelings surprised me. As a child, I had played with other children the games all children play when they begin to discover their own bodies, but I had never had a sweetheart. I’d always thought that what Sparrow and I had given to each other was something only lovers shared. Now I knew differently. While Sparrow’s grief still awaited her, as my loneliness awaited me, for a little while we found respite in each other’s arms.

  We woke early. Sparrow gave me a shy smile.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “What for?”

  “For being my friend.”

  The room was freezing, and neither of us was in a hurry to get ou
t of bed. We snuggled down under the covers and huddled together like children.

  “Today will be better,” Sparrow said.

  I waited to see if she would tell me what she meant, but she was already thinking of something else.

  “Did I ever tell you how I became Eramet’s apprentice?” she asked me.

  “No.”

  “She stole me, right out from under the nose of my mistress.” Sparrow chuckled at the memory.

  “Your mistress?”

  “When I was a slave in Arnet’s house.”

  She said it so casually that I thought I must have misunderstood her.

  “What?”

  “When I was a slave,” she said. She saw my confusion. “You didn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “I thought everyone knew. I’m the only person here without a name.”

  I had thought Sparrow was a childhood name, the kind of name that sticks to a person no matter how many names she may have been born with or earned for herself afterwards.

  “My mother was a slave,” she said. “I was born in Arnet’s house.”

  “Who is Arnet?”

  “Namet’s older sister. Eramet and I were children together.”

  I was still trying to make sense of what she’d just told me. Sparrow misunderstood my silence.

  “I thought you knew.” A chill had crept into her voice, and she turned away from me. “I should have known that Tamras, Tamnet’s daughter, would not befriend a slave.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve never known anyone who was a slave, but it makes no difference to me. You’re my friend now.”

  Sparrow wouldn’t look at me. Her face had the same closed expression I remembered from the day I arrived in Merin’s house, when I first told her my name. I fumbled under the covers until I found her hand and held it tight in both of mine.

  “Forgive a backward country girl her ignorance,” I said.

  In spite of herself, Sparrow let a smile lift one corner of her mouth. “Not so backward anymore.”

  I felt myself blush. “Tell me about Eramet,” I said.