When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior's Path

by Catherine M. Wilson

  I had forgotten about Namet.

  “I’m sorry for your grief, Mother,” I told her.

  “Thank you, child,” she said.

  She too looked as if she had not yet been to bed.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked her.

  She shook her head.

  I turned to Maara. “Sparrow has a fever.”

  “I can fend for myself today,” she said. “Do what you can for her.”

  I made Sparrow a bowl of soft porridge and milk, something she could swallow easily, and brewed her a tea of willow bark and rose hips. When I returned to her room, she was awake. She lay in the bed staring up at the ceiling.

  “She died,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “She died.”

  This time it was a whisper. It was as if, by saying so, she might convince herself that it was true.

  I sat down beside her and handed her the bowl of tea. It seemed such a small thing to offer her.

  § § §

  I looked in on Sparrow as often as I could that day. When I found her sleeping, I didn’t wake her. To let her sleep was the kindest thing I could do for her. Whenever I found her awake, I brought her soft food and tea and sat with her a while. Although she didn’t want to talk, she seemed to take some comfort from my presence. I stroked her hair and rubbed her back until she slept again.

  Maara slept for several hours that morning. She had been up all night with Namet, listening to her stories of her only child. She would say no more to me than that about it.

  While Maara was sleeping, I went to the companions’ loft. I hoped I hadn’t missed hearing about the battle, but I shouldn’t have worried. The companions who had been there were delighted to tell the story over and over again to anyone who cared to listen.

  “The snow began three days ago.”

  “I thought it was two,” I said.

  “No. Three.”

  “It began day before yesterday here.”

  “Well, it began three days ago at the ravine,” said Taia.

  Taia was an apprentice. In another year, she would be a warrior. Her green eyes and copper hair set her apart from the others even more than her height, although she was the tallest woman in Merin’s house.

  “Vintel had our warriors strung out up and down the riverbank for over a mile,” she said, “but we waited all day for nothing. They never came.”

  “You should have heard the fights that night around the campfires,” said Bec with glee. Bec loved a fight.

  “Some said there was no need to freeze there by the river for another night,” said Taia, “that the northerners weren’t coming. Others said we should wait and see.”

  “If the strange one had been there,” said Bec, “they would have had the truth out of her one way or the other.”

  It was the first time I had heard my warrior called ‘the strange one.’ I was indignant. “They had the truth out of her already.”

  Bec brushed a shock of thick, black hair out of her eyes and gave me a scornful look. “Well, we know that now, but how were we to know it then?”

  “At any rate,” Taia said, “the next morning Vintel sent everyone back to their places to wait. We couldn’t see a thing. The mist was so thick you could have walked off a cliff before you knew it. My warrior and I were hidden in a copse not ten paces from the river, and we couldn’t see where the water met the shore.”

  “We heard the sound of the oars long before we saw the boats,” said Bec.

  “And someone almost made a bad mistake.”

  Taia glared at her, and Bec’s face turned red, whether from embarrassment or anger I couldn’t tell.

  “We thought they’d seen us,” she said. “The first boat landed next to us. We heard them talking to one another, though we couldn’t make out a word of what they said. They walked right past us. I was sure they’d seen us, and my warrior gave the curlew’s call. That was our signal. The northerners must have heard it, but they went by us in the mist.”

  “Vintel thought they would send just one boat at first,” Taia said, “to scout our side of the river and let the others know it was safe to cross. Vintel was right. After they’d been ashore a while, we heard them call to their friends across the river. By the time the next boat arrived, Vintel and Eramet had taken everyone in the first boat prisoner.”

  “We captured six of them,” Gnata boasted. “There were only four of us, two warriors and two companions, and we captured six of them.”

  Gnata was younger than I and had always seemed to me to be rather frail. It surprised me that her warrior had taken her along.

  “How were they to know there were only four of you?” said Taia. “The mist was so thick that a score of warriors could have been right behind you.”

  “But there weren’t. We captured six of them all by ourselves.”

  “How did you take them without a fight?” I asked Taia.

  “We waited for them to get out of their boats,” she replied. “Before they could send the boats back across the river, we walked out of the mist and told them to surrender their swords.”

  “They did too,” said Bec smugly. “They had no stomach for a fight.”

  “They had our swords at their necks before they knew what was happening,” Taia said. “What else could they do?”

  “They were too cowardly to fight,” said Bec.

  Taia turned on her. “Give them an even chance and see for yourself how cowardly they are. I doubt you’d stand long against any of them.”

  Bec scowled. If Taia had been smaller, Bec might have challenged her, but she thought better of it and held her tongue.

  Little by little they pieced together the story for me. I couldn’t imagine how the northerners had carried boats with them. I was thinking of the boats made from hollowed logs used by the fisher folk who fished with nets on the calmer stretches of the river. Taia explained that the boats were made of oxhide stretched over a framework of willow branches. The hides they could have carried with them, and willows grew everywhere along the riverbank.

  After our warriors had captured a dozen boats, no more came. From time to time they heard voices calling from the other side of the river. None of the prisoners dared answer. Then one of them broke free of his captors and ran to the water’s edge. Before he could scramble into one of the boats and make his escape, our warriors pursued him and struck him down.

  Finally I asked them how it happened that Eramet was wounded. I couldn’t help being curious, but I didn’t like to ask Sparrow about it. They were all quiet for a moment. The reminder of a life lost spoiled their delight in the story.

  “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 a
s 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 Sparrow 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 mat
ter 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.