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

by Catherine M. Wilson

  The Lady frowned, but she waited for me to finish what I had to say.

  “I know the value of what Vintel offers me, but you have praised my loyalty, and my loyalty is to Maara, for as long as she wants me.”

  “And if she doesn’t want you?”

  It was a cruel question and one I couldn’t answer.

  “If she cares for you at all, she will want you to do what’s best for you.”

  Everything the Lady said was true. Everything she said was reasonable. The right thing for me to do was plain for anyone to see, but my heart refused to see it.

  “What is best for you is, I think, best for her as well,” she said.

  My heart fell.

  “Maara has spoken of finding a place where she belongs, just as you belong to us. Maybe this year, maybe next, she’ll want to leave us. It would be wrong of you to hold her here.”

  Then I knew I was defeated. The Lady felt the fight go out of me, and she was wise. She didn’t press me any further. She left me to make the decision for myself.

  “Take some time to think,” she said. “Speak with your warrior and with Vintel. I trust that when you come to a better understanding, you will do what’s best for everyone.”

  § § §

  I went back to Maara’s room and found her asleep. I reached my hand out to awaken her, but just before I touched her, I thought better of it. I was troubled and afraid, and more than anything I wanted to be comforted. I wanted Maara to listen to my troubles and reassure me that all would be well. While that might have made me feel a little better, it would not help my situation. What I needed to do was think, and consider what, if anything, I could do about it.

  I went downstairs and sat down on the hearthstone in the great hall. A few people were still lingering there. Some were talking quietly together. Others nodded over mugs of hot cider. No one paid any attention to me.

  I saw what was going to happen. I would be apprenticed to Vintel. Maara might stay with us, but when I was no longer her companion, the tie between us would be broken, whether she stayed in Merin’s house or not. The companions would all envy me. As Vintel was first among the warriors, so Vintel’s apprentice would be first among her peers. In due time I would be made a warrior, and I might aspire to be the Lady’s right hand someday, as Vintel was now. It was everything I thought I wanted. That night it meant nothing to me.

  Tears filled my eyes. I was ashamed for anyone to see me crying, so I retreated into the friendly darkness of the kitchen. I thought I was being quiet, until I heard a whisper in the dark.

  “Has Rumbles had her kittens or is someone crying?”

  “Someone is crying,” I said.

  I felt my way over to Gnith’s place on the hearth and sat down beside her.

  “Who is it?” Gnith asked.

  “Tamras,” I said.

  Gnith’s bony fingers found my hand and held it in a grip that was very strong for one so frail.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Yes, Mother,” I said. “I’m Tamras, Tamnet’s daughter.”

  “You stood before the council.”

  “Yes.” I was amazed that she remembered me.

  “Have you lost your sweetheart?”

  “No, Mother.” Although a few tears still trickled down my face, I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “Hmm,” she said. “You must not have a sweetheart. Not so funny to lose a sweetheart.”

  “No, Mother.”

  “No sweetheart.”

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “A young girl should have a sweetheart.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

  “Did someone die?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “No sweetheart and no one died?”

  “No, Mother.”

  “Perhaps you are crying because you have no sweetheart.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “No,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  The laughter in her voice told me that she had been teasing me away from my tears.

  “There is something troubling me,” I said.

  “What would that be?”

  “The Lady wants to apprentice me to someone, but I don’t want to be her apprentice.”

  “Then say no.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “The Lady isn’t making it easy for me.”

  “I wonder why,” she said.

  “She wants me to be bound to one of our own people.”

  “Ah,” said Gnith. “You are the stranger’s gage.”

  I had never heard the word before. “What is a gage?”

  “A gage is like a pledge,” she said. “Something a person would leave with another as a guarantee. Of her word. Of a promise or the payment of a debt.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “That changes things.”

  “It does?”

  “Oh, yes. That changes things.”

  Gnith handed me a lamp. “Bring some light,” she said.

  Not far away, embers glowed on one of the open hearths. I lit the lamp and brought it back to Gnith.

  “You don’t want to leave your stranger, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Does she want to keep you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must ask her.” Gnith shook her finger at me. “That’s important. Make sure that you are what she wants. As she is what you want. Will you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I will.”

  Gnith’s eyes sparkled in the lamplight, and her mouth widened in a gleeful grin. “I think I can help you,” she said. “Yes, yes, I think I can.”

  She motioned to me to lean closer to her. “Listen,” she whispered. “The Lady can use every one of us as she will. That is her right. Just as her care of us is her duty. You understand?”

  I nodded.

  “But sometimes when she uses us, she may incur a debt.”

  I didn’t understand.

  “You stood in your warrior’s place,” said Gnith. “That was a gift to your warrior. But you were also a pledge of safety to the Lady. An extraordinary service it was that you did for her. I think you might ask a gift.”

  “A gift?” I said. “What gift?”

  “What is it that you want? What is it you were crying about just now? What do you want to happen? What do you want not to happen?”

  I thought about it for a minute. “I don’t want to be Vintel’s apprentice. I want to be Maara’s apprentice, but I don’t know if she’ll accept me. Still, I would rather be her companion than anyone’s apprentice.”

  Gnith chuckled. “You’re a strange girl, Tamras, Tamnet’s daughter. You don’t want what you ought to want, but you know what it is you do want. I suppose that counts for something.”

  “What is it that I ought to want, Mother?”

  “Not for me to say,” she said. “People want what they want. Sometimes they get it. More often they don’t. And if they do get it, they may be sorry.”

  Gnith took my hand again and looked into my eyes. “Make sure of what you want, and when you get it, don’t complain.”

  § § §

  I was awake at first light, and by the time I had dressed myself, Maara was also awake. I felt her eyes on me as I pulled on my heavy boots and my warmest tunic.

  “I need to speak with you,” I said.

  She blinked sleepily at me. “All right.”

  “Now,” I said.

  “All right.” She sat up in her bed and looked at me.

  “Not here.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  I helped her dress. Then I took her cloak from where it lay covering the foot of her bed and put it over her shoulders.

  “Where are we going?” she asked me.

  “Outside.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  She followed me down the stairs and through the kitchen. We went out the back door and through the kitc
hen yard. I didn’t want to run into anyone, especially the Lady or Vintel, before I had a chance to talk with Maara.

  The air was cold, and voices carry in the cold. I wanted to get well away from the house, where no one would overhear us. There were few places where we could talk unheard and unobserved, so I took Maara down to the oak grove. The sun was low in the sky, and the long shadows of the trees stretched out over the snow.

  The oak grove was a good choice. The ancient trees reassured me. They made a strong circle around us. I turned to face my warrior.

  “There’s something I need to say to you,” I said. Even though we were alone, we were in a sacred place, and I kept my voice low.

  She met my eyes and waited. She looked as if she expected to hear bad news.

  “The Lady wants to apprentice me to Vintel.”

  I watched her, to see if she would show me how she felt about it. She looked away. “That would be a good thing for you,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She looked back at me, surprised. “I thought that was obvious.”

  “It seems to be obvious to everyone but me.”

  The night before, I did as Gnith had told me. I thought long about what I wanted and why I wanted it. Because of that, and perhaps because of where we were, my words had a power they’d never had before.

  “I’m going to tell you what I want,” I said. “Then you must tell me what it is that you want.”

  Her face closed a bit. She waited.

  “I want you to accept me as your apprentice.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. I thought I saw a look of pain cross her face, but it vanished so quickly I couldn’t be sure.

  “The Lady would never give her consent.”

  “I’m telling you what I want,” I said. “Right now, the only thing that matters is what I want. And what you want.”

  Something new came into her eyes. I couldn’t name it. It was more than curiosity, more than surprise. A window had opened, and for a moment she was unguarded.

  “I want to be your apprentice,” I said. “I understand that someday you may want to leave this place for a place where you will feel more at home, and if you do, I will release you from your obligation to me. If you’re still unwilling to take on the obligations of apprenticeship, then I would rather remain your companion than be apprenticed to Vintel, or to anyone else.

  “Last night I asked myself why I feel this way. Many would see my choice as foolish. I realize that. But what I want to be has more to do with the things you’ve taught me that were not about swordplay or camp craft or any of the things that any other warrior could have taught me. I don’t have the words to tell you what those things are.”

  I cast about for a way to make her understand. “You’ve taught me how to build a warrior’s body. You’ve taught me how a warrior handles weapons and how a warrior walks in dangerous places. Any of the warriors here could teach me those things, but you have shown me a warrior’s heart, and every warrior’s heart is different. If I ever do become a warrior, I want to have a warrior’s heart like yours.”

  Time stopped. Silence fell over us. We looked at each other, and I knew that she had heard me.

  “I’ve told you what I want,” I said. “Now I want you to tell me what you want. Do you know? What is it that you want?”

  “What do I want?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to go home,” she said. “I can’t. So I don’t suppose it matters where I go.”

  As much as her answer surprised me, I saw in it a way to speak to her.

  “What would home be like?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then how would you know if you found it?”

  “Home would feel different. Home would feel like…”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know what home feels like to me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Merin’s house is my home,” I said, “as much as my mother’s house is my home, but sometimes I feel as if I don’t belong here. Sometimes I feel as if no one here will ever see me as I am. They all see Tamnet’s daughter, who has a place within the circle. The threads of my life are tangled in the web of all the other lives here, and sometimes I want to tease them out and weave a pattern of my own, rather than fit myself into a pattern made by others.

  “But on midwinter’s night, I was glad to have a place within the circle. I felt comforted and safe. I knew the songs we sang and the stories we told and how we would greet the sun in the morning. Some things in Merin’s house are different from the way things were at home, but mostly this place feels familiar. There’s something comforting about things that are familiar.”

  Maara had been listening carefully to everything I said. “What does any of that have to do with me?”

  “If you take me as your apprentice,” I told her, “you will begin to tangle the threads of your life with the threads of my life and with the web of all these other lives. In time this place will become familiar to you, and the day will come when no one will remember that you were once a stranger here.”

  Suddenly Maara smiled. “When did you grow such a golden tongue? I think you could talk the birds down out of the trees this morning.”

  I smiled back. “Have I persuaded you?”

  The smile left her eyes. “What difference does it make? The Lady has other plans for you.”

  “It may make no difference at all,” I said, “but I intend to ask the Lady for what I want, and before I do, I need your consent.”

  Maara frowned. “Have you cast an enchantment over the Lady? She seems to do everything you ask of her. I don’t doubt that it’s because she sees the wisdom in what you ask, but sometimes I believe things happen for you just because you want them to.”

  She took a step closer to me and put her hands on my shoulders. She looked deep into my eyes, as the Lady had looked into my eyes when I first entered her house. This time I saw no visions. This time I saw only my warrior’s face, as familiar to me as the palms of my hands, and in her eyes I saw a promise.

  “You have my consent,” she said. “You would honor me if you would become my apprentice.”

  § § §

  As we walked back up the hill, I thought about Maara’s words. I want to go home. Such a simple wish. I remembered how eager I had been to get away from home, but my home was still there waiting for me, would always be there waiting for me, while Maara might walk from one end of the world to the other and never find what she was seeking.

  I felt Maara’s eyes on me. “Are you having second thoughts?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I was thinking about you.” I stopped and faced her. “You gave me what I wanted. I wish I could give you what you want.”

  “You gave me something I didn’t know I wanted,” she replied. “No one else has ever asked me what I wanted.”

  16

  Vintel’s Apprentice

  Sparrow was eating her breakfast in the kitchen. I sat down beside her, leaned close to her ear, and said, “Do you want to be Vintel’s apprentice?”

  Sparrow scowled at me. “Didn’t your mother teach you how to say good morning?” She sounded out of sorts.

  “Good morning,” I said. “Do you want to be Vintel’s apprentice?”

  “Too late,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Vintel says that you will be her new apprentice.”

  “Vintel is wrong.”

  “She’s already spoken about it.”

  “To you?”

  “To everyone.”

  “I haven’t accepted her.”

  “Apparently she thinks you will.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “Especially not now.”

  I thought I understood what Vintel was doing, or perhaps it was the Lady’s idea. Once something had been spoken of publicly, it was a thing that was accomplished in everybody’s mind. In order to undo it, I would have to go against the ideas
of everyone in the household. It would put me in a bad light, and it would also shame Vintel. If Vintel had taken it upon herself to speak without my consent, it was a shame she deserved to bear, but not if the Lady had assured her that I would do what she wanted me to do.

  “Answer my question,” I said to Sparrow.

  “About being Vintel’s apprentice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would she accept me?”

  “Let me worry about that,” I said. “Just tell me if it’s what you want.”

  “Of course,” said Sparrow. “It would be an honor.”

  “So they tell me.”

  “You’re a fool to turn her down.”

  “They tell me that too.”

  When I started to get up, Sparrow caught my wrist and held me there. She looked around to make sure we couldn’t be overheard.

  “You be careful how you cross Vintel,” she said.

  But now I was angry. “Vintel had best be careful how she crosses me.”

  “By the Mother, hush,” said Sparrow, “or I’ll find your little body lying in a snowbank.”

  “Why would you bind yourself to someone who would do that?”

  Sparrow thought for a minute before she spoke.

  “I know Vintel,” she said. “I’ve known her since I came to Merin’s house, and I knew of her from Eramet. She’s a skillful warrior and a powerful leader. She is strong-willed and must have her own way in things, and people don’t always like Vintel’s ways, but every girl here would put up with her failings for the sake of learning from her.”

  “Is she such a fine teacher?”

  “She made Eramet a fine warrior, and she’s loyal to her friends, and generous.” Sparrow regarded me intently. “I want you to understand what you’re turning down. If she’s pleased with you, Vintel will be your ally and your friend. She’s from a house as great as this one. She can always go back to her place there, taking with her anyone she chooses. She can offer you an important place, either here in Merin’s house or in her own. She can be difficult too, although that shouldn’t bother you. Your warrior is worse on her good days than Vintel is on her bad ones.”

  I started to tell Sparrow that my warrior wasn’t at all difficult, but she put her fingers on my lips to stop me.

  “I know,” she said. “You’re used to her now, but when I see her glower in a corner and refuse to speak with you, I wonder how you put up with her.”