The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  “That’s close,” Rowan replied. The others present appeared skeptical. “But,” she added, holding up one finger, “if in fact you traveled that far, you might not see one, after all.” She reached down and smoothed the dust over one of the secret Guidestars. “One has fallen.”

  More faces, pale in firelight, turned toward Rowan, then turned among themselves in puzzlement, and some argument.

  “They can’t fall,” one warrior woman loudly replied to the man beside her. “They can’t fall—they’re stars.”

  “But if they did,” he protested, appalled by the idea.

  “They’re not stars, they’re objects.” Rowan had to raise her voice. “They’re things. Stars move across the sky at night. The Guidestars seem not to move, unless you move yourself beneath them. They are different.”

  “They are stars.” The arguing woman turned toward her. She had a narrow face, sharp as a hatchet. “They’re special stars, there’s only two, and they haven’t fallen. They can’t.”

  The healer was watching Rowan in fascination. She was tempted to speak directly to him, to offer her information only to that old, quick mind behind the sunburned wrinkles; but her duties were not just to one person.

  She changed her method. Speaking to the woman, she said, “Why only two?”

  “Two is all we need.”

  “Need for what?”

  “Direction. To tell where we’re going.”

  “To say that they’re for something is to say that they exist for your benefit.”

  “Why else?”

  “And that they were put there.”

  “Yes .. :,

  “By whom?”

  “By gods.”

  Rowan leaned back. “They were put there. By wizards, and for their use.” A certain category of simple spells, Corvus had told her, required the presence of at least one Guidestar. Certain larger spells, he had speculated, probably required the presence of all of them.

  “By wizards? Wizard things, up in the sky?” The idea was beyond credibility. “No. There’s no wizards out here.”

  “Olin’s not far,” Hanlys pointed out, jerking his head to indicate direction: west. The limits of Olin’s holding, always vague, might come as near as the western bank of Greyriver.

  “We’re Outskirters,” the woman stressed. “Wizards leave the Outskirts alone. We’re not their goats, like Inner Lands folk.”

  A part of Rowan resented the metaphor; but as a steerswoman, she conceded its truth. “You’re fortunate in that.” She considered the diagram in the dirt, then wiped it clean with a sweep of her hand. “And without meaning any insult, it doesn’t much matter if you believe me or not. I know where the Guidestar has fallen, and that’s where I’m going.”

  The healer studied the blank space as if the marks were still there. “Long trip, just to look at something,” he commented.

  She smiled at him. “Long trips are the best kind.”

  Across the fire, Rowan noticed Bel standing among her own small audience, speaking to a female warrior while four men listened with expressions respectively dubious, bored, scornful, and annoyed. Some comment of Bel’s made the young woman look at her in sudden surprise, then laugh and—to Rowan’s astonishment—pat Bel’s shoulder as if comforting a child. Bel stiffened, eyes cold.

  With a gesture, Rowan caught her glance and beckoned. Bel was not a person to take insult casually, and Rowan thought it best to distract her as quickly as possible. Bel turned her glare unaltered on the steers-woman, but approached, edging her way through the seated warriors. The healer departed, with some reluctance, at a gesture from the seyoh.

  Bel seated herself beside Hanlys, glumly. “What?”

  Rowan addressed both Outskirters. “As I understand it, the assistance we gave the wounded warriors, and the fact that Jermyn willingly asked for my name, give us the right to assistance in turn. This tribe is going east, Bel; I assume you want us to travel with it?”

  “Until they choose another direction, yes,” Bel said, looking with sidelong dislike at the seyoh.

  Her unspoken opinion was wasted on him. He rubbed his sharp nose. “And you’re welcome to. If nothing else, you’re both amusing.”

  Bel gathered herself to retort, but Rowan spoke first. “Sometimes I think that half of the Inner Landers’ interest in steerswomen is the diversion we supply,” she admitted.

  Bel quieted herself. “And these people know the lay of the land,”

  she added, reluctantly. “You might ask for information to add to your empty maps, the parts we won’t see ourselves.”

  Hanlys replied to Rowan’s questioning glance. “Of course. Can’t hurt us any. Let’s do it now.”

  Rowan rose, intending to fetch her pack, but the seyoh waved her to sit, then caught the attention of the serving woman, whose duties were now finished. “Ho, you! The steerswoman’s gear!” The woman delivered a flat glare, then wandered off.

  Rowan noticed the healer standing to one side near a particularly tattered tent, conversing with a pair of elderly persons of indeterminate gender. All three wore ill-fitting clothing, ancient, barely serviceable, and unclean, save in the healer’s case. The steerswoman recollected from Bel’s coaching that there existed two categories of Outskirters within a tribe: warriors, who defended the tribe and its flock and conducted raids; and mertutials, who did not fight, but attended to matters of daily maintenance—cooking, cleaning, various kinds of service. These then, with the woman fetching Rowan’s gear, and two others tending the sleeping children in their tent, comprised this tribe’s mertutials. Bel had not mentioned that the work carried so little prestige.

  Hanlys turned back to Rowan. “How far are you going?”

  “Dust Ridge.”

  He shook his shaggy head. “Never heard of it.”

  “Perhaps four months’ travel, eastward,” Rowan told him, “assuming we meet with few difficulties.”

  “A long way. I don’t know anyone’s been that far.”

  “I do,” Bel put in. “My father. And I’ve been most of the way myself.”

  Behind Bel, three warriors adjusted their positions and began gaming with a pair of dice. Jermyn, who had been seated nearby, rose to leave, but they cajoled him and beckoned. He hesitated, then joined the game with a studied gaiety that did not reflect in his eyes.

  The seyoh spoke to Bel, expressing his opinion of the ways of her father’s land. “A hard life, and hard travels so far out.” He shook his head. “Things needn’t be so difficult.”

  Bel leaned forward, brows knit. “A hard life is good. It keeps a warrior strong.”

  “Ha. It’s fighting makes a warrior strong. And good fight deserves good reward.” He tapped the ground between them, where the diagram had been obscured, emphasizing his point. “What do you gain when you battle out there, hey? A few more goats, is all, and the right to run them in the direction you want. Till you meet another tribe won’t let you by, or wants a few more stinking goats themselves.”

  Bel’s answer was cold. “The herd is life.”

  He laughed and spread his hands. “Not here.”

  The mertutial woman reappeared, and Rowan took the pack with an unthinking “Thank you,” at which Hanlys grunted amusement. Bel shot him a glance, but said nothing.

  They spent an hour bent over the charts, as the seyoh helped the steerswoman amend them. His knowledge, supplemented by occasional comments by other warriors, included eastward areas to the distance of perhaps eighty miles. Rowan had been under the impression that Outskirter tribes generally covered a wider range than this, but she forbore to mention it, not wishing to prompt a possibly insulting response from Bel. Rowan also marked areas to the north and south that she would not be crossing; the more complete she could make her maps, the better for future travelers. She became engrossed in her work.

  Eventually Hanlys noted, “Your friend doesn’t seem very happy.”

  With some difficulty, Rowan pulled her attention from the chart and saw that Bel ha
d walked away from the center of the camp to stand facing out into the darkness, alone. As Rowan watched, Bel began walking slowly to the left, her face invisible. “No,” Rowan agreed, puzzled. “I should think she would be. She’s going home.” She took a moment to wipe the ink from her fingers with a rag from her kit, her eyes still on the lonely figure.

  The seyoh made a sound of resignation. “Well, it’s no surprise. She’s not comfortable with us. She’s different.” He shrugged, in a vaguely eastward direction. “Probably doesn’t understand our ways. Her people are far from civilization.” He caught Rowan’s eye and winced apology at speaking against her friend. “They’re just a bit stiff-necked out there, old-fashioned, see. They can’t help it. Try not to hold it against her; I don’t. We’ve accepted you both, and you both have our hospitality. That’s Outskirter honor.” And he nodded his head with careful dignity.

  “I see.” Rowan did not believe him; Bel was anything but stiff-necked. Clearly something was bothering her that she did not feel free to articulate.

  Rowan considered. She wrapped her pen and inkstone in the rag, rolled her charts, and returned them to their case. “Excuse me,” she said to the seyoh, and went to find her friend.

  In the dimness at the edge of camp, Bel was a collection of gray, shifting shadows. Rowan found her more by hearing than sight: the crunch of gravel beneath the Outskirter’s boots, the creak of leather and the soft hush of her breathing.

  She was walking the limits of the camp, slowly, moving quietly. Rowan heard the hiss of grass as the breeze swept in from the meadow, the shivering rattle when it met the forest’s edge, and sensed Bel’s attention shifting at small inconsistencies of sound: a clattering as a dead twig tumbled from the high branches, the fluttering pass of a trio of bats, the rustle and snap as some tiny predator found tinier prey.

  “What are you doing?”

  Bel was disgruntled. “What no one else is doing.”

  Rowan added up the clues of her behavior. “You’re standing guard.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The others don’t seem concerned.”

  “They’re fools.”

  The steerswoman fell in with her friend’s careful pacing. “How long will you keep this up?”

  “Until they put that fire out.”

  Goblins were attracted by fire at night, Bel had often told the steerswoman. Rowan looked back at the camp. The flickering light was blocked from sight by two low canvas tents. Its faint glow was visible only high above, where it eerily outlined the branches of the overhanging trees.

  Bel had also said that there were no trees in the Outskirts; they were not, then, beyond the admittedly vague limits of the Inner Lands. “I don’t think goblins are common in these parts,” Rowan said.

  “They don’t have to be common to be here.”

  They continued their slow pacing of the perimeter. The sounds shifted from those of wind and open meadow to the night sounds of forest, cool and close. Voices drifted from the camp: a single person, speaking in declamatory style, others laughing. “You don’t like this tribe,” Rowan observed.

  Bel’s voice was tight. “No.”

  They were completely alone in the darkness. “Why not?”

  Away from the camp, Bel’s answer came immediately. “They’re not good Outskirters. And it’ll do no good to tell them so.”

  “You’re the only Outskirter I know well,” Rowan observed. Underfoot, the gravel changed to soft pine needles. “It’s hard for me to look at you and know how much is unique, how much common to all Outskirters. What’s wrong with these people?”

  “What’s wrong with these people is your people. The Inner Lands. This tribe has been weakened by them. Things are too easy here.” Bel’s posture shifted: a slight drop of one shoulder, then the other, the brief weaving motion Bel often made when thinking. “I wouldn’t mind if they decided to live completely like Inner Landers, in farms and towns and such, because that’s a useful way, too, even though it’s weak. But what they’ve done is taken some Inner Lands ways, and lost some of the true ways ...” She turned abruptly and, slapping Rowan’s arm once, pointed back to the camp. “Look. Where is their herd, where are their handicrafts? Raiding is fair; if you can’t defend your goods, you don’t deserve them. But if you only live by preying on the weak, then you’re weaker than your prey. These people would die without the Inner Lands nearby. They’re not good Outskirters, just bandits.”

  “I see ..”

  “And Hanlys is a warrior, did you notice?” Her voice was outraged. “Yes ..”

  “Well, that’s wrong. You choose a seyoh from the mertutials. If your leader knows only how to fight people, and not how to fight the land, or hunger, or disease ...” She made a sound: a harsh breath released through her teeth, a sound of disgust. “This is what you get. These people are stealing your goods, while they steal our name. I wish a troop of goblins would come down on them.”

  Rowan sought the right word. “They’re ... degenerated?”

  “They’re primitive.”

  Through gaps in the ring of tents, Rowan studied the crowd of warriors around the campfire: men and women clean though unkempt, rough-mannered but friendly and lively. She thought she could see part of Bel in them, but did not mention it.

  But then she thought of the raiders’ disinterest in the death of Jermyn’s wife, of their abandonment of her remains to scavenging animals, and she began to see that these Outskirters did lack something that Bel possessed in full: perhaps a depth of heart, or breadth of understanding.

  “Do you want to leave them?” After taking so much trouble to win their assistance, it seemed unlikely.

  “No,” Bel confirmed. “But don’t expect me to tell them that I like them.”

  “I won’t.” The very idea distressed Rowan. “The tribe is moving in the morning,” she pointed out. “If you stand guard all night you won’t travel well.”

  “That’s true.” The Outskirter stopped herself abruptly, then let out an amused “Ha!” She looked up at the steerswoman, shadowed eyes glinting starlight. “If we sleep near the center of the camp, then any goblins that come will get at these fools first, and we’ll have plenty of warning.”

  Rowan found herself laughing, despite the possibly grim vision. “There is that,” she conceded.

  Bel clapped her shoulder. “Let’s do it. They can take their chances.”

  They returned to the center of the camp and found entertainment in progress. A huge red-haired warrior was pacing by the fire, singing a humorous song in a booming voice. Rowan and Bel took seats beside the offending fire.

  The song told of an Outskirter scout who seduced a farmer’s daughter, inspiring her to steal her father’s possessions, one by one, as gifts to her lover; a clever, saucy tale—and one that Rowan had heard a dozen times in the Inner Lands, with a tinker in the role of the Outskirter.

  The hatchet-faced woman rose next, to recite a heavy-rhythmed poem which included many lovingly depicted gory battles, whose points or purposes remained obscure. The warriors listened intently, but the steerswoman noted one face not watching the recitation. It was Jermyn. During the previous song, he had showed ostentatious hilarity; now he sat, expression blank, eyes on the ground. One of his dicing companions nudged him to direct his attention. He did not respond.

  Bel and Rowan were seated across the fire from him; Bel was following Rowan’s gaze. “He should sing a song for his wife. Or tell a story, or a poem; something to mark her passing.”

  “I don’t believe that he wants to,” Rowan observed. Jermyn’s companions continued to display no sympathy for his loss, and he seemed to wish to pay it no attention himself; finally mastering his emotions, he fabricated an expression of interest and turned up his face toward the performer, to display it.

  Had Bel not spoken the next words, Rowan would have: “It’s wrong.”

  “Yes.”

  The woman’s recitation came to a thudding end, and in the space that followed, someone
seated far back from the fire underwent a degree of cajoling, as friends called for an amusing story. The person reluctantly began to rise to his feet, a lopsided grin on his face.

  Bel stood. “I’ll do it.” She stepped forward.

  Her appearance was a surprise, exciting quiet comments from the warriors, some of dubious tone. Bel ignored them and took up her position by the fire, to the right, where the fewest people sat behind her. Rowan saw her in profile, face flickering pale in firelight, starlit darkness behind.

  The tune was slow and gentle, filled with the rich, long notes that Bel’s voice carried best. The lyrics followed no standard form that Rowan recognized; they wandered, with no clear rhymes, only suggestions of assonance, falling at unexpected points in the melody, line endings now lagging, now running ahead of the natural symmetry of the tune.

  “Who has seen her, following the wind,

  From end to end, long hills

  Winding, black and midnight when her voice

  Comes shadowing down the sky?

  I know her eyes from ages past, and this

  A year ago, a day,

  Still too wise for the touch ...”

  Melodic cadence and lyric resolution seemed to wrap around each other. Rowan began to catch the sense behind the structure: an endless, forward-moving spiral, as each element strove to complete itself, found itself out of step with its partner, and so was impelled to continue.

  “Her eyes now light in light on dark,

  Her voice a silent, known and humming

  In my heart only: wider, call and empty.

  Her fingers pulse the edges of the sky ...”

  The style of grammar was peculiar, the choice of metaphor hardly comprehensible: the song seemed to use words in a fashion very different from the usual. The steerswoman struggled briefly, then understood that a hundred unheard implications echoed unperceived behind each phrase. She began to listen more with her heart than her ears, grasping at the emotions that trailed behind the words. First they seemed like moving shadows; then like pastel banners of silk; then she understood how to hear the song, and its images opened to her.