The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  It was a love song, but the strangest she had ever heard. The woman who was its subject seemed absent, though bound to return; but from the manner in which the composer attempted to convey her nature, it was clear that she was perceptible only to him, like a spirit, or a ghost, coming to him alone, mysteriously.

  “... I lose my days in days of days,

  I know my time by nights of yes or no,

  In going, stepping into dark,

  And standing, marking yes or no ...”

  Although the form was new to her, Rowan sensed that the song was ancient, passed from voice to voice, altered subtly across the years. The composer was as gone as his lover, as mysterious as she, known only to the listener for the space of time that his words and music were lifted into the night air by Bel. Defining his lover, he defined himself; showing what he loved, he showed the most secret part of his soul, showed it easily and willingly.

  In all Rowan’s short life of only casual love, she found herself for the first time wishing to know someone who would speak of her in words like these.

  “Until my own hands meet once,

  And fleeting, learn her place among

  The empty spaces I will arrange myself

  Among the changes of the dark. I will

  Find myself in waiting, forget I wait,

  And what is known, unknown. When she is gone,

  I am sole and only ...”

  The flickering fire, the harsh, still faces vanished; but Rowan remained aware of the forest, of the cool quiet atmosphere smelling of greenness and water, of the sky where, amid the glittering stars of the Fisherman, the Eastern Guidestar shone, a stark needle-point of light.

  “ ... And she will tell me, when she speaks again: the cry

  Of stars, the sweet of light, the secret tang of numbers.

  When last I sang she smiled, and I will sing again

  While all the world and winter rain complete,

  Until fleeing has no home but her words,

  Last known, last awaited, last spoken, last heard.”

  The elements of structure approached each other, met: the song ended.

  There was a long silence, and Rowan rode on the silence as if it were still song; it seemed endless, holding within it all the time needed for the mind to reach across the wide world, across time and history. She felt empty, but not diminished, as if all that lay in her heart had left her body to become water, sky, the air itself.

  She was a hollow reed, and the wind had blown through her, the wind that circled the world, that had been everywhere and touched everything and was still touching it. That wind had blown one pure tone through her soul and departed, and she waited, disbelieving that it could be gone.

  A motion brought her mind back to camp, leaving a piece of her heart in the wilderness. Bel shifted from one foot to the other in a fashion characteristic to her at the completion of a performance, smiled her small smile, and crossed over to seat herself by Rowan’s knee.

  The steerswoman studied her friend: a small, compact shape of bone and muscle, fur and leather, poetry and violence. Beneath a shock of short brown hair, the familiar dark eyes glowed in pleasure. Rowan shook her head, amazed.

  There was a scattering of ground-pounding Outskirter applause, and Rowan looked across the fire for Jermyn’s reaction. He was gone. “What happened to Jermyn?”

  A man beside her replied. “Ran off.” And he reached behind her to give Bel’s shoulder a friendly shove. “There’s a new way to do battle: turn a man to an infant with a song, and send him crying.”

  The steerswoman looked at him in shock. He had not been listening; or, listening, had not understood. It did not seem possible.

  “Better than swords,” one woman added with a laugh, lounging back to lean on her elbows. “Easy victory, no blood to either side.”

  Rowan found it difficult to control her distaste. “I don’t believe that was the intention.”

  Bel’s eyes flared. “That was The Ghost Lover,’” she informed the woman stiffly. “Someone ought to have sung it, or something like it, so I did.”

  Hanlys joined the conversation. “It worked on Jermyn. Looked like a ghost himself.”

  Bel had altered the way she was sitting, becoming more upright, more balanced. “It’s one of Einar’s songs,” she said coldly.

  The woman who had spoken earlier indicated deprecating comprehension. “I suppose they still sing those old songs,” she said, and made a vague gesture intended to refer to the east, actually indicating south by southwest.

  Rowan recognized danger in Bel and tried to redirect the conversation. “Who’s Einar?” she asked.

  “The first seyoh, from the oldest times we know. He made our laws. And he was a poet, and a singer.”

  “A legendary figure,” Hanlys put in, for the steerswoman’s edification.

  “Not only legend! He was a real person!”

  The woman disagreed. “If he lived, why does no one have his name in their line?”

  “Because he loved a ghost! You can’t get children on a ghost.”

  The male warrior spoke under his breath. “Loved a ghost, ha. Goat, more like, out there,” he said, and then events moved too quickly for Rowan to forestall.

  From her cross-legged position, Bel was on her feet in a single fluid movement. Her sheathed sword had been on the ground beside her; now the naked blade was in her hand. “Enough!” Light flickered on the weapon as it moved: then, abruptly, it was standing alone, vertical, its point buried in the earth by the fire, while its owner pointed an accusing finger that moved slowly around the circle of faces, indicating each and every person singly. “This is a challenge!” Fury filled Bel’s voice, a fury Rowan recognized: the fury of battle. Bel’s dark eyes glittered, cold stars in a shadowed face. “Come forward!”

  Around the circle, puzzled faces stared, pale in the shuddering yellow light.

  Rowan sat frozen in disbelief. “Bel, are you insane ?”

  “No!” Bel whirled back toward her. “No, this is too much!”

  Rowan found herself at Bel’s side, inside the circle of faces, one hand half reaching out to restrain her friend, held back only by the knowledge that such an attempt would be very unwise. She pleaded. “No, it’s a misunderstanding, it’s a difference of opinion—Bel, you can’t mean to fight all of them!”

  “I don’t have to. I fight one, that’s law.” Bel’s hand swept the circle again. “Choose your champion, if you have one, if there’s one among you can stand on two feet alone!” The warriors had not moved.

  “You insult my customs,” Bel spat out, “you insult my people, my tribe, my blood, my heroes and forebears. You insult the Outskirts, you insult its air with your fetid carrion breath!” She whirled in the flickering light, confronting the impassive faces, a wild storm awaiting release. “Choose, you vermin, you rodents, you dung-worms!”

  From his position among the seated warriors, Hanlys cleared his throat experimentally. “Pardon me, lady?”

  Rowan could scarcely believe that she was being addressed. “Yes?” He gestured. “We don’t need this.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He indicated Bel, somewhat apologetically. “Can’t you control your friend?”

  Rowan discovered that now it was she who was insulted. “She’s not my servant,” she said, voice flat, “and she’s not my dog, either. She’s a free woman and a warrior.” The steerswoman was suddenly, coldly calm. She stepped back to her place among the warriors and sat. “I won’t interfere with your traditions.” She said to Bel, “I wish you good luck.”

  A single “Ha!” expressed Bel’s opinion of luck.

  Murmurs passed between the faces, and Hanlys looked even more uncomfortable. “Well.” He caught Rowan’s eye and, with a little shrug, rose. “I’m sorry for this, lady.”

  “No need. It’s between you and her.”

  He winced. “Not quite.” His gaze flicked around the circle, and he made a rapid series of small gestures.

&nb
sp; Whether Bel understood the signals or merely recognized their import, Rowan could not tell, but the Outskirter suddenly spun and reached for her weapon. Then all warriors were on their feet, and one pair of hands clutched for her sword arm, another stopped her left hand an instant before it reached the hilt, and someone grabbed her from behind with an arm around her throat, lifting her from her feet. Bel thrashed wildly, kicking out, and connected with one man’s chest, another’s stomach, and then disappeared in a mass of struggling forms.

  None had drawn a weapon.

  Rowan found herself standing alone, aghast, as a writhing crowd worked its way away from the fireside, out between the standing tents, off toward the edge of camp. Bel’s was the only voice raised, in furious, inarticulate shouts. Then all vanished from sight.

  Rowan followed the mob to the limit of the encampment. There it struggled to a halt, reconfigured, and a thrashing thing was expelled into the darkness. It came back instantly, flailing wildly: Bel, striking out with both fists toward any person within reach. She received the same treatment as before, as both arms were captured, by several people, and rendered harmless. She was turned about forcibly, and again ejected. She came back. The process was repeated.

  “Lady? Rowan?”

  Rowan turned. Jermyn stood before her, one arm looped through the straps of two packs: Rowan’s and Bel’s. In his other hand was Bel’s sword, now sheathed.

  He glanced once at the melee and had the grace to look deeply ashamed. “You’d better take these.”

  “Will they hurt her?” Rowan almost believed it might be better if they tried to.

  “No. You both helped us. But they won’t let her come back.”

  Rowan took the equipment, looking up into a face made large, eyes made small, by tears. She suddenly wished not to leave him here, among false comrades who mocked his pain. She wanted to ask him to come away.

  But before she could speak, he stepped back. “Thank Bel for the song,” he said, and was gone.

  Rowan made her way to the edge of camp and circled around the mob. Bel stood, darkness at her back, frustrated for the dozenth time. She shook with fury, eyes full of murder.

  “Bel.”

  The Outskirter turned to her with a choked shriek of hatred. Rowan fell back a step, then recovered, and stood quietly, holding out the pack and sword.

  Bel was a moment in recognizing her friend; then she took the gear without a word, spun away, and tracked off into the night, leaving Rowan to follow. Behind, the warriors dispersed, one by one.

  5

  “How safe is it, traveling in the dark like this?”

  Bel was long in answering. “Not at all.”

  They had walked some time in silence. The raider tribe’s camp was already two miles behind, hidden by low brush and a small copse of spruce. Looking back, Rowan saw no light; the fire was either blocked by trees, or had been finally extinguished.

  Before them, the landscape was a vague starlit sweep of hilly meadow, with a dark loom of forest to the north, smaller blots of trees scattered to the east. Rowan followed Bel, a half step behind and to the Outskirter’s left. The steerswoman realized that they had exactly reversed their usual positions. In the Inner Lands, Rowan had always led, a half step ahead, on the right.

  “Do you know this area?”

  Bel replied with an expressionless “No.”

  Rowan’s step faltered. “How are you guiding us?”

  “By my ears.” The Outskirter paused, and both women listened.

  A breeze rose, and the meadow grass hissed and visibly undulated, rolling black shadows like fleeing beasts. Behind, the spruce and brush gave out muted rattles, branches cushioned by leaves and green needles. Ahead: a series of harsh high clatterings, like brittle brush bare of leaves. Three sources of this sound: one nearby to the right, one farther away and straight ahead, one distant and slightly to the left. When the wind shifted, Rowan could hear from the forest to the north the sound of water over stones.

  Eventually, Rowan asked, “What does a goblin sound like?” Near the raiders’ familiar fire, the threat had seemed abstract, unlikely; here, nearly blind, in unknown territory with both Guidestars weirdly shifted west, she found the possibility disturbingly believable.

  Bel provided the information reluctantly. “Alone, like a man walking quickly.” She led on, angling to the right. “In a group, they call to each other.” She stumbled on an unseen tussock, and Rowan managed to catch at her arm and prevent her from falling.

  “What sort of call?”

  Bel recovered, readjusted her pack, and continued. “A sort of rasping squeal, and a rattle.” A pause. “I’d imitate it, but I might draw one.”

  Rowan drew up short. “Not that rattle we’re moving toward?”

  “No. That’s tanglebrush.”

  The Outskirter was disinclined to converse. Rowan left her friend to silence, and the two continued together into the quiet night.

  Informed that Bel was depending on hearing, Rowan did the same, and at once began feeling more and more at ease. This was not yet the dangerous, unknown Outskirts; it was hill and grass and forest such as she had walked on and through all her adult life. Her night-traveling skills reasserted themselves, and she began listening for movement, not of goblins, but of animals large and small, of the echoless loom of unseen bushes, and of stealthily approaching strangers. She heard the call of a nightjar, the rustling of field mice, and once, in a lull of the breeze, sensed the sudden breathless hush of owl’s wings above. The rattling tanglebrush was a tantalizing oddity, and she struggled internally, resisting the impulse to approach one and kindle a small fire by which to examine it.

  A chorus of yelps rose in the distance, and Bel startled. “What was that?”

  “Foxes.” Rowan discovered that without noticing, the women had exchanged positions: Rowan was again leading, comfortably. “They like this sort of land.” In Bel’s months of traveling the Inner Lands alone, she could easily have missed that particular sound. “They’ll stay away. They don’t like humans.”

  Bel made no reply. They walked on, as the land began to slope.

  Rowan wished to find something to say, some way to remove from Bel the dishonor of the raider tribe’s treatment. It seemed impossible.

  She searched and considered—and soon found herself mired in speculations based on incomplete knowledge of Outskirter traditions and codes. She tried to form an analogy by reference to Inner Lands groups who claimed to hold honor highly: certain cadres of soldiers, highly placed aristocrats, priests of some sects. Nothing seemed applicable.

  Then she tried again on a simpler level, and realized suddenly that Bel, through no fault of her own, had been made to look a fool in front of a friend. “I don’t think much of those raiders’ manners,” Rowan said, spontaneously. To herself, the comment seemed inane.

  But Bel relaxed somewhat. “And that,” she said aggrievedly, “is what you Inner Lands think Outskirters are.” The matter was closed. She turned to practical concerns. “Do you have enough water, or should we try to find a brook to camp by?”

  Rowan began to feel better. She elbowed her shoulder-slung water bag, and it emitted a jolly little gurgle. “I have enough.”

  “Then let’s stop here. I only wanted to put some distance between us and that mob. They might change their minds and turn on us.”

  It seemed unlikely. “All right.” Rowan paused, and tried to scan the area. The ground had flattened again, and was clear enough for their purposes. Only a few low bushes sprouted in the darkness, one of them a tanglebrush clattering with a quiet, brittle noise in the now-light breeze. The women unslung their packs and set to flattening a section of the knee-deep greengrass.

  As they arranged their camp, another Inner Lands danger came to mind. “The villagers mentioned occasional wolves,” Rowan said. “And a fire would keep them away. Rowan, I won’t have a fire here.”

  “You’d rather meet a wolf than a goblin?”

  “Of course.”
There was a grin in the Outskirter’s voice, and she once again became completely herself. “I’ve never met a wolf.” She settled her gear with a thump of her pack at the head of her bedroll. “But just in case, we’ll sleep in shifts. You first.”

  The Outskirts had no border.

  Despite the knowledge, Rowan had more than half expected to be awakened to a wild endless sweep of redgrass rolling to the limits of the horizon, cheerfully spotted with white goats—and likely to suddenly sprout an infestation of bizarre creatures, or a shouting horde of sword-waving barbarians.

  But the pale gray light of the cloudy morning showed terrain no different from that of the Inner Lands. The dewless meadow was greenly carpeted with clover and one of the various sorts of green-grass called “panic” by common folk. The land remained flat to the east, grew hillier to the south. North, the forest sent a long arm eastward, and shielding her eyes against the sun as it rose into the clouds, Rowan discerned the woods curving south again in the distance.

  But close beside Rowan’s resting place stood the intriguing tangle-brush. She pulled herself from her cloak and bedding to examine it.

  Rising as high as her waist, its black branches, randomly right-angled, doubled back and forth on themselves, creating a seemingly impenetrable mazy dome. The outermost twigs bore flat, narrow leaves as long as her hand, gray on one side, blue-black on the other. Each leaf stiffly presented its dark face to the rising sun. Beneath the edge of the dome, as if in its shelter, grew a patch of the vermin weed redgrass.

  “Do the leaves move as the sun moves?” The leaves of some plants in the Inner Lands did so.

  Bel’s mood had repaired itself in the night. Now she was occupied with rolling her piebald cloak and securing it to the outside of her pack; the day was already warm. “Yes. Don’t put your hand in there. There are thorns, and the sap is poisonous.”

  Rowan had been about to do exactly that, and drew back sharply. She would have to learn to investigate more cautiously than was her usual habit. They were going into Bel’s country, and anything unfamiliar should be checked against Bel’s knowledge.