The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  “We took a goat yesterday,” Bel told her man. “If it’s yours, trade is due you.”

  There was a long silence. The distant, half-seen object apallingly sprouted recognizable human arms, made broad gestures: signals, certainly, to the man behind Rowan, possibly replies to similar silent signals from him. Rowan wished she could face the nearer stranger. He was close by, he was undisguised, but she could not read his face, she could not interpret his reactions, she could not see what he was doing.

  Bel was facing the closer enemy; it was fitting. Bel was the better fighter, Bel was the native. Rowan’s job was to guard their backs, and she set to her job with a grimmer, more intense concentration.

  The far warrior was signaling again, and reinterpreting the distortion of distance, the steerswoman saw that he had turned around and was gesturing to someone past him, someone beyond sight. Rowan suddenly surmised a relay formation, and understood that there might be dozens of warriors nearby, spread invisibly across the landscape, moving to surround the travelers. Her stance had shifted, of itself, in unconscious preparation for sudden action. She now reviewed the path that she and Bel had used to approach this area, tried to guess if it was still clear, and began planning a retreat.

  Bel and the near warrior had been conversing; in retrospect Rowan understood that he had asked to see what she was offering. Bel said to the steerswoman, “Stand as you are, I’m shifting.” Rowan felt her friend step forward; she heard her slip off her pack, and the slap of thongs as it was opened.

  Rowan saw a motion to her left and was about to speak when Bel’s warrior said, “Warrior at three.”

  “I see him,” the steerswoman confirmed to Bel; to her eyes, it was merely a spot of variegated brown, difficult to focus on, moving with suspicious purpose.

  Bel was fussing with the pack’s contents. “Check nine,” she said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Is there anyone to your right?”

  Rowan scanned the area. “I don’t think so.”

  She heard Bel step forward again, heard the warrior come to meet her, and realized that Bel had walked past her own sword and was now face-to-face with the warrior, completely unarmed. Rowan found that she hated the idea, and strained to keep herself from turning around.

  There was silence behind; then the man spoke. “How many goats did you take?”

  “One.”

  “This is too much.”

  “I know. It’s what we have. It’s yours.”

  The man in front of Rowan was signaling again, this time to Rowan’s right.

  “Someone’s coming,” Rowan said. “They’re going to close us off.” Bel said to the warrior, “We’d like to meet your seyoh.”

  “Where’s your tribe?”

  “We have no tribe. We’re traveling. Perhaps we can travel with you.” He made a negative sound, then amended, reluctantly, “It’s not for me to decide. Let’s have a look at your friend.”

  Bel called to her. “Rowan, set down your sword and come here.”

  “Put it down?” She could hardly believe the order.

  “Yes. Do it.”

  With the greatest reluctance, Rowan set her weapon down onto the rotted stubble, finding she had to clench her empty hands into fists to keep them from clutching for it again.

  Bel and the stranger were five feet apart, Bel standing with the blatant ease that told Rowan she was ready for instant action; the man studied Rowan with a mild-mannered calm that she recognized as his version of the same preparedness.

  “This is Rowan,” Bel said. “She only has one name. And I’m Bel, Margasdotter, Chanly.”

  The names were volunteered, and the warrior was under no obligation to offer his own. His bright black gaze puzzled over the steers-woman. “You have no family?” He was holding the handleless knife blade that Bel had offered him, one of eight that Bel and Rowan carried as trade items.

  The steerswoman found herself reluctant to speak more than was necessary. “I have family.”

  “She’s from the Inner Lands,” Bel supplied.

  “You’re a long way from your farm.” He turned the blade over in his hands, enjoying its gleam, its balance.

  “I’m not a farmer, I’m a steerswoman.”

  He shook his head; the word was meaningless to him. “Warrior, at nine by you,” he said then.

  Rowan spun left and saw an Outskirter, clearly visible, perfectly recognizable in a bold piebald cloak. The person was signaling. Bel put a reassuring hand on Rowan’s shoulder. Rowan turned back. “We’re surrounded.”

  “Yes.” Bel spoke to the man. “What’s your answer?”

  He studied the women. His hair was shaggy black to his shoulders, his beard unevenly trimmed, his face a sunburned brown with black chips of eyes. Rowan saw that his sword was now sheathed.

  He slipped the knife blade into his waistband, then abruptly stepped back and gestured widely to his comrades. Rowan startled at the suddenness, wondered what he was saying. A finger of sunlight broke through the clouds, and indicated a gully past the warrior, as if it had tried to find the trio, and missed. It vanished, and a light rain began.

  “Get your weapons. It’s a long walk to camp.”

  Bel slapped Rowan’s shoulder with a delighted “Ha!” They retrieved the swords, and when she held her weapon again the steers-woman felt a shade more proper, more fit. They were still surrounded.

  “Are we accepted?” Rowan asked. She wiped the blade on her sleeve, made to sheathe it, but discovered that her hand and arm did not want her to do so.

  “Not yet. But we have a chance to explain our case. If we can convince them we’re not enemies, they might take us in.”

  “We don’t know that they’re going in our direction.”

  “Yes, we do.” Bel shouldered her pack. “There isn’t any grass left to the west. They’ve been there. They have to go east, or at least easterly.” She turned to the man, who had approached again and was waiting for them. “Can we make camp by nightfall?”

  He scanned the flat, sprinkling sky, calculating. Sudden as buckets, the downpour recommenced, and the distances closed in and vanished into rattling, roaring gray. Rowan hastily sheathed her sword and drew up her hood.

  The warrior had been caught with cloak open and his face up, and was drenched in an instant. He laughed and shook his hair like a dog, then turned his face up again as if being battered by the fat, cold drops was the most pleasant sensation in the world.

  “Who knows?” he shouted over the noise. He dashed water from his eyes with his fingers, wiped his face with the heels of his hands, then cocked a bright black eye at the women, amused. When he nodded past Rowan, she turned and discovered two more warriors, one standing not four feet from her side, the other posted beside Bel. Their approach had been completely unnoticed. Raised hoods and closed cloaks rendered them eerily neutral: genderless, and without personality. They did not speak.

  The first man pulled up his own hood and leaned closer to the travelers, to be heard above the rain. “We’ll just keep walking until we get there, shall we?”

  9

  Rowan awoke to heavy, musty air, the sour odor of wet fur, and the sound of rain. Shifting on her bedroll, she found that someone had replaced her sodden cloak, which she had been using as a blanket, with a heavy felt cover, thick enough to be a rug. She had been unaware of the exchange.

  “Bel?” Nothing was visible in the sealed air of the tent; the grayness was just one shade above black, and the dark seemed less an absence of light than an intrinsic feature of the smell.

  Rowan shoved the cover aside and cast about with one hand, searching for her pack. Someone, probably Bel, had laid her sword alongside her bedding. The steerswoman considered, then stood to strap it on, rising carefully, uncertain of the available headroom.

  She paused and listened. There was no sound but hers in the tent, no breathing but her own. Outside, amid the pattering hiss, she heard movement, muffled voices. She groped her way along the tent
wall and suddenly found a flap and threw it back.

  Brilliant sunlight struck her with an almost physical force, and she drew back, one arm thrown up against the glare. She had been fooled by the sound: there was no rain, and every vestige of cloud and mist had vanished. The brightness was too much for her sleep-bleared eyes. Above and below the shield of her arm, she caught only glimpses of wild red ground and painful blue sky.

  Someone brushed by, then turned back and abruptly fingered the loose edge of Rowan’s blouse. “This is filthy. I’ll get you another,” a female voice said, and then the woman was gone.

  “Thank you,” Rowan replied in her general direction. She wiped at her tearing eyes with her sleeve and tried to see the world. Redgrass.

  Down the hills and up them, over ridges and out to the edge of sight, was a single sweeping carpet of redgrass, rippling in the steady south wind. The grass had already been dried by the morning sun, and its natural brilliance had returned; colors trembled across the land as each individual blade twisted and bent, now showing a brown side, now a bright red. It was difficult to focus clearly on the shifting and flashing; the earth looked feverish, as if Rowan were delirious but unable to decide on the particular hue of her hallucination. Driven by the wind, the hollow reeds tapped against each other, rough blades rustling, setting up a rattling hiss that Rowan had mistaken for the sound of rain.

  In front and beyond, hills ranged, broken by two staggered ridges, then falling faintly lower as they reached out toward the horizon. A far lake sparkled silver in the distance, edged with looming dark shapes—trees, Rowan assumed, blinking with the effort of seeing past the grass. Then she corrected herself. There were no trees in the Outskirts, and this, finally and surely, was true and pure Outskirts.

  The air held a scent, like cinnamon and sour milk, over the freshness of departed rain. The tent beside Rowan wafted up a miasma of must and goat. Somewhere someone was roasting meat.

  Rowan could see no green plant life at all. Clumps and thickets of tanglebrush, gray and black, were recognizable nearby. A few rocky outcrops showed on one of the ridges, and far off the land displayed jagged black lines, caused by what, Rowan had no idea.

  And the sky above was empty and blue: blue as a lake of pure, fresh water.

  Someone shifted behind her, and she turned to face a large male

  Outskirter, in full gear. He regarded her silently and warily.

  “Hello,” Rowan said, hoping he found her as innocuous as she knew herself to be. “Have you seen my friend around here?”

  “I might have. How would I know him?”

  They had come in at night, in rain, and had gone directly to sleep. Possibly news of their arrival had not been passed on to all the tribe members. “A woman,” Rowan told him, “smaller than I am.” She held out a hand to demonstrate the height. “Dark brown hair, brown eyes. Her cloak is not as fine as yours.” The man’s cloak was not Bel’s random patchwork, but a striking gray and black diagonal design. “An Outskirter, like yourself.”

  “Ha. There’s only one like me.”

  “Well, yes.” He was nearly twice Bel’s size, and blond. “And there’s only one like her, as well, more’s the pity. We were brought in last night, by a warrior, one of the men guarding the flock to the west. I don’t know his name.”

  The warrior nodded, as if this confirmed information he already possessed, and it came to Rowan that if she had presented any tale but the truth, matters would have turned to the worse. This man was assigned as her guard.

  As they stood regarding each other, Rowan’s Inner Lands habits began to demand that an introduction be made. She tried to remember the rules Bel had laid out, but found nothing that covered interaction with a person assigned to watch her. She followed her instinct. “I’m Rowan, a steerswoman, from the Inner Lands. I only have the one name.” Replying with his own full name would imply an acceptance he had no authority to render, but she hazarded to ask, “And you are ... ,” knowing that mere first names were sometimes bestowed more freely, and wishing to have some means of addressing him.

  The Outskirter delivered a narrow glare and rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, his sword strap creaking. “Hm. That fellow who brought you in has gone back to his band.” His dislike seemed more formal than personal. “Well, I don’t suppose you’ve killed anyone yet. Have you?”

  She was not sure this was a joke. “Not so far.”

  “Here.”

  Rowan turned at the new voice and caught a tossed wool shirt. “Wash at the creek, or no one will want to associate with you.” The woman vanished again, leaving Rowan only with impressions of height, long dark hair, and a bundle balanced on one shoulder.

  Rowan looked at the shirt in her hand, then held it up for the man to see. She waved it slightly. “How do I find the creek?”

  He made a satisfied sound, then motioned with a nod. “On the far side of the camp.” He paused. “You can’t go through. I’ll lead you around.”

  “Thank you.”

  His reply was a grunt.

  The tent she had slept in was one of a cluster of four crowded together, back-to-back. Some of skin, some of felt, all in shades of gray and brown, they might have been cloud shadows against the wild color of the surrounding redgrass.

  As she followed the Outskirter around the body of the camp, Rowan saw that all the tents were in groups of four, back-to-back like cornered soldiers. Between the groups she caught intriguing glimpses of the life within. Spaces between the clusters seemed to define avenues, annexes, even courtyards; it was like passing by a village of cloth and leather houses. People walked along those paths she could see, most of them moving quickly, as if on some errand; they glanced at her once, then studiously ignored her.

  As they rounded the south side of the camp, they passed a group of five children, playing at battle—using real weapons, Rowan realized. One made boldly to challenge her presence, but her guard stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and an admonishing finger in his face, and with gestures directed the children’s attention away from the steerswoman. But he paused among them long enough to correct one fierce young girl’s sword grip; the others watched the instruction intently, then picked up their adventure where it had been interrupted.

  The groupings of the tents fell into some larger pattern: a star, it seemed, though Rowan could not from her vantage count the points. The wind brought the smell of cooking again, and she surmised a central open area, with a fire pit.

  When they passed another of the tent city’s points, Rowan found herself at the crest of a little dale, looking east. Below, the creek reflected the blue of the sky, stable and peculiar amid the noisy, shimmering red and brown. The motion of the colors rendered the scene freakish, unreal, the sloping perspective seemed about to shift without ever quite doing so, and the tapping of the reeds never ceased, but rose and fell like rain on the ocean. Rowan gazed down dizzily and felt as if her ears were tired inside, from the noise.

  Over the sound, half-audible voices came up from the creek: cheerful, comradely shouts, playful squeals. Her guard nodded down at the creek. “There you go, Rowan,” he said, and she wondered if the use of her name signified anything. “Don’t be too long, or you’ll miss breakfast.” And he sat, apparently with every intention of watching her as she bathed.

  As she descended, slightly unsteady, Rowan fought an urge to turn back, to lose herself among the tents and people. Her eyes, and her mind, remained uncomfortable with the sweep of shuddering colors, the cruel, immobile black, and her body was uneasy, unable to find its proper balance as she moved down the slope to the waterside.

  But at the creek, to her surprise, she found green life: a crowd of scrub pines, and an incongruous patch of gray-headed thistle. Her eyes rested there as if they were the only real things in the world.

  The bathers were all women, standing hip-deep or sitting neck-deep in the cool water. One of them was annoying the others by skimming her palm across the surface to send up sheets of spray
. Her cohorts soon dealt with the prank by mobbing her and forcing her head below the surface until she indicated surrender.

  On the fringes of the group, all alone, was Bel.

  “Ha,” Rowan’s companion said. “You took your time.”

  “I didn’t know the hour,” Rowan replied. She slipped her sword strap over her head and kicked out of her boots. Each person’s clothing, whether neatly or haphazardly arranged, had its owner’s weapon lying on top, hilt carefully pointing to the water—handy for quick recovery in case of danger. Rowan followed their example, wondering to herself if the precaution was necessary.

  She waded into the cool water, feeling small stones beneath her feet. “I think I insulted my guard, by asking his name,” she told Bel, then dipped beneath the surface to rinse the first layer of dirt from her body. Below, sound closed in with a familiar closeness, and her sight was limited to shafts of sweet white light, brown creek bed, and a number of blurred naked human bodies. She had an odd desire to remain there.

  She resurfaced to the incessant hiss and tap of the redgrass, the rattle of nearby tanglebrush, the shifting red and brown. On the far side of the creek, some Outskirts plant had put out a patch of magenta blossoms. The effect was faintly nauseating.

  “No one will tell you their names, not until we’ve been accepted,” Bel reminded her, studying a raw spot on her own stomach, an abrasion from wearing wet clothing for days. Bel scooped water onto it, then rubbed off a patch of dead skin.

  “Should I tell them mine?”

  “Yes. Every chance you get.” Bel raised her voice to the bathing women. “This is the friend I mentioned, the steerswoman, Rowan. She only has one name.”

  “Ha,” someone said, and the women went back to their business.

  “Will that knife blade buy our way in?”

  “Nothing will buy our way in, and you shouldn’t say it like that. The knife blade was for the goat we took. And the fact that we bothered to trade for it instead of stealing it shows them that we mean well.”