The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Turning her body and making the few steps to the plotting table were actions identical in kind to her control of the ship itself, and had to occur without lessening her other awareness. Standing still at the plotting table freed her to see what was lying on it, and she found that she possessed no calipers or rulers, no pens, no charts. Alone on the table lay only a huge leather-bound book.

  A single ribbon marked a place. She eased slack into the jib sheet, adjusted the rudder more tightly against the current, and caused her hands to open the book.

  Words: line after line, for page on page. Straining to encompass their meaning, she began to see that the words comprised specific, detailed instructions. Her course was here, described not by maps and headings, but by single words, one after another. Each individual action that would take her to her destination was laid out, precisely, step by step, moment by moment. She need make no choices, but only enact.

  She was satisfied. The handwriting was her own.

  And in her dream, it now seemed that she had been running in this fashion for a very long time. In her dream, it seemed fitting.

  For an unmeasured length of time she traveled so, the sun never moving, the sea and stars never changing. Her mind was completely inhabited by the innumerable small and large details of control—constant, blending, endless—following her route without the need of thought, trusting the book and her previous self for the truth of her course and destination.

  A moment came when she again added awareness of her hands and eyes to the sum of her task, and again a measure of her self faded briefly, then returned, as she turned another page.

  Her eyes rested on the new words as she waited for comprehension to occur. She became aware that it was taking long to do so. Something had changed.

  She struggled dully to stretch her attention to include more of the page, to piece together the lines of ink into comprehensibility. For an instant she succeeded, and the marks resolved

  Into broken lines, skewed letters. Huge, clumsy words trailing wildly down the page. Fragments of sentences, in a hand as blunt and awkward as a child’s.

  She was incapable of dismay. She turned herself back to her task. The ship hesitated, shied, settled. Her journey continued.

  And beneath her endless work, behind her unwavering concentration, deep within her slow, cool thoughts, Rowan recalled from that book only three facts:

  That the broken words had held no meaning to her; that they filled the rest of the book, to the very end; and that the handwriting was Bel’s.

  Very quietly, someone spoke her name.

  14

  “What?” She was on her feet, her question was spoken, and her sword was in her hand, before she realized that she was awake.

  Bel was a silent shadow beside her, watching the darkness. She pointed with her chin, a motion only dimly sensed.

  There was a flickering smear of light in the distance, yellow in the blackness and the blue-tinged starlight. “Brushfire?”

  Bel did not reply, concentrating on the glow. She seemed to be listening, but not to the steerswoman.

  Rowan studied the light. It was broadening. With no referents, there was no way to guess its size or distance. No breeze brought its scent; the air was still, humid, dead.

  Something flared at its edge—a patch of tanglebrush, catching all at once, with a sudden, distant roar. Something moved across the light, then something else, then many things ...

  “Come on!” Bel was gone, running to the fire. Rowan followed, redgrass snagging at her trouser legs. She saw Bel pause, sweep once with her sword, and then continue. When Rowan reached the place she tripped over something in the grass, something in two pieces, that thrashed.

  Over the rising roar of the flames, Rowan heard sounds: rusted hinges, a rhythmical clatter. There was a wordless cry from Bel, the sound she made in battle, but no clash of metal.

  Rowan hurried on. Figures were visible in the firelight, flailing, converging on two points.

  Something snagged at her left arm from behind, and Rowan spun to the right, momentum freeing her and adding force to the stroke of her sword as she came around again.

  She had aimed at the height of a man’s neck; the stroke swept harmlessly over the goblin’s head. She let her sword spin her again, aiming for the creature’s waist as she came around again.

  It was gone. Then something raked at her scalp and tore her tunic down the back. She stumbled forward, turned left, struck out blindly in an upswing.

  The blow caught the goblin under one arm, which separated from its body with appalling ease to fall twitching to the ground. The creature did not seem to notice. It clutched out with its remaining hand, and Rowan made a quick stab into its chest. It did not stop or fall or pull away, but pushed toward her, driving her point deeper. Its hand jerked forward at her; she ducked her head out of reach, and the hand clutched at the sword itself, trying stupidly to shove it aside. The edge bit deep into the finger joints.

  Rowan thrust harder, tried to bring her blade down to slash the torso open. Too much resistance; she twisted instead and felt the point make a small slicing arc within the goblin’s body. She gasped at the effort. “Gods below, don’t you know when you’re dead?”

  It squealed and rattled, seemingly in frustration only, then freed its hand and reached again for her face. She kicked at its stomach, then pulled out her sword as it fell back.

  A sound behind her. She turned and swung down at the next creature’s shoulder. Her blade hit shallowly, then skittered off. The thing had hide like horn.

  She dodged, struck at the arm joint from beneath, dodged, struck again. The creature closed on her as if it still had limbs to clutch her with.

  For a frozen instant its face was inches from hers. By firelight she saw its features: hard brown flattened skull, six black knobs trailing down in a double row—eyes. Its mouth thrust forward at the end of a pointed chin, opening and closing, horizontally and vertically, four curved rasps as long as fingers at each corner.

  She brought her sword up close to her body, caught the goblin under the chin, thrust back into its neck. The head fell back, the body forward.

  An arm came across her from behind, serrated down its length, points angled inward. She pushed herself into the elbow, levering the wrist out with her hilt. Something snapped, and she was free. She turned back to face the fire.

  The one-armed creature was flailing its remaining arm from the shoulder, its elbow and hand flapping uselessly. Rowan kicked it again, sending it into one of its fellows, and another came at her from the right. She knocked its arms aside, sliced off its head with an angled upstroke, did the same with the crippled one as it rose, did the same with the third, turned when a rattle told her there were more behind her again

  And she stopped counting.

  She was moving constantly, too fast to think or plan, trusting the only strategy she knew would work. She dodged, took off their hands at the elbows, their arms at the shoulders when they reached for her, used the moment that followed to strike off their heads. The difficulty was in the numbers; in the time that she dealt with one, another was coming from behind, a third stepping over the first ...

  None of the creatures learned from the deaths of its fellows. They were stupid, like insects. They tried to grab at her slashing sword as if it were a club, lost their hands, their taloned fingers, and their lives by their own stupidity.

  And the legs of the headless fallen continued to move. She tripped twice, once to end tangled among the thrashing dead limbs, and one of the living creatures fell on her, its mouth rasps closing on her sword arm ...

  Then its head tilted freakishly forward and rolled off over her shoulder. For an instant she saw a man above her, his wide dark eyes full of battle fury. He spun away.

  Before she could rise, another goblin tried to fall on her and impaled itself on her sword. Rowan cursed. Using both hands, she swung sword and goblin over her, to smash the creature against the ground to her right.

&nbs
p; For an instant, nothing attacked. She freed her weapon and set on another goblin, striking at its neck from behind.

  It did not work; tough plates shielded the back of its neck. The goblin turned, and she struck again, up under the chin, and this time it did work. She seemed to have time, so she relieved it of its arms as well, as it staggered and fell.

  She went for another, slipping her blade around it to reach the front of its neck ...

  After the third time doing this, she realized that she was now attacking them from behind, that their attention was on someone else.

  There came a moment when the one she reached for fell before she struck it, and through the open space she saw the man again. In the three-second lull he looked at her in amazement, then shouted “Ha!” as if in greeting. He turned right, kicked a goblin that was almost on him, dispatched it with an efficient version of Rowan’s technique, and turned again to deal with another on his left.

  Rowan eliminated three more, from behind. The fourth was facing her but seemed undecided, as if it had forgotten something. It lost its head while it was waiting, and she met the man’s eyes again across the creature’s fallen body.

  The onslaught was diminishing. Rowan had time to see that the fire was to her left; it had become a long undulating line trailing ahead of her. Behind, it had spread out into a fan. The flames seemed reluctant to move into the redgrass in her direction, and she realized that they were following an easier path along a growth of resinous blackgrass.

  A goblin between herself and the fire line turned, surprised to see her. She felled it, and saw that others were moving between her and the flames, all their attention on the blaze. They seemed to be trying to touch it, but were driven back again and again by the heat. Their weirdly jointed arms snapped forward toward the flames; their heads rocked dizzily. They jittered on trembling legs.

  She thought to go after them, had an instant to wonder if she ought, then turned to try and assist the stranger in his work.

  “Get back!” It was Bel’s voice. Rowan could see a knot of action beyond the man, realized that Bel was working her way toward him, saw that the man was working his way toward Rowan, and understood that her own job was to secure their escape route.

  She turned and found that a handful of the creatures were coming in from the darkness, squealing and clattering as they scrambled toward her. She sidestepped one, heard a grunt from the stranger as he dealt with it, eliminated the next herself, and stepped back when a third stumbled over a tangle of quivering corpses. She trod on its neck, which snapped with a sound she found deeply satisfying.

  She brought another down, and saw that nothing more stood between her and the darkness of the veldt. She looked back.

  Only Bel was still in action, backing constantly toward the man, who walked slowly, matching her pace, watching all sides as he approached. His left arm was pressed close against his body; there was blood. Then Bel shouted once, and they both broke into a run.

  Rowan led. Once she came upon one of the creatures, and paused to kill it. Later, in deeper darkness, another rose suddenly from the grass to clutch her around her arms, pinioning her. She cursed when its rasps grazed her cheek, then felt its left arm give way to the stranger’s blade, sensed its head fall back from a two-handed twist by Bel.

  She stumbled over its body, took a few steps, then stumbled again when something tried to pull her down. She almost struck out, then realized that it was Bel.

  “Sit.” Bel guided her into position and sat at an angle beside her, one shoulder against Rowan’s. The stranger dropped to the ground and completed the triangle, and the three of them sat facing out, gasping for breath, watching the darkness. Rowan could feel Bel’s heartbeat, and the man’s, against her back.

  They were on a slight incline, Rowan facing up, away from the distant fire. She tried to speak and found she had not enough breath. She listened instead, for a sound like a man walking alone, for a rasp and a rattle.

  When their breaths began to quieten, Bel spoke. “How badly are you hurt?”

  Rowan almost replied, then realized that the question was addressed to the stranger.

  “Averryl, Leahson, Chanly.” He paused for more air. “My left arm is bad. I may cross the line on that one.” Cross the line, Rowan remembered: become a mertutial.

  “Ha. Not with a right arm like yours. Bel, Margasdotter, Chanly.”

  There was a long pause before Rowan understood that it was her turn. “Rowan. That’s my only name. Will those creatures come after us?”

  “No. We’re too far away now. With the fire going, they’ll be more interested in it than in us.”

  “So it’s helping us now?”

  “That’s right.”

  Rowan paused for more air. She could hear the distant roar and snap of the flames. The cries of the creatures were all squeals now, freakishly ecstatic. Other than that, the night was quiet.

  She found her pulse slowing. “That’s good.” Behind her, Averryl was shaking. He swayed once. “We should see to your wounds, if we can in this dark,” she said. “Does ‘Chanly’ mean you’re related to Bel?”

  She felt Averryl half turn in surprise at the question, felt him stiffen in pain at the movement. Bel supplied, “Yes, but likely far back, at the beginning of the line. There are a lot of Chanlys.”

  Averryl’s breathing had slowed, but Rowan was disturbed by the way his heart was stumbling. He said to Bel, “Why doesn’t she know that? She’s not a child. Though she fights like one.”

  Rowan wondered how to react to the insult. “I’m from the Inner Lands,” she told him, “and I know next to nothing about the Outskirts. I’ve never fought a goblin before in my life.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Rowan, I beg your pardon.” He spoke with sincerity. “Knowing that, I change my opinion.” His breaths came more quickly, shallower. “You are very brave, and very clever.”

  Rowan turned in time to catch him as he crumpled forward.

  15

  The steerswoman said, “His name is Averryl, Leahson, Chanly. e’s one of yours, and he needs your help.” She stood in the lee of a small hill among many small hills, on shreds of redgrass, which were cropped to the roots and dying. A heavy wind drove across the sky, not touching her, but sweeping and snapping the patchwork cloak of the warrior who stood on the crest above. Rowan’s sword lay on the ground at her own feet, hilt to the right, as she waited for a reply.

  It was long in coming. The warrior shifted stance, paused as if in great thought, shifted again, then studied Rowan with eyes narrowed. “Averryl was lost four days ago,” she said. Rowan noticed her gaze flick to Rowan’s right, and guessed the next words before they were spoken. “Warrior, at three by you.”

  It was a lie. From Averryl’s description of his war band’s deployment, and its likely rearrangement after his disappearance, the nearest warrior should arrive from the opposite side. Rowan quashed a brief rise of anger; this woman knew nothing of the Steerswomen’s traditions, nor could she recognize Rowan as a member of the order. Lies told under such circumstances carried no ban. Instead, Rowan took the ruse as confirmation of her own understanding of the war band’s configuration.

  “He was sheltering in a stone field not far from the stream southwest of here.” Rowan

  “That’s a dangerous move.” And extremely unlikely, the warrior’s attitude implied.

  “So it seems. It almost didn’t work; the fire caught too quickly, and the goblins converged too rapidly. He was trapped. My companion and I were nearby and saw the light. We came to help.”

  The woman considered the information with a show of suspicion so extreme that it was obviously fabricated for effect. “It’s too late in the year for mating mobs.” She had straight black brows, large eyes, and a wide mouth. On such a face, emotions showed easily and were easily feigned.

  “Perhaps that’s true; I wouldn’t know.” Rowan grew annoyed again; providing Averryl’s names ought to have constituted her own credentials. “
But I have been told that the weather is much warmer this season than has been the case in previous years.”

  The suspicion grew further, into a parody of itself. “You’re no Outskirter.”

  “No.” The fact was obvious; but admitting to being an Inner Lander might amount to requesting to be victimized. “But my companion is. She’s traveling more slowly, with Averryl, perhaps a day or so behind me.”

  “Because of his wounds.” Disbelief dripped from her voice.

  “Yes. As I told you.” Averryl’s guide might be called upon to fight for two people; Bel had decided that Rowan was the better choice to send alone for help. The steerswoman dropped her attempt to control her emotions. “And he told me that you yourself would be working this position. You’re Jann, Linsdotter, Alace, and the man probably now sneaking up on my left should be Merryk, Karinson, Gena. Unless he’s switched with the man at the inner point, who, I believe, is your own son Jaffry.” She stood looking up at the woman, her feet broadly planted and her chin uptilted. She realized that, unarmed as she was, her pose made a proper Outskirterly show of defiance.

  Jann broke her act with a lopsided grin. “Ha! Sneaking up on your left, is he? Ho, Merryk!” She called across the distance. “Stop sneaking up, there’s a good fellow! We’ve found Averryl!” She added wide-gestured signals to clarify the information.

  “About time,” came the shouted reply. An Outskirter seemed to emerge from the ground and began working his way toward the pair.

  Although he was not tall, he was the broadest person Rowan had ever seen, and seemed to carry more weapons than he might reasonably be expected to use in one lifetime. As he approached he added, “He was probably sleeping. I’ve tried to break him of the habit, but it’s just no good. He backslides. Generally at night.” Arriving, he studied Rowan a moment. “Good disguise.”

  Jann thumped him on the stomach. “That’s his rescuer. And he fell asleep, true enough, in the middle of a mating mob.” She recounted Rowan’s story for his benefit, as all irony dropped from his attitude.