The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

“From anyone at all?”

  “Yes. Unless they refuse my questions, or lie to me.”

  “Then,” Jann said, “what are you doing here?”

  Rowan smiled in the dark. “We’re chasing a fallen star.” The full explanation could well occupy her until daybreak. “But information is best passed by finishing one subject before moving to another. I’ll tell all you want, but if you don’t mind, can you tell me about the Rendezvous first?”

  Jann considered, possibly gauging the importance of the information against a theoretical betrayal of her tribe’s interests. Then she shrugged. “Every twenty years, all the tribes that can find each other gather together. Nobody fights, and nobody steals. We meet, share food and stories, dance ..”

  “A celebration?”

  “Yes. Sometimes people will change their tribe at that time, usually because they fall in love; Rendezvous is a good time to do that. Or a person with an unusual skill might join a new tribe, if he thinks he’ll do better there.”

  “Why every twenty years?”

  “It’s always been done that way.”

  “What did Bel mean about the weather?”

  Jann was dubious. “In songs and stories about the events of different Rendezvous, the weather is strange. Whenever it’s mentioned at all.

  “Strange in what way?”

  From the sound, Rowan assumed that Jann had made a descriptive gesture. “It changes, suddenly. Rain, and then a clear sky. Lightning when you don’t expect it, tempests ... But you can’t take that as a fact, it’s just an artistic consideration.”

  Rowan’s reaction was delayed by her being taken aback by the phrase. “Artistic consideration,” she repeated.

  “That’s right. It’s symbolic, or a dramatic effect, or a contrast to the events. It serves the meaning of the story, the truth inside it. You can’t assume it really happened.”

  Rowan was accustomed to Bel’s conversation revealing unexpected flashes of intellectual complexity. But it was against common Inner Lands appraisal of the barbaric tribes to the east, and without being aware of it, Rowan had come to believe that Bel’s more sophisticated traits were unique to herself, and not held by Outskirters in general.

  The steerswoman had fallen back on the easier explanation. She was very surprised to discover, first, that she had made such an assumption, and second, that it was wrong.

  Bel heaved an ostentatious sigh and resigned herself to joining the conversation. “It’s not symbolic, it’s true. My grandmother told me that in her time, you could tell when to Rendezvous just by the weather.”

  “But you only need to count. Twenty years.”

  “That works, too.”

  “But the weather doesn’t work at all. I’ve been to two Rendezvous, and the weather was dry.”

  “It used to work. Now it doesn’t.”

  Rowan spoke up. “Bel, weather can’t he that regular. If Rendezvous happens every twenty years, one couldn’t possibly count on bad weather each time. Unless bad weather is normal for the time of year, every year.”

  “No,” Jann said. “Rendezvous comes at the vernal equinox.” Rowan was again surprised by her choice of words: this time, a technical term used most often by sailors. “We have rain then, but not like this, and not hail and snow, as it says in the songs.”

  “It’s in all the songs,” Bel emphasized. “The weather used to be peculiar during Rendezvous, and then it changed.”

  “Suddenly, or slowly?” Rowan asked. A suspicion began to form in her mind.

  Bel thought. “I don’t know. But no one minded. It’s much nicer to Rendezvous in fair weather. And the Face People stopped coming, too, which nobody regrets.”

  Jann asked, “Who are the Face People?”

  Rowan knew the answer from earlier conversations with Bel. “The Face People are the last Outskirters, living far in the east. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, beyond the Face People there are no more human beings at all.”

  “Why are they called the Face People?”

  “The Face is their name for the part of the Outskirts they live in,” Bel told Jann. “You’re too far west for them to Rendezvous with you, but my tribe was farther out, and the Face People used to come. They’re primitive. And nasty. And they eat their dead.” Bel adjusted her cloak across her back again, letting in a brief gust of cold air. She pulled her bedroll around her legs. “I’m going to sleep now, so if you must talk, do it quietly.”

  But Rowan had one more question. “Why did they stop coming?”

  “Perhaps they can’t count to twenty.”

  Bel slept, and while she slept, in whispers, Rowan told Jann the tale of the fallen Guidestar.

  18

  Rain concealed the dawn.

  Rowan was awakened by Averryl. He was attempting to rise, and had managed to push himself up to knees and one hand, then remained so, muttering unintelligibly, weaving as he shifted weight onto and off of his left leg, which seemed to pain him. Bel and Jann were no longer at their posts, and light from the open edges of the shelter was dim and tinged with brown.

  Averryl was barely visible in the gloom. “Lie down.” Rowan wrapped one arm beneath his chest and laid one hand against the small of his back, urging him down. “Come on, rest. It’s too early.” Against his skin, her hand and arm were immediately hot and wet.

  He seemed not to hear her, but understood her hands. He collapsed, with something like relief, spoke in a loud, slurred voice that Rowan could not understand, and abruptly became completely still. Shocked, Rowan checked his pulse. It seemed too slow, and too forceful.

  Through the open shelter sides, Bel and the others were nowhere in sight. Rowan took her sword and clambered outside—to be startled by a strange man, who was striding up quickly.

  “He’s in there?” he asked, then hurried forward and was under the shelter before Rowan could challenge him.

  She stood bemused. Another scout, she hypothesized, then found her pack and soaked her spare blouse from the waterskin while rain drizzled down her neck.

  The stranger was sitting on his haunches, studying Averryl silently. Rowan gave him one cautious glance, then set to bathing Averryl’s back with the wet cloth. The man watched a moment, then without a word took the shirt from her and continued the job.

  She sat back. “I’m Rowan,” she said, then added, as she had learned to, “Only the one name.”

  “Garvin, Edenson, Mourah.” He gestured. “Help me turn him.”

  The sick man, who had revived under the cool water, protested peevishly, but when the newcomer reassured him, he recognized the voice and struggled to become alert. “Garvin?”

  “None other.”

  “Where were you?”

  Rowan handed Garvin the waterskin, and he resoaked the cloth. “I never saw your fire. Met a troop and ran like a tumblebug. I know when I’m in over my head.” He wiped the cloth down Averryl’s chest. “Looks like you don’t.”

  “I was surrounded.”

  “Mm. Well.” Garvin examined, but did not touch, the injured arm. The wound itself was wrapped in linen torn from Bel’s spare blouse, secured with thongs. Below this, the forearm showed a single raised ridge along the inside to the wrist, and the middle two fingers of the hand were visibly swollen. The other fingers and the thumb seemed normal, which followed no logic Rowan could discern.

  Averryl relaxed under his comrade’s ministrations, and presently Garvin caught Rowan’s eye and jerked his head in suggestion that they speak outside.

  The drizzle had stopped, and the air had begun to move, a light west wind. Garvin peered at the sky, then shook his head in incomprehension of the weather’s pattern. “Do you think he’ll lose the arm?” Rowan asked.

  The warrior was surprised. “No. No ...” His eyes were deep-sea blue in his tanned face, and an old scar arced from his left temple to the side of his nose. He studied the steerswoman speculatively from under bristling yellow brows, then, by way of explanation, held out his own thick forearm and with one
finger traced a line that followed the ridge on Averryl’s arm. “Goblin spit. Runs down the nerve, here.” The finger ran down to his palm, which he tapped thoughtfully. “He’ll lose the use of those fingers, for certain. He’ll be able to use the arm itself, but he might not want to. It’ll pain him forever.”

  Rowan nodded. She knew that damage to a nerve often resulted in paralysis of a part of the body farther from the backbone. “What about the fever?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. If he gets past that, he’ll do well enough.” With that he descended into internal musing, eyes automatically scanning the horizon as his expression faintly mirrored his thoughts.

  Abruptly, the wind swept from west to north, and the clouds above began to roil. Garvin stared up, slack-jawed. “Look at that.”

  With uncanny speed, the cloud cover churned and seemed to tumble gray masses down toward them, which bled into streamers of mist that trailed off to the southeast before they reached ground. Breaks showed in the layers above, revealing a blue first faint, then brighter. Around the little camp, spots of yellow sunlight illuminated the decimated redgrass. To the north, a clearly demarcated line of clear weather appeared, sped toward them, swept in, arced overhead, and flew south, bringing a coldness that descended so suddenly that Rowan’s ears popped.

  She and Garvin traded looks of amazement. “Rendezvous weather?” the steerswoman hazarded. Garvin gave no reply.

  A voice hailed, and, squinting against the brightness in the distance, Rowan recognized Bel, waving. The Outskirter paused to stoop to the ground, then approached at a jog trot, dragging something behind.

  Leaving Garvin to tend Averryl, Rowan went forward and met her friend. “What do you have there?”

  “A tent for Averryl. Did Garvin arrive?”

  “Yes. But I meant, what are you carrying the tent on?”

  “This is a train. No, don’t examine it; pull it. I have to go back and help. The tribe is moving.”

  Rowan positioned herself between two poles whose grips were worn shiny from countless hands. “Where is the tribe going?” She took a moment to wonder where such lengths of wood had come from, in the treeless Outskirts.

  “It’s not going, it’s coming. They’re pulling everything up and moving here.” She gave Rowan a dray-beast’s slap. “Go.”

  By the time she reached the little camp, Rowan had acquired companions: six goats had come up from behind, passed, then doubled back to pace alongside her. They jittered, shaking flop-eared heads in disapproval of the barren ground.

  Their voices drew Garvin from the shelter, and when Rowan dropped the train grips, he immediately fell to dismantling the conveyance, standing on one side and directing Rowan to imitate his actions on the other.

  The frame of the train was made from two poles, some twelve feet long, and a four-foot spreader. Behind the grips, the gap narrowed away from the puller, as in a travois, but with a single small black wheel at the point. Between the grips and the wheel stretched a hide platform, apparently part of the tent itself. Garvin released the wheel on his side and twisted his pole, and it slid back, collapsing the structure. Rowan did the same on her side.

  Hot damp breath blew down her neck, and something nibbled at her hair. Garvin reached across and shoved the goat away from Rowan; it protested, then clambered forward, over the train and past the rain fly. Two more goats joined it, appearing from the right, and when Rowan paused to look about, she counted a full dozen nervously wandering animals.

  “Hey-oh, Rowan!” someone called from behind. Rowan turned, and the person waved at her from a distant rise, then angled away to the south. It was no one she knew.

  Garvin was taking the poles themselves apart: they were constructed of four-foot lengths of tangleroot wood, the mated ends revealing curious twisting joints, reinforced by wood strips and leather straps. Rowan imitated Garvin’s actions.

  She spotted another warrior far off, moving from her right to her left, and understood that this was the direction the approaching tribe followed. More goats appeared, reluctantly trailing after the figure.

  The steerswoman made to continue disassembling, but Garvin stopped her. “No. We want one long pole, one short each.” That was what they had. He chased away a kid goat that was perched atop the folded mass of the tent, and began to untie lashings. The kid complained, skipped aside, and made a dash to regain its position.

  It was swept from its feet by a tall woman, and draped across her shoulders as she strode into the camp and strode out again without pausing. There was another person beyond her, and yet another beyond, pacing her at measured distance, all warriors in gear, but without packs.

  “Who chose this spot? It’s terrible!” Two train-draggers had appeared, and dropped their loads. One fell to work, and the other fell to complaining, pointing here and there at inadequacies of the terrain. Three walkers with outsized packs came up to the cold remains of yesterday’s fire, and examined it, shaking their heads, then scuffed dirt to cover it. They found a better location ten feet away, dropped their packs, withdrew implements, and set to digging a shallow hole. More goats straggled through.

  Rowan and Garvin did not bother to take down the rain fly where Averryl sheltered; they drove stakes, looped thongs, and prepared to draw the stitched hide up and directly over the tarp itself. Four more draggers appeared, found positions, and began to disassemble their trains.

  “There, there, there!” a high voice squealed, admonished by a quieter deep voice. A flock of children flurried forward, parting around Garvin and Rowan like a burbling tide around rocks as they passed. One little girl froze and stared at Rowan, giggling in hysterical shyness at seeing a stranger, and was drawn off by a bent-backed old man. “Hush and stay away, now, Averryl’s sick.” A serious-faced blond boy paused and stooped to peer in at Averryl, then stationed himself protectively nearby as a crowd of over a hundred goats of every size, age, and combination of colors swept in, through, and out again, exactly as the children had done. An elderly woman dropped her train by the new fire pit and began unloading blocks of peat.

  Bel appeared, pulling a train, locked in conversation with a gray-haired man who spoke with much gesticulation and walked with a limp. She spared Rowan a wave. The man took an item from the train’s platform, stumped over to Rowan, and handed it to her: a foot-square box of stiffened wool fabric, patterned in maroon and violet. Not knowing what else to do with it, she tucked it under the rising tent as she and Garvin lifted the lower end of its short uprights. The guardian boy left his post to help, pulling the tent’s side into shape.

  A shadow fell over Rowan’s shoulder; she looked up and found three other tents, erected back-to-back in a square with her own. As she secured the last guy lines, a woman nearby said, “Like this, Rowan,” and showed her the best way to cross the lines of the adjacent tent.

  “Thank you.”

  A man approached, wearing two shoulder-slung pouches, straps crossing on his chest. He was of warrior age, but he carried no sword; the steerswoman noticed that he lacked a left arm. “Rowan!” he greeted her, and then said, “Which one?” indicating the tents with his only hand. Before she could reply, Garvin, now inside the tent, held open the entrance flap and waved the man inside. The flap closed, to be reopened an instant later as the rain fly and its two gnarled poles were thrust into Rowan’s arms. Atop the tent, an overlap slapped open from below and was tied into place by hands that vanished a moment later.

  “Rowan?”

  She turned to see an Outskirter standing behind her; he slid a pack from his shoulders and brushed a strand of white hair from his face. A thick white braid trailed down his broad chest, and his eyes were black in nests of weather-beaten wrinkles.

  “Kammeryn, Murson, Gena,” he introduced himself, and added with a gentle smile, “Seyoh. Welcome to our camp.”

  The steerswoman stood bemused, arms full of canvas and tangle-root, and looked around. She was in the middle of a town.

  Her newly erected tent faced the cent
ral square, where the fire pit was already being put to use by two squabbling mertutials. Other tents circled the areas, entrance flaps and occasionally entire sides rolled open and secured above, to show inner chambers carpeted with patterned cloth. Outskirters—warriors and mertutials both—strode, wandered, or bustled according to their individual duties. Half a dozen warriors arranged a carpet before one of the open tents, dropped packs, and settled to relax and converse.

  “Thank you,” Rowan said to Kammeryn, “but I feel a bit odd being welcomed to a place when I haven’t moved ten feet from where I originally stood. Perhaps I should say to you, ‘Welcome to my former bivouac.’”

  19

  “We have been told that you are a steerswoman. Now you must tell us what that means.”

  The adjoining walls of four adjacent tents had been rolled up to the ceiling and tied in place, creating a single large chamber, its remaining walls rippling like water from the chill wind gusting outside. Above, vent flaps were turned up, affording sixteen identical views of crystalline blue sky. Their configuration against the flow of wind occasionally set them humming faintly, disharmoniously.

  Rowan and Bel sat in the center of a thin carpet angularly patterned in blue and white, surrounded by a circle of eighteen seated Outskirters. Kammeryn sat directly before his guests, an armed cushion of the same design behind him. Rowan took a moment to scan the faces. There was no clear demarcation between warrior and mertutial; but she noted that the woman on Kammeryn’s right was of his own age, and certainly a mertutial, and that the man to his left was younger than Rowan, and surely a warrior. There seemed to be a general trend toward maturity, progressing around the circle to end at the seyoh’s seat. Rowan wondered if, should Kammeryn die, the circle would simply shift, adding one young face at the beginning.

  “I said a great deal to Jann, about myself and my purposes. She didn’t pass the information on to you?”

  “Jann spoke to me only, briefly, and returned to her position on the outer circle. What you have to say, we need to hear from you.”