The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  She introduced herself. “Kree, Edensdotter, Mourah.” She resembled her brother Garvin very little; he was broad-shouldered, pale-haired, she compact and fiery. His eyes were a wide, deep blue, hers small and close-set, of a sharp blue so pale as to be almost colorless.

  Rowan was disturbed. “Has the council decided so quickly?” It did not bode well.

  “No,” Kree reassured her. “I stepped out, to get you settled. You’ll be sleeping in with my band, for tonight, at least. With Averryl here, and Fletcher who knows where, there’s room.”

  Bel nodded, satisfied. “Good; that’s better than having a tent to ourselves. The more people, the warmer, and it’s turning cold all of a sudden.” She made a suggestion: “If we’re accepted, you could use me in Fletcher’s place. Or Averryl’s, if he can’t fight.”

  Kree considered, then poked her son in the ribs. “Will Averryl be able to fight?” she asked him.

  “Mander doesn’t know.”

  Displeased, Kree sat considering implications; from her demeanor, Rowan understood that Kree was chief of her war band. Kree spoke to Bel. “Are you any good?” Bel’s reply was a small smile, which seemed to satisfy Kree. “And you?” she asked Rowan.

  The steerswoman winced. “I don’t yet know what my status should be, if I’ll be permitted to serve as a warrior. But I think I can hold my own: Bel and I traveled alone from the Inner Lands, and we’ve made it here safely.”

  “The Inner Lands ... how far is that from here?”

  “About five hundred miles.”

  “Eight hundred kilometers,” Bel added, translating to Outskirter terminology.

  Kree permitted herself to be impressed. She gave Hari another poke. “Show them where to sleep. And where’s their gear?”

  The boy scrambled to his feet and disappeared into the tent, returning with packs and Rowan’s cloak, which he seemed to consider a very peculiar object.

  Bel took it from him and passed it to Rowan. “Lead on, Hari.”

  “Harramyn,” he corrected.

  The afternoon passed, and very differently from Rowan’s first experience among an Outskirter tribe. There, people had avoided acknowledging her and spoke to her only when necessary, or when tricked into it. Here, every passing person seemed to seek an excuse to come by her tent, to address her, and especially to call her by name. It was: “Rowan, how is Averryl?”

  “Are you really from the Inner Lands, Rowan?”

  “Here, Rowan, come lend a hand,” and “Hello, Rowan, what are you doing?”

  “I’m writing,” she answered for the dozenth time, on this occasion to a mertutial who had paused before her as she sat outside Kree’s tent. “I’m trying to record the things I’m learning in the Outskirts, and what I see that I don’t understand yet.”

  “Writing ...” The old man thought long, then shook his bald head disapprovingly. “We used to do that. We gave it up.” And he hurried off on his duties, arms full of dirty laundry, leaving Rowan bewildered, with a hundred questions trapped between her mind and voice.

  “Ho, Rowan!” But it was Bel this time, returning from a stroll between the encampment and the inner circle of guards.

  Rowan greeted her with relief. “I should have gone with you. This is getting tiring.”

  “I thought you liked answering questions.” Bel settled down on the rug, stretching her short legs before her and leaning back on her elbows.

  “I do. But not the same ones, over and over.”

  “Say you’ll tell them later, all together. It can be like a story. That’s what I’ve been doing. Everyone wanted to hear about Averryl’s rescue; I’m going to make a poem of it.”

  “Please don’t embroider. If someone asks me, I’ll have to tell the true version.”

  “Ha. The true version is what I’ll tell. It was a good fight.”

  “Yes. And I sincerely hope I’m never in another like it.” She closed her logbook and rubbed fingers that were stiffening in the chill air over eyes that were blurring from close work. She had been trying to conserve her paper, writing as small as possible, forcing herself to be concise. Even with these tactics, there was too much for her to effectively notate: hundreds of observations, large and small, a sea of detail.

  Bel looked at her sidelong. “You’ve been sitting there since I left you?”

  “Yes. Trying to catch up.” She had had no opportunity for the last few days, and little before that, to make her entries. Looking around, she realized with surprise that the deepening of the chill in the air was due to the approach of evening. “I had no idea,” she said.

  “A steerswoman never gets lost, except in her own thoughts,” Bel observed wryly. She thumped Rowan on the back. “Take a walk. Everyone’s busy getting ready for evening meal and bed. They won’t bother you.”

  Rowan left her book and pens in Bel’s care, and was only greeted twice on her way to the camp’s edge. There, looking out, she could find no sign of the inner circle, only some twenty goats in two unequal flocks, nuzzling the barren ground, shaking their flop-eared heads in annoyance.

  It was quiet out on the veldt, despite the icy breeze: no redgrass stood to chatter in the wind, no tanglebrush, no rattle and rasp and squeal of goblins. Behind her, the camp noises defined an audible delimited shape, like a safe room with invisible walls. Following an inner impulse, she skirted the camp, circling around to where she could look out to the east—for all the past month, east had been her direction, eastward lay her unmarked road and her final destination, and she found herself seeking it, trailing toward it as surely as a banner driven by western winds.

  As she came around a cluster of tents, she noticed that someone was sharing with her the quiet fall of evening on the veldt.

  Kammeryn stood some forty feet out from the camp, facing the horizon. Rowan was reluctant to interrupt his solitude, but she was certain that he had heard her approach. She did not know if it was more polite to greet him, or to ignore him, or to turn away and walk elsewhere. She made her choice by making no choice, and stood quietly a few paces to the side and behind him, waiting for him to take note of her. But he did not acknowledge her, did not turn to her or speak, and minutes passed.

  He seemed not to be musing idly, but studying something. She tried to find what was holding his attention. The land around the camp was used and barren, up the near hills, across them, up the farther hills. The tribe had already passed this way, had only doubled back for Averryl’s sake. They could not remain here long; perhaps this was Kammeryn’s concern.

  Beyond the hills the land was lower, and not so visible. Scouts would have told Kammeryn what lay there; perhaps he was making his future plans.

  In the farthest distance, at the limit of sight: an irregular line, lit glowing pink from the light of the falling sun behind the camp. It was too low to be mountains, too high to be part of these low hills, and too nearby to be the distant Dust Ridge. No such feature was marked on Rowan’s poor maps. She stepped forward unconsciously, fascinated, gaining no better perspective.

  When she reached Kammeryn’s side, she saw that he was not looking out, but up. “The Eastern Guidestar,” she said.

  He nodded, slowly, accepting her presence without surprise. “If it fell, would it fall here?”

  “On the camp? I don’t know, but it’s not very likely.”

  He stood silent again, and the world grew darker as the sun disappeared. More stars began to show: the Eye of the Bull, the Hound’s Nose, and at the horizon, the Lion’s Heart.

  The seyoh’s voice was very quiet. “If they both fell, how would we know where we are, how would we know where to go?”

  “By the true stars, and by the sun.” If the Guidestars fell, she suspected that there would be greater and more urgent concerns than the one he voiced. And yet she sympathized with him; loss of direction was important to his life, and was the one result most easily comprehended. “Navigation by the stars is complicated, and less accurate,” she told him, “but it can be done. If you lik
e, I can teach you, or one of your people. If you feel the need.”

  “Unseen Guidestars,” he said quietly, “and a Guidestar falling, wizards coming to the Outskirts ... How can what you say be true?” His face was no longer distinguishable in the gloom.

  Rowan could find no further thing to say to lend greater force to her knowledge. “It is true,” she told him. “And the things Bel said—I hadn’t considered them before, but yes, I believe her. Sometime, I don’t know when, but soon or later, these things will affect your people.”

  “The council cannot reach consensus,” he said. “My word will only permit you seven days.”

  Her heart sank. “I’m sorry. I’ve come to like your people. I almost feel at home here.”

  He was a dim gray shape, his white braid falling across his heart like a shaft of light. He spoke, not like a seyoh, but as a man, with reluctant, disbelieving wonder. “How can Guidestars fall? They’ve been there forever.”

  “They haven’t been there forever. Nothing has been anywhere forever.” It seemed too large a statement; she doubted it herself, even as her heart and mind both recognized its truth. “You yourself haven’t been here forever,” she told him, “nor your people. Long ago, their lands lay west of here; longer ago, farther west. And before? Who can say? But they must once have had a home.”

  Out of the gloom he answered, and it was in an altered voice, soft, but with a slow subtle rhythm: the voice of a storyteller:

  “‘They came at last upon a river, cool and deep, wide in silver sunlight. Here to the banks, and north and south, ran redgrass, deep, and high as the waist of a man, and the air was sweet and warm. The people said each to the other: “Our wandering is ended, and now we will stay. This place is our home.”

  “‘But Einar said to them: “This is not your home.” And in forty days, when the land was made barren, he led them across the river; and they traveled for twenty days.

  “ The people climbed long into a high land, where the sun shone around them on every side. In endless winds the grasses danced and spoke, and there were glittering stones upon the ground. The people looked up into light, around into light, and down into shadows below, where they saw the peaks and hills that rose from mist like stars from night. Every eye saw only beauty, and the people said to each other: “We will not leave here, but remain in this land. This is now our home.”

  “‘But Einar said: “This is not your home.” And in thirty days the redgrass was silent in its death, and Einar led his people down into the valleys; and they traveled for twenty days.

  “‘Around the valleys stood high hills like hands to shelter the herds and the people. Small brooks fell far from above, to cross and cross again the lands below. The goats climbed among the falls, finding rich redgrass between, and shelter from the winds. Below were roots for the people, and blossoms, and level ground for the camp.

  “ The people then said: “We will stay here. This will be our home.” And every eye turned to Einar.

  “‘Einar took up his weapon and flung it down onto the ground. Spreading his arms wide, he cried out to his people in a voice of anger: “This is not your home, and this is not your home, and this is not your home!”

  “‘And the people understood that he answered them for the future; that they were never to have a home; and that, being answered, they must never ask again.’”

  The steerswoman heard him turn to her, invisible in darkness, and she could not tell if he still spoke from the tale, or was now using his own words: “We are the wanderers on the edge of the world. We are the warriors of the land. We are the destroyers, and the seed.” He turned away. “You may stay with us, both of you, for seven days, by my word. In seven days I will give that word again, for another seven days, and again after that; and I will continue for as long as I choose. If ever I tell you to go, you will go immediately. If you ever betray my tribe, you will die.”

  Rowan held her breath, then nodded at the dark, and the stars, and the wind from the veldt. “Thank you,” she said.

  21

  In the morning, there was rain again. A velvet mist hovered close to the ground, ghosting up the sides of the tents in the gray light, and the soft pattering reminded Rowan of redgrass.

  As she emerged from the tent, Rowan discovered a curious object lying on the ground before the tent flap, half-buried in the dirt, as if a passing foot had crushed it, casually or maliciously: a tangle of bright yarn, blue, green, and white, looped about a pair of broken tangle-brush twigs. She nudged it with the scarred toe of one boot and reconstructed it in her imagination. It resembled the sort of hanging decoration called a “god’s eye” in the Inner Lands, favored in poorer households. What its Outskirts significance might be, Rowan had no clue; it might have been a child’s lost toy, a lucky fetish, or, more disturbingly, a curse-object. Choosing the route of caution, she left it undisturbed and went about her day.

  As she was returning from the cessfield, a little girl came dashing by. She stopped short at seeing Rowan, ran up to her, all thrill and urgency, stopped again at the prospect of addressing a stranger, and finally lingered in shy indecision, studying her toes.

  “Yes?” Rowan prompted her.

  The child replied with her chin tucked tight to her chest. “Kree,” she began.

  “What about her?”

  “Looking for Kree” was the muffled reply.

  “I haven’t seen her,” Rowan answered. And the girl was gone.

  At the edge of camp, Rowan found a little crowd of some dozen people: warriors, mertutials, and children, all chattering excitedly. Among them, Rowan spotted a pair of long arms gesturing, heard a voice exclaiming cheerfully, “Come on, back off, wait, I have to report to Kree first.”

  Rowan joined the small crowd and asked a male warrior, “What’s happening?”

  He was more interested in the focus of the crowd’s attention. “We figured you dead,” he called out.

  The warrior addressed caught the man’s eye with a gaze of deep disappointment. Then, with a preliminary outfling of arms, he assumed a broad, theatrical, clasp-handed pose of gratitude, a pained expression of piety, and directed both at the sky above, as if this constituted reply. The man beside Rowan snorted in derision, but more others laughed, and some clapped the newcomer on the back. He pretended to stagger from the force of the blows. “So, do I have to wade through you to get to my chief, or is someone going to fetch her?”

  “I sent Sith with a message,” a mertutial told him.

  “Ah. Wonderful. And by now Sithy’s at the cessfield, torturing a tumblebug.” He was a long man, with long bones in a long body, less muscular than the average warrior; his piebald cloak flapped to the action of angular elbows, an effect faintly ridiculous. His dank hair was decidedly yellow, his beard woefully sparse, and his long face showed his emotions clearly, emphatically, so that as he winced in indecision the expression was so extreme as to become the very archetype of indecisiveness. He visibly rocked, as if brains and gawky body were at odds with each other. This was Fletcher, Rowan realized. The missing warrior.

  “Well,” he said, “well ...” He kicked a knotted bundle that lay at his feet. “Take a look at this.” He dropped to the ground, folding his legs beneath him like a nesting crane, opened the bundle, and spread it and its contents for display:

  A number of crusted, uncured goatskins; a tangle of knotted strips of the same material; an oddly chipped stone the size and approximate shape of a flattened hand; and two lengths of tanglebrush root, apparently split from one piece, showing a number of gouges along their lengths ...

  Rowan came closer, maneuvering around others who were now stooping or sitting beside the items. One woman held up the collection of skins, revealing them to be attached to each other clumsily with thongs, to form an object like an irregular gappy blanket, singed and blackened down one edge. The steerswoman reached between two observers and came back with one of the root segments. It was nicked and chipped along one side only, and the splintered en
d began at a particularly deep cut.

  “It makes a poor weapon,” she remarked.

  Fletcher nodded appreciatively to the crowd at large. “And that”—he pointed—“makes a poor party suit.” The woman had slipped the skins over her head, and the whole arrangement flopped ludicrously about her body as she undertook a series of poses, as if displaying finery.

  “Someone wore that?” Rowan asked.

  “Wore it to his own funeral,” Fletcher replied, catching Rowan’s eye; and abruptly, he stopped short, his mobile features stilled in amazement.

  To Rowan’s own surprise, his gaze quickly tracked a route familiar to her in the Inner Lands, never seen yet in the Outskirts: from her face to the gold chain at her throat, to the silver ring on the middle finger of her left hand, and back to her face. “A steerswoman.”

  Rowan was bemused. “That’s right.”

  Sky-blue eyes stared at her dumbly; then suddenly he snatched the chipped stone from the hand of a man who was examining it and thrust it at Rowan, all excitement. “What do you make of this?”

  She took it; and seemingly of itself, it shifted in her grip into a comfortable, balanced position. “A hand-axe.”

  He watched her face, fascinated, then made a wide, questioning gesture that included all of the accoutrements.

  Rowan added them together in her mind. “One of the Face People.”

  “‘Face People’?”

  “Primitive people, living on the eastern edge of the inhabited Outskirts,” she provided. “They’re not normally seen this far in.”

  He nodded, slowly, and seemed to lose himself to thought for a long moment. Then he broke his trance and threw up his arms. “A steerswoman said it, it must be true,” he declared, then addressed the crowd. “Did you catch that? Primitive people. Not normally seen this far in.” He turned back to Rowan. “And you can add to your information that they’re nasty little fighters, slick as a snake, quick as a weasel. I’d rather face a troop of goblins.”