The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Rowan sat up. “Fletcher?” He approached.

  She did not like to upset him; but she needed to know. “Does this smell like your swamp?”

  He tested it. “Yes.”

  * * *

  Rowan and Bel walked that morning with Kammeryn.

  “According to the wizards Shammer and Dhree,” Rowan said, “demons need salt water, and a salt water different from that found in the Inland Sea. North in the Inner Lands, there is an area called the salt bog; I’ve been there, and the water smelled a bit like that egg. There are legends that demons once existed in the salt bog, but no one in living memory has ever seen one.”

  “If they need special water,” Bel added, “that would explain why they’re so rare. And why we see signs of them now that we’re moving closer to Fletcher’s swamp.”

  “Perhaps the Face People have some experience of them.” Kammeryn mused. “Face People, demons, wizards. You bring strange things, steerswoman.”

  Rowan was taken aback. “I bring nothing,” she told him, “but information.”

  During the morning, messages were regularly relayed from the scouts. No sign was found of demons. The most skillful scout, a woman named Maud, was sent much farther ahead than was usual, specifically to search for the creatures. Garvin was pulled from his band to serve temporarily as her contact, at which Jann commented: “Now we’re short. What a bother: I suppose it’s Fletcher’s talent for trouble, again.” Orranyn’s band had been moved up within the formation and was now dragging train. With Garvin absent, burly Merryk was both dragging train and carrying a pack.

  Rowan was unable to tell whether Jann’s observation was by way of complaint. “Surely it’s better to find out about things before they cause problems.”

  The warrior sighed aggrievedly. “Of course it is. But the thing is,” she said, glowering, “Fletcher’s not a good warrior.” Merryk shot her a cautioning glance; the bald statement was of the sort that caused Outskirters to take quick offense. Fletcher, however, was well out of earshot.

  Jann continued. “You’d think that it would be the skillful warrior who finds danger first; we’re trained that way all our lives. If there are strangers, or monsters, we ought to spot them. But we don’t; a gangling fool like Fletcher does. It’s like an insult.”

  “Perhaps,” Rowan ventured, “it’s because he has less ability with the usual Outskirter skills that he’s developed—” She sought the word. “—more observativeness, perhaps. The ability to notice the incongruous.”

  “Or maybe his god protects him,” Bel said, then knit her brows at Rowan’s dubious expression. “You’re too quick to deny the gods, Rowan,” Bel admonished the steerswoman.

  “I’m not quick at all,” Rowan began, prepared to expand upon the subject; but Jann forestalled the explication that would have followed. She turned to Bel, speaking hotly.

  “His god, ha! Did you hear what he said, that he found that egg by almost putting his knee on it? He kneels to pray, Bel; you should think of that. No warrior kneels to anyone. Not even to the gods.” She trudged in silence for a long moment, then spoke as if to herself. “There are bad gods and better gods. You fight the bad ones and deal with the better ones. But any man who abases himself, even to gods, is no Outskirter.”

  Bel agreed easily. “That’s true.”

  Rowan was taken aback. “Didn’t you once say that one ought to respect other people’s religions?”

  “Yes. Because a person’s religion is a part of his own way of honor. But this is different. When you belong to a tribe, the whole tribe is depending on you to do your part. You have to do it right, or someone could die. Your first honor is to protect the tribe.” She thought long; high above, a pair of hawkbugs swooped, fighting for territory. Bel continued, uncertain. “I don’t understand Fletcher’s god; it doesn’t sound right to me. If he were in the Inner Lands, I wouldn’t think twice about it.

  “But this is the Outskirts, and Fletcher is calling himself one of us. If he follows this god, then whatever he does, he does for different reasons than we do.” She became decided. “In the Outskirts, it’s Outskirter ways that succeed. If Fletcher wants to be an Outskirter, then he ought to be one completely.”

  They walked in silence for a while. “It seems to me,” Rowan hazarded, “that whatever his motivations, Fletcher is doing more good than harm.”

  From behind them, Jaffry made one of his rare contributions. “So you say.”

  * * *

  When noon meal was passed out, Rowan took the opportunity to drop back in the crowd, eventually falling in near Fletcher and Averryl.

  She greeted them, then addressed Averryl. “How are you? Are you feeling fit to fight? And if that counts as an Outskirter insult, please accept my apology in advance.”

  Fletcher laughed out loud; Averryl did not, but his gray eyes crinkled. “It’s no insult. And you’d have to do a great deal, steerswoman, for me to take any insult. I owe you and Bel my life.” He still carried no load; but his steps were easier, his right arm swinging freely to their rhythm. His left arm he carried close to his body, occasionally flexing his hand unconsciously. The middle two fingers, slack, did not follow the motions of the others.

  Fletcher was walking with his sword drawn, its hilt tucked under his right arm and its length braced along the forearm. He had a whetstone in his left hand and was idly honing the weapon. “A metal sword,” Rowan observed, with surprise.

  “Yes, indeed.” He took a moment to study the edge. “Lovely thing, isn’t it? Got it in Alemeth. Saved my pennies and commissioned the swordsmith three streets over to make it for me. Went and watched him at his work every day.” He grinned. “Bothered him no end.” He walked without looking at his direction, and the warrior in front of him threw wary glances at the exposed blade waving at her back. Fletcher ignored her, giving careful attention only to the maintenance of his fine weapon, as he strode along in his loose-legged lope.

  All Fletcher’s actions carried excessive movement: wide-armed gestures, turns of the body when a shift of the eyes would do—sloppy, undisciplined motions. It was impossible to imagine him being a superior fighter.

  “Why have you never been challenged for your sword?” Rowan asked unthinking, then immediately regretted the statement. It contained an implied insult; that, if challenged, he would certainly lose.

  He took no offense. “I was challenged about as soon as I arrived.”

  The precision of his honing suffered as he warmed to his story. “There

  I was,” Fletcher began, “settling into my first day in camp, and a huge strapping barbarian steps right up to me and starts complimenting me on my weapon. And I’m trying to thank him without thanking him, because my grandfather warned me about that. But if he’d warned me a little better, I would have known what this fellow was leading up to; it’s all part of the form, see. So, I finally get the idea, everyone needing to explain it to me first, and I still wasn’t all that certain they weren’t just having me on.”

  “But you fought him and won.”

  “No,” he replied. “I fought him and lost. Took all of about five seconds.”

  “But—” And she indicated the sword.

  He looked down. “Yes, right.” He resumed honing. “Well, I made such a fool of myself that it was pretty obvious to everyone that I was mostly useless, and not really a warrior at all. Then they all found out I hadn’t gone walkabout, which meant that I was really a child. A little embarrassing. But the best thing, all around, really.”

  “And the warrior gave the sword back to you?” At this, Averryl snorted a laugh.

  “Lord, no!” Fletcher asserted. “You don’t waste a fine weapon like this on a child.”

  “But—”

  He waved down her protest and indicated that she should let him finish his tale at his own pace. “So,” he went on, getting back to work as he spoke, “the warrior who took my sword starts following me around, giving me suggestions, correcting my behavior when I do something part
icularly silly. He even offers me fighting practice sessions, and before I know it, he’s become my mentor. Eventually I learn enough to try to become a warrior. Now, when a child is ready for walkabout—” He paused for the briefest moment, then continued. “When a child goes walkabout, it’s customary for the mentor to give him a gift.” And he smiled.

  “Your sword.”

  “Right. It was—well, it’s not usual to give something this fine. He was a good teacher, and now he’s a good friend, and I’d be dead a hundred times over, if it wasn’t for the things he taught me.”

  “A thousand times over,” Averryl corrected.

  “Really? That many?” Fletcher considered, with raised brows. “Well, you know best, I’m sure.”

  Rowan understood. “You were his mentor?” she asked Averryl.

  The Outskirter shook his head sadly. “Someone had to he.”

  Fletcher spared a glance from his honing to look down at the steerswoman. “That’s right,” he said. “Averryl taught me, Averryl argued for me when I came back, and Averryl recommended me to Kree when there was an opening in her band. She thinks a lot of him; if she crosses the line before he does, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he took her place.” At this, Averryl looked politely dubious. Fletcher continued. “She wasn’t all that sure of me at first, but I’ve held up my end, well enough, I think.”

  “She speaks well of you,” Rowan informed him.

  He smiled and made an expansive gesture with the hand that held the whetstone. “It’s my charm,” he assured her. “Purely my charm.”

  Rowan spent the next morning among the goats, which traveled in two great streaming herds on either side of the tribe. As she was conversing with one of the flockmasters, she recognized the angular form and characteristic movement of Fletcher, on guard duty on the inner circle at position eight. He greeted her with a wide wave, which earned him a silent, energetic scolding from the relay, who had mistaken the gesture for a signal.

  Rowan continued her discussion with the flockmaster, attempting to discover more about the specific differences between Outskirter goats and those living in the Inner Lands. She was considerably handicapped by a lack of knowledge of farm goats, which she had frankly never thought to study. Nevertheless, she thought she could discern differences other than appearance.

  Outskirter goats seemed on the whole to be both more wary and more sociable than their farm cousins. On her arrival among them, they instantly converged upon her, then stood slightly back as she was submitted to careful inspection by one fat and lively female. The flockmaster, a mertutial named Kester, solemnly introduced the she-goat to her as “the Queen of Nine-side.”

  “She’s a nice old queen,” Kester told Rowan. “Doesn’t mind stepping down to let me be queen goat, now and then.”

  Rowan was amused. “Can a human male be a queen goat?”

  “Oh, yes. Have to be, sometimes. And sometimes I’m a king billy, and sometimes I’m a kid. Right now, I’m king; see the queen watching me? If she doesn’t like what I’m doing, she’ll come and stare at me, ‘til I do something else.”

  Rowan and Kester strode along together, with the tribe moving on Rowan’s right. She found she liked the sight; she liked movement, and travel. Here was the equivalent of an entire town, all of them doing exactly what she most enjoyed.

  At first, walking among the flock, Rowan took pains to avoid the puddles of goat muck. In this she was frustrated: the animals seemed to defecate almost constantly. She soon gave it up as a lost cause.

  “It’s the redgrass,” Kester informed her. “Runs through them, fast as anything. And it comes out not much different from how it went in. A goat’ll eat a day, maybe two days before it’s worked up enough to cud.”

  Rowan’s scant knowledge indicated that this ought not to occur. “Greengrass would probably serve them better.”

  His hand swept the horizon. “Find some. They’ll thank you.” Rowan laughed. “How does a goat thank someone?”

  “By not crapping on your foot.”

  At noon a brief rest was called. Adults dropped trains and packs to sit in the dim sunlight that filtered through high, thin clouds. The children arranged themselves on cloaks and trains, and instantly fell asleep.

  Rowan wandered along the edge of their area, eventually coming across two adults engaged in a homely, comfortable occupation: a woman, of about Rowan’s age, was carefully combing out the long hair of an older man. The woman herself wore her hair short, and by this Rowan knew her as a warrior, and her companion as a mertutial. Warriors wore their hair short: men’s hair routinely to the shoulders, although trimmed back from their faces; women’s sometimes the same, but more often shorter still. When a warrior crossed the line, he or she ceased to trim the hair in a fighter’s style. Length of hair was a good indication of how long a person had been a mertutial.

  As Rowan approached the pair, the man looked up at her. Something in his eyes, in his posture, in the pure sunlit smile with which he greeted her, made her alter her intended manner. “Hello,” she said with pronounced cheerfulness, as though to a child. “I’m Rowan. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Deely,” he declared, leaning forward to tell her, as if it were an important statement. Then he leaned back with pleasure into the attentions of the woman with the comb.

  The warrior introduced herself. “Zo, Linsdotter, Alace.” Sister to Jann, Rowan noted.

  “Oh!” Hearing three names prompted the man. He closed his eyes to think. “Delanno, Linson, Alace.” He opened them again and smiled. “Zo is combing my hair.” Although his pronunciation was perfect, he spoke with the careful separation of phrase common in the slow in thought.

  “I see.” Rowan sat down beside the pair. Both had Jann’s straight brows and thick hair: Deely’s a solid black, Zo’s a warm shade lighter. “It looks like it feels good.”

  “It does,” he said seriously. “It feels good.” He squirmed a bit, to emphasize the point, and his sister said, “Stay still.”

  Taking the usual Outskirter conversational opening, Rowan asked, addressing Zo, “Whose band is yours?”

  Deely replied for his sister. “No one’s. Zo is a scout.”

  “That explains why I haven’t seen her before.” She exchanged a glance with Zo, then continued with Deely. “Scouts stay out a long time, don’t they?” She became interested in him, and in his presence.

  “Real scouts stay out a long time,” Deely informed her. The statement saddened him. “It’s very important.” He was quoting someone, who had once spoken those words to him as explanation and reassurance.

  “I see. But Jann and Jaffry don’t have to. I see them around often.” She hoped he could find solace from Zo’s frequent absence by the presence of other family members.

  “They’re in Oro’s band.”

  “Oro?”

  “Orranyn. No one calls him Oro now.” Deely and Orranyn were of an age; likely they had been childhood playmates. “Jaffry’s funny.”

  “How so?”

  “He doesn’t talk.” The idea caused him deep perplexity.

  “I’ve heard him talk,” In very short sentences, with the thoughts behind his words remaining unspoken.

  Deely conceded the point. “Only a little.”

  The grooming was finished, Deely’s hair a dark, rich fall of midnight lying across Zo’s lap; should Deely stand, it would reach to his knees. “Shall I fix it?” Zo asked.

  “I’ll do it.” He reached up and buried his fingers in darkness. Then, with astonishing speed, he quartered, subdivided, and nimbly braided.

  The skill of his hands prompted Rowan’s memory. “Of course! You’re Deely, the weaver. I’ve seen your rugs. They’re very beautiful.” But, rapt in his work, he had forgotten her presence.

  Zo watched him with pride, then briskly applied the comb to her own hair. “Deely makes rugs,” she told Rowan, “and ropes, and boxes. Sometimes he helps Parandys with the dyeing.”

  “Your job keeps you away from hi
m,” Rowan observed. There was clearly much love between the siblings.

  Zo nodded. “It’s what I’m best at. But I do miss him. Jann doesn’t understand him.”

  “Jann—” Rowan began, and stopped herself. Here was an opportunity to confirm her speculation about the source of Jann and Jaffry’s dislike of Fletcher; but Zo, too, might share the feelings.

  Zo finished the steerswoman’s statement for her. “Jann is a very good warrior,” she said, with a wry mouth and eyes that understood what Rowan had not said. “But she’s not good at recognizing valuable things that come in odd packages.”

  “That’s a good way to put it.” In itself, the statement explained much. But Zo’s frankness impelled Rowan to add, “Fletcher is an odd package, in his way.”

  Zo’s reply was buried by Deely’s. “Fletcher is back?” The prospect gave him joy.

  “No,” Zo told him carefully. “Kree’s band went out to the first circle, remember?”

  He nodded his disappointment, and his hands found their work again.

  Rowan watched him a moment; Zo did the same.

  “Fletcher’s become a good friend to Deely,” Zo said. “He wasn’t, at first. He was well, he was a sillier person, when he first arrived.” Rowan chuckled. “Sillier than he is now?”

  Zo’s dark eyes caught the steerswoman’s. “If you think Fletcher is really a fool, you’re not very clever.”

  “I don’t know him well enough to tell, for certain,” Rowan replied with perfect honesty. “But his presence here does surprise me. I’ve learned that it’s difficult to approach an Outskirter tribe. How is it that you let him in?”

  “If you render a service, you can ask for a service in return,” Zo responded. She shifted back a bit to give Deely more room; he had reached the center of one thin braid, stretching it out behind his body to work. “And if you can give the name of a tribe member, you can’t be refused.”