The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  “No good scout would ever give false information. No steers-woman ever, ever tells a lie.

  “She isn’t an Outskirter,” Fletcher concluded, “but as far as I can see, she’s as good as any scout.”

  Quinnan studied the steerswoman a long moment; then he took up one of the bags and told her what to do. Rowan listened closely to the instructions; but when she turned to Fletcher, to find some Outskirter way to express her thanks, she found he had gone.

  Rowan stood alone on the windy veldt, waist-deep in redgrass a mile due north of the camp. Some twenty goats were browsing nearby, making their first pass at the grass. Later they would return again, to graze more closely, then again to crop the reeds to stubble. Rowan thought it a shame to spread the ashes where the animals would be eating and defecating. But she had been told to go no farther.

  Halfway to the horizon, she saw a lone guard manning the inner circle. The warrior did not watch or acknowledge her, but attended to his or her own assignment.

  Rowan opened the little bag cautiously. It contained small objects among the ashes: bones, she assumed, likely finger bones that had not had time or enough heat to incinerate. Through the bag’s sides the ashes were cool, the bones slightly warm.

  The steerswoman held the bag in both hands with the opening away from her, and put her back to the wind.

  She passed the bag across the air; a fine white mist blew from it, caught by the breeze, vanishing instantly. “Maud ...” she began, and tried to remember who Maud had been. Rowan had never met the scout, had only glimpsed her once, in the distance. She had no face, no form in Rowan’s mind. A stranger.

  Rowan moved her hands again. “Brinsdotter ...” She looked among remembered faces for a woman, a mertutial or older warrior, named Brin. She found none. There was no living mother to weep for this warrior child.

  A third time: “Haviva ...” It was necessary to upend the bag to empty it completely. The small bones fell from the opening, disappearing among the chattering grass at Rowan’s feet. Rowan knew of no other person in Kammeryn’s tribe who carried the line name Haviva.

  The steerswoman felt cold, empty. She looked about the endless wilderness: at the shimmering blades, at the cloud-crowded evening sky, and at the camp itself, lost on the veldt among its own shadows. The only sound was the voice of the grass.

  Then she heard words. “Who is Maud?” She had spoken the words herself.

  And she answered herself: Maud was no one; Maud was no face, no voice, no person; Maud was a road stopped before its destination. Maud, Brinsdotter, Haviva was three names, white mist, bones on the ground.

  The steerswoman was tired by death. She did not know how to mourn enough for all the dead. But here was only one dead, one person gone, sent into the wind by Rowan’s own hands.

  Rowan felt she could mourn for one person; but she could not mourn for Maud.

  She dropped the woolen bag, stepped over it, and walked back to camp.

  She could not rest that night.

  Eventually she rose and threaded her way in darkness through the sleeping warriors: past Bel, Averryl, Fletcher, who stirred uneasily in his sleep; past Chai, Cassander, Ria, and at last Kree in her position by the entrance. The chief sat up, instantly awake, asking softly, “Is that Rowan?”

  How Kree had identified her in the dark Rowan had no idea. “Yes,” the steerswoman said. “I can’t sleep. I need to walk.”

  “The circles are undermanned. There may be more Face People out there.”

  “I’ll stay in camp.”

  Outside, the night was cool and clear. Rowan walked down the alley between Kree’s tent and Orranyn’s toward the center of camp. The tents were faint shapes, difficult to discern; their black star-shadows seemed to hold more substance than they themselves did. Rowan passed in and out of those shadows, half expecting to feel their edges on her skin, like the touch of the water’s surface on a rising swimmer’s face.

  The fire pit was cold, with the ancient, deserted smell of dead ashes. In the open center of the camp, Rowan looked up. Above were scores of bright stars; but she did not link them into their patterns, or give them their names. She left them solitary, each alone in the cold air. Among them, nearer to the zenith than ever she had seen it, stood the Eastern Guidestar. A wizards’ thing, hung in the sky, she thought, and tried to be angry for the fact. She failed. Timekeeper, traveler’s friend, she tried again; the terms had no meaning. Her beacon, urging her eastward forever, toward the place where its own fallen mate lay dead in the wilderness; the matter now seemed abstract, illusory.

  As she watched, the earth’s shadow overtook the Guidestar, and it vanished from sight.

  Between two tents, in a patch of sky toward the edge of camp, five little stars, a canted parallelogram with a dipped tail: the tiny constellation of the Dolphin, caught in a joyous leap from the horizon into the sky. And because it was a dolphin, because it was of the sea that she loved, and because it named itself to her without her asking, she walked toward it.

  From the edge of camp to the hills in the distance, the redgrass, bleached silver-gray by darkness, wavered and rippled like a sea that reflected more starlight than shone upon it. The night rattled sweetly with the voices of the grass. Stretched along the horizon, the Milky Way was a cold and glorious banner of light. Rowan rested her eyes on the sight.

  During a lull in the light breeze, another sound came to her; not far to her left, someone was weeping, alone. Rowan turned to walk away, then turned back, because the voice was a child’s.

  Rowan found the child crouched among a stack of trains: a small form, ghost-pale in starlight. “Who is that?” A tangle of dark hair above a blurred, shadowy face. “Sithy?” The girl tried to compose her sobs into words, but failed.

  The steerswoman came closer, hesitant. She had never learned how to comfort the sorrows of children. Stooping down, she put one hand on the small shoulder, then withdrew it instantly. The touch was faintly shocking; the child had seemed insubstantial before, only her voice real.

  Sithy was clutching something to her chest: large, square, its woven pattern visible despite the dimness. It was a box, such as Outskirters kept by their beds to store small possessions, but too large to belong to a child. “Sithy,” Rowan said again.

  The girl’s voice resolved into a word; but it was only her own name. “Sith ...” Inside the box, something shifted quietly from a high corner to a low one.

  With nothing else to say, Rowan said, “Yes ...”

  The sobbing ceased, held back for a long moment by sheer force of will; then words came from the girl, half-choked, half-shouted. “Sith, Maudsdotter, Haviva!”

  Solitary Maud had had one small connection with the living tribe.

  The weeping resumed, but silent, Sithy’s little body shuddering violently. Rowan raised her head and looked past the child, at nothing. “I see,” she said at last. And she sat down in the star-shadows beside the child, and remained until the sun rose.

  30

  “Zo gives it as a brook with a sharp bend around a big rock at four, a field of tanglebrush at twelve, three big hills in a line at seven, and the tribe back somewhere at nine.”

  “This with Zo facing north?”

  “So she says.”

  “Good.” Rowan took a sip of broth, blew on her chilled fingers, and took up her pen and calipers.

  The tribe had been ten days on the move again, in the routine with which Rowan had become so familiar. By day: hours of travel, carrying packs, dragging trains, the changing of guard on the circles, the voices of the flock rising over the hiss and rattle of the veldt. By night: close quarters, in the warmth of buried coals rising from below the carpet. With the weather growing colder, Rowan had become an accepted fixture at each evening’s fireside, using its warmth to offset the chill of sitting still, updating her logbook, amending her charts from the information relayed from the wide-ranging scouts.

  She found the landmarks mentioned, triangulated from them, and noted Zo�
�s position. “And Quinnan?”

  The second relay squinted in thought, his old face becoming a wild mass of wrinkled skin, bright eyes glinting. “Facing east, he’s got the land growing flat to the horizon at two, a brook running straight at his feet from ten to four, and at eight, three hills in a line.”

  The steerswoman repeated the procedure and found the second scout’s location. From both sets of information, she calculated the location of the tribe itself, considered the significance of her results, then leaned back in deep satisfaction. “That’s it then.” She began to organize her materials. “Thank you both, and send my thanks to Zo and Quinnan at the next report. Is Kammeryn in his tent, do you know?”

  “Consulting with the flockmasters, yes.”

  “And Bel?”

  “Helping Jaffry guard the children; they’re clearing lichen-towers.”

  “I’ll tell her first, then.”

  Both relays were interested. “Tell what?”

  Rowan slipped her charts into their case and capped the end. “It’s time we were leaving the tribe.”

  “At its next move,” Rowan told Bel as they watched the four children destroying lichen-towers, “the tribe will swing northeast. We should start moving southeast from this point. Now, or within the next few days.,,

  “We’ll need to prepare our supplies. Dried food, light, and probably as much as we can carry. How many days to the Guidestar?”

  Hearing it said in words, Rowan felt her happiness transform into a thrill of anticipation. The fallen Guidestar was near; this would be the last leg of the travelers’ journey. “Traveling hard, three weeks at the best. But we can’t count on that; we have to skirt that swamp. And there’s at least one large river to cross. If we can’t find a ford, we’ll need to build a raft.” Rowan had tested and found that tanglewood did float. “And Outskirts weather isn’t trustworthy. Call it five weeks.”

  Bel winced. “Short rations. Hardbread. Dried meat.”

  “A small price to pay.”

  The eldest child, Dane, emitted a warning cry. Creaking and crackling, a fifteen-foot lichen-tower arced across the sky. The wind of its approach blew the redgrass flat beneath it as it fell, changing the grass’s constant rattle into a sudden roar, then into abrupt silence an instant before the crash. The tower settled, twice: once as its outer surface touched the ground, again when that surface collapsed to the accompaniment of a thousand tiny inner snaps. The breeze became damp and faintly sweet.

  “What’s that word Dane is shouting?”

  “‘Timber.’ It’s what you say when you knock down something tall.”

  “I’ve never heard it used in that way.”

  Two people approached from camp, one of them dragging an empty train: Fletcher, easily identifiable from a distance by his height and his lope. When they arrived, the second person proved to be Parandys, come to collect lichen-tower pulp to make blue dye. “I hear you’ll be leaving us,” he commented, as the children attacked a fallen tower with their knives, competing to excavate the largest spine-free lump.

  “The news has traveled fast,” Rowan replied. “I was hoping to tell Kammeryn first.”

  “Well, he already knows. He’s set Chess to making your travel provisions.” Parandys examined one of Hari’s offerings, chided the boy for leaving a spine in place, and stumped over to study the tower himself.

  Fletcher cleared his throat tentatively. “I asked Kree if I could go along with you.”

  Bel was less than pleased. “Why? I thought you didn’t believe in the fallen Guidestar.”

  “Maybe that’s why. If I saw it, I’d have to believe.” He gave a shrug, a gesture atypically small. “Kree said no.”

  “I think that’s for the best,” Rowan said, and on Fletcher’s long face disappointment became so evident that she continued, apologetically, “because Bel and I are used to traveling together. We understand each other’s limitations, and our natural paces are well matched. It’s going to be hard travel, and we’ll do it faster with only the two of us.”

  “I know,” he admitted. “I just wish I could help somehow. But Kree said you don’t need any help. She’s right, I expect.” He quietly watched the children at work for some moments. “But, look,” he began, then seemed to think better of speaking, then decided to speak after all. “But look, Rowan, when you come back, Bel’s going to leave you, isn’t she? To talk to the other tribes?”

  Bel replied before the steerswoman could. “That’s right.” She studied Fletcher. “But I’ll bring her to a place she can reach her home from, first.”

  “Well ...” He spread his hands, but without his usual flamboyance. “Suppose I do that?”

  Bel did not quite approve. “You?”

  “Well, me and Averryl, if you like. That way he and I would have each other for company, coming back to the tribe.”

  Rowan disliked the idea of parting with Bel at all, but recognized its necessity. She had hoped to delay their farewells as long as possible. However, she had come to respect Fletcher’s skills, as unlikely and unexpected they might seem. “You would be free to begin spreading your message sooner,” she pointed out to Bel.

  “I was going to tell it to any tribe we meet, on our way to the Inner Lands. It won’t delay anything if I go with you. And Jaffry wants to learn the poem, as well. He’ll try to tell it to any tribe Kammeryn’s meets. Word will be moving in two directions.”

  Fletcher’s astonishment was extreme, and he became more natural. “Jaffry? On the other hand, what a good idea. It’ll train him to say more than one sentence in a day.” Then he thought. “Teach it to Averryl, as well. He’ll do anything you or Rowan ask of him. Jaffry will spread the story east, Averryl and I will take it west on our way out, and you can go north.”

  Rowan became impressed. “That will cover a lot of territory.”

  Bel was still reluctant, but began to find the idea interesting. She looked up at Rowan. “You decide.”

  Rowan preferred not to. “No, you. I don’t want to lose you; but it’s to your own mission that this will make a difference.”

  Bel knit her brows, annoyed. “Not very much.”

  Exasperated, Fletcher threw up his hands. “Will one of you please decide to decide?”

  Both women laughed; but afterward, Bel continued to wait.

  “I decide,” Rowan finally announced, “to think more about it. I’ll tell you after we see the Guidestar. I don’t yet know what I’ll learn there; perhaps it will change my plans altogether.”

  Fletcher was satisfied. “Can’t say fairer.”

  But as the group walked back to camp, with Fletcher trailing behind, cheerfully dragging the train and playing hilarious rhyming games with the children, it occurred to Rowan that as much as she might miss Bel, if she traveled with Fletcher she would be given, every day, reason for laughter. And she found that she liked that idea very much.

  31

  The dangers of the Outskirts did not merely inhabit the Outskirts.; they constituted it. Blackgrass grew in puddles beneath the redgrass: wiry tangles to trap the feet and send the traveler sprawling. Flesh termites scouted the tops of the grass, hunting the heat of breathing. Solitary goblin jills, exhausted and at the end of their lives after laying their last eggs, lay prone and half-hidden, to rise up suddenly in a last instinctive attack.

  Even the damp redgrass itself snagged and sliced at the passerby. The surface of Rowan’s gum-soled steerswoman’s boots had become scarred to a fine network of white on gray and were now covered, thanks to the help of an inventive mertutial, with a pair of thong-tied gaiters of shaggy goatskin. Her trousers, torn with innumerable small cuts, were covered by rough leather leggings, and her gray felt cloak, its leading edges worn to the underbinding, had been left in the dubious care of Hari, who fancied it as a blanket. Rowan’s new cloak, piebald in patches of brown and gray, was one discarded by Chess in favor of the appropriated courting gift.

  As a result, the casual eye spying on the travelers would see not
a warrior leading an Inner Lander, but two Outskirters, wading down the hills through rain-soaked redgrass toward the misty lowlands.

  There were no casual eyes. There were only a convoy of harvesters, trooping along below the grass cover; a fleet of shoots sweeping the sky for gnats, bobbing behind slowly pacing trawlers; and a slugsnake, which had insinuated itself between Rowan’s boot and gaiter, there to travel unnoticed for hours, comfortably coiled about her ankle.

  There were also, somewhere in the nearby swamp, one or more mud-lions—and, quite possibly, demons.

  “Fletcher never saw demons here,” Bel replied to Rowan’s speculation.

  “I know. But Shammer said that demons need salt water.” Rowan crumbled dirt onto her boot, covering the slime left by the evicted slugsnake. “And that the Inland Sea was the wrong sort of salt.” She replaced the gaiters, knotting the thongs behind heel, ankle, and calf. “I was near the salt bog in the Inner Lands years ago, just after Academy. I’d like to taste the water here to see if it’s the same.”

  Bel looked down at her sidelong. “You’d like to, but you won’t.”

  Rowan sighed and straightened. “No. It wouldn’t be wise.” She had a sudden, vivid vision of the girl Mai being clutched by rough-scaled arms and torn by needle-studded jaws. In Rowan’s mind, Mai was a younger, female version of her brother, so that it was calm Jaffry’s familiar face that Rowan saw twisting in pain and terror.

  “Good.”

  They skirted the marshier ground, keeping a course due east before swinging southeast past the swamp. Rowan found Fletcher’s observations and landmarks invaluable. The weather had become uniformly gray and drizzling, the sun’s direction difficult to discern even in full day, and the Guidestars remained invisible for long damp nights. Without Fletcher’s information, Rowan would have had little idea of her true direction. She found reason, again and again, to bless Fletcher for his sharp observations; and a few moments, to her surprise, to miss him.