The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Kammeryn’s aide walked close beside him, holding his elbow, occasionally speaking to warn him of objects underfoot. Her instruction was insufficient, and Kammeryn stumbled once. On his other side, Rowan reached out to assist, grasping him by the arm.

  The touch sent a shock through the steerswoman. The seyoh’s arm was thin, the skin loose, the muscles slack. His bones seemed light as a bird’s, and as she helped him regain his balance, she felt his weight almost not at all.

  Kammeryn was an old man. She had forgotten.

  Kammeryn always stood tall and straight, striding about his camp with a firm step; his dark eyes were clear, his comprehension deep, his authority unquestioned. He was a man of power.

  But his wisdom was the wisdom of years. The years were marked on his face, and the years had long ago wasted the mass from his body. His power came from his tribe’s recognition of his wisdom; his strength was strength of spirit and intellect.

  But it was not his spirit alone that had now walked twenty-four hours with no rest. It was his body. And he was an old, old man.

  Reports slowly began to come in again, briefly interrupted as the outer line paused to deal with a number of goblin jacks. Back in the tribe, another mertutial succumbed, falling in exhaustion, and died where he lay. His body was carried to the front of the tribe, segmented by mertutials as the tribe passed around it, and cast by warriors in the rear positions of the outer circle.

  The herdmaster reported that twenty-three goats had escaped in the night. The seyoh’s mind was already occupied; he nodded indifferently.

  Rowan’s own thoughts began to be claimed by the new information from the warriors ahead; and before she grew too completely involved, she slowed her steps and dropped back within the tribe.

  Orranyn and his band, with Fletcher within them, were traveling some thirty feet behind and to the left of the seyoh’s position. Rowan crossed to them and caught Fletcher’s attention; but before she could speak, Jann interposed herself.

  “No,” the warrior said.

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “No. Kammeryn said, keep him apart.”

  The night’s march had been hard on Fletcher. It was only a week since he had been wounded, and his reserves of strength were not great. He was pale, panting in effort, and limping slightly. He watched the two women speaking, his bright gaze flickering between them.

  “I’m sure Kammeryn didn’t intend to keep me from speaking to Fletcher,” Rowan said.

  “No.”

  “Dann, he knows things we might need to know!”

  And Fletcher called out to her. “How far have we come?”

  And it shocked her to recall: Fletcher was under the Steers-women’s ban. Rowan could not reply.

  Orranyn came around the guards and joined Jann. “Rowan,” he said carefully, “do you want to ask Kammeryn if you may speak to the prisoner?”

  Her mouth moved once in realization; then she said, “No.” She dared not distract the seyoh from his work. She drew a breath, expelled it. “Orranyn,” she said, “you might be interested to know that, by my estimation, the tribe has traveled one hundred and twenty kilometers.” And she hurried forward to rejoin Kammeryn.

  Up front, Bel had slipped off her pack and was carrying it below one arm, while she rummaged inside with the other hand. “Here,” she said to Rowan, handing her something.

  Rowan looked at the object: a box wrapped in silk cloth. “Your cards?”

  “And here.” A spare knife. “Put them in your pack. And these.” The three remaining handleless knife blades the travelers brought from the Inner Lands.

  “In my pack?”

  “Yes. I’m losing mine; it’ll slow me down.” Bel indicated the land ahead with a jerk of her chin. “I’m moving up to work as a scout. They lost the point man overnight.”

  Rowan groped back over one shoulder to thrust the items into her pack. “I’ll feel much better knowing it’s you out on point,” she said.

  “Ha,” Bel said, still rummaging. “I’m not going to be point. I’ll take someone else’s place; they’ll move to point.”

  Kammeryn spoke. “Relay.”

  “Seyoh?”

  “Bel is point scout.”

  The relay gave Bel one appraising glance, then sent the signal forward. Bel grinned, thumped Rowan on the shoulder, and was off, moving at a tireless jog, her pack still in her hands. Thirty feet away, she swung the pack three times over her head and sent it flying off over the redgrass, then disappeared among the brushy hills.

  Kammeryn was not yet so occupied as to be unaware of conversations nearby. Rowan hazarded addressing him. “Seyoh, you might be interested to know that I can do the same as you. I can interpret the reports coming in, I can visualize the landscape, and I can keep track of the tribe’s progress.”

  “Are you current on the reports?”

  “For the most part.”

  “Tell me about the brook we’re approaching.”

  No brook was visible. “It’s now ten and one half kilometers away, oriented northeast to southwest. At the point we’ll meet it it will be too deep to wade, unless we change direction now. We can’t change direction because of that hill ahead of us at position ten, five kilometers away. We must go to the brook, and travel along it for one and one half kilometers, where the water is just over a meter deep. We’ll know the place by the young lichen-towers the scouts crushed to mark it.”

  The old man smiled into the distance. “Stay by me. Keep up with all the reports.”

  “Yes, seyoh.”

  Just past noon they came to a doused fire pit, with slabs of half-cooked goat meat hung across it. The fire had been started by members of the far outer circle, checked by the following circles, doused by the innermost. Kammeryn called a halt. The tribe settled down to eat, the stronger ones bringing food to those more exhausted; and for the most part it was now warriors serving mertutials, and mertutials thanking the warriors for the service. Rowan brought the partly raw goat meat to Kammeryn herself.

  The tribe rested for four hours, and most people slept; but Kammeryn did not, nor Rowan. When the tribe prepared again to march,

  Rowan noticed that five warriors had lost their packs and were instead carrying small children strapped to their backs. Asleep, the children stirred fitfully as they were hoisted up on the warriors. Some fell back to sleep; two began weeping continuously but softly, too tired for louder complaint.

  By midafternoon, hazy clouds climbed in from the south, crossing and then filling the sky. The clouds deepened; horizons dimmed, then vanished. A fine drizzle more mist than rain began.

  Soon, no further reports could be received, and well before nightfall, the tribe was again traveling by night tactics—without stars by which to check true direction.

  Kammeryn was again issuing instructions continuously to the tribe. Rowan listened intently, matching each word against her own knowledge, constructing her own version of the imagined chart. The work was difficult, and soon absorbed her completely. All her concentration was required to maintain the clarity of her vision and her route. Other considerations faded; her very identity seemed diminished.

  The situation struck her as oddly familiar, but she had not the freedom of thought to analyze the impression. She gave herself to the work, and it owned her, utterly. In her mind, the tribe slowly inched its way across the land.

  When they reached the last known position of the innermost line, they encountered one warrior of Berrion’s hand, waiting alone in the hazy light. The woman fell in with the tribe, as expected. But when, only one kilometer farther along, they found another single waiting warrior, Rowan understood that a different tactic was being used.

  The warriors ahead had stationed themselves along the route Kammeryn had selected. For the rest of the evening and partly into the night, the tribe met them, hailing from the darkness, one after another, at approximately one-kilometer intervals.

  But later, after fifteen warriors had been met, the tribe w
alked over a kilometer without meeting anyone.

  Kammeryn called a halt; everyone behind sank immediately to seats on the ground, drawing up their hoods against the soft rain. The seyoh, his aide, and Rowan remained standing.

  Kammeryn called for a volunteer. Garris sent one of his warriors forward.

  The woman was given careful, precise directions, and alone walked ahead at a slow pace, step by measured step, into the wet darkness. While the tribe waited, word came forward to Kammeryn that another mertutial had succumbed to age and exhaustion, and one infant. The mertutial was cast, the infant buried.

  An hour later, the volunteer returned; she had found no one. Kammeryn issued new instructions and sent her off at a slightly different angle.

  She was never heard of again.

  The tribe slept, waiting for the dawn. Rowan and Kammeryn spent the night speaking to each other in strange, short sentences, consisting purely of measurements and the names of natural features, as they mutually reconfirmed their understanding of the land ahead.

  The rain stopped shortly before sunrise, and in the morning light Kammeryn recognized that the tribe had wandered north off its route. He and Rowan amended their information, and the tribe slowly resumed travel.

  The waiting lines of guards ahead were met, slowly, and sent ahead again. The new reports began.

  Eventually the scouts began to be heard from, and at last the point scout herself. Rowan accepted the information provided and integrated it; and somewhere within, a small part of herself recalled that it was Bel whose words she now heard. That small part of Rowan found a moment to be pleased, and grateful. Bel was ahead, discerning what dangers the tribe must avoid; Rowan was behind, observing, integrating, planning, waiting for her own wider knowledge to be called upon. The configuration struck the steerswoman as perfectly natural, and correct.

  They traveled until noon, when they found food again. They ate, and rested briefly. They walked on again, people shambling, stumbling in exhaustion. When night came, their seyoh permitted a three-hour rest.

  Kammeryn did not sleep; Rowan wished to, desperately, but followed his example, realizing that once she released her detailed understanding of the invisible land ahead, she would be hours, perhaps a full day, regaining it. Kammeryn did not dare to slack his attention, for the sake of his tribe; Rowan refused to rest her own.

  She found she must stand, or fall asleep. She and the seyoh walked together in the dark, pacing back and forth on a twenty-foot line they both knew to be flat.

  After three hours they woke the tribe; and through the rattling redgrass, across the rolling veldt, under a thousand stars and the two bright, untwinkling beacons of the Guidestars, Kammeryn led his people on through the remainder of the night.

  Just before first light, Rowan stopped short, realizing that she had walked the last ten paces alone.

  She turned around, unconsciously adjusting the map in her mind to take that fact into account. She walked back, forcing herself to see and hear what was immediately present.

  The leading edge of the tribe had stopped, the rest slowly easing to a halt. There was a clot of activity directly before Rowan.

  Kammeryn’s aide was stooping to the ground, speaking to someone. “Give us a name.” Rowan could hear Garris shouting for Mander. She stepped closer.

  Kammeryn was half-prone, attempting to rise; his aide would not permit it. “Mander’s coming,” she said. “Seyoh, give us a name.” Kammeryn attempted to speak, but failed. Behind, the tribe members, helplessly, one by one, dropped to seats on the ground.

  The healer approached, Chess following close behind him. By starlight, Mander looked into Kammeryn’s face and said immediately, “He’s going no farther.” Kammeryn no longer tried to rise, and was breathing in long breaths, slow but shallow.

  Rowan looked at her mental chart, triangulating from known landmarks, comparing distances.

  “Seyoh,” the aide repeated, trying to get his attention. Rowan stooped down beside them and cautiously permitted herself to be aware of Kammeryn’s face.

  The seyoh saw and recognized her, and Mander bending over him, then looked past the healer’s shoulder. “Chess,” he said.

  The cook grunted in surprise. “Right.” She heaved herself erect and looked about in the dim starlight. “You!” she called, and pointed.

  “What’s on that train? Never mind, clear it off! Mander, Jenna, get him over there.” They hurried to obey, raising the seyoh between them. He spoke weakly; Rowan could not hear his words.

  Chess did, then turned to the steerswoman. “He says you know where we are.”

  Rowan checked her figures, checked the time by the stars. “Where do we go now?”

  She looked at the route ahead and became briefly confused; she thought there was one number that she had neglected to take into account ...

  “Rowan!”

  The map glowed in her mind, as if lit by a fire behind it. And then a second chart overlaid itself: Fletcher’s information, longitude, latitude, area. The features of both charts merged, matched.

  They vanished. Rowan stood shivering with cold, shuddering in exhaustion, redgrass chattering around her, with Chess’s gnarled face before her, dim in starlight.

  The steerswoman swallowed. “No farther. We make camp here.”

  47

  “Chess, I need to speak to Fletcher.”

  It was now full light. The tribe had slept, struggled back to wakefulness, and set to work.

  The old woman pulled her attention from the rising tents and eyed Rowan. “Sounds like a good idea to me.” They passed together through the standing and sitting tribe members.

  Fletcher was seated on the ground, looking down, weaving in place. Half of Orranyn’s band was seated in a circle around him, watching him with eyes feverish from exhaustion; the other half sat leaning against their comrades’ backs, asleep. One of them was Orranyn.

  Chess kicked his foot. “Wake up. We’re going to talk to him.” Orranyn came awake with a violent start. “Kammeryn said—”

  “Kammeryn’s asleep. He put me in charge. Stand up when you talk to me, boy.”

  “Chess—”

  “If I can stand, you can stand, and I’m standing, so stand!” He stood.

  “We’ve got a captive wizard here,” Chess said, “and we want to know some things. Move aside.” And she led Rowan into the circle, which shifted at their chief’s gesture to make more room within.

  Fletcher looked up at the two women. One side of his mouth twitched. “Shall I stand?” He looked too weak to do so.

  “We’ll sit.” They did. Chess jerked her chin at Rowan. “You ask. I don’t know what to ask.”

  “Rowan—” Fletcher said.

  She put up her hand. “Fletcher, just don’t ask me anything. Answer.” He nodded, jerkily.

  “Girl, your laws are stupid,” Chess said.

  “Yes,” Rowan said without thinking, “sometimes.” And if the survival of these people she loved, and her own life, had depended upon breaking those laws at this moment, she would have done so, on the instant. But that was not necessary.

  She said to Fletcher, “Rendezvous weather.”

  He nodded. “We’re safe from the heat, but we’ll catch the weather that follows it.”

  “How soon will it come, and how bad will it be?”

  “I’m not sure.” He rubbed his face. “Before, when I was looking back at the twenty-year cycle of routine bioform clearance, the weather started reacting about two weeks after the start of the heat. But looked at another way, it came one day after peak.”

  She shook her head in annoyance; she was too weary to puzzle through his language. “Peak being a high point? The moment of greatest heat?”

  “Yes. And there’s no buildup this time. It’s coming all at once. We might have as little as twelve hours from the moment the heat starts.”

  “At nightfall, today?”

  “Yes.”

  Chess leaned back and shook Jaffry awake. “Yo
u. Go to Steffannis.” One of the cook’s assistants. “Tell him to start a fire, slaughter twenty goats, and start cooking them now. And to set a crew to making bread.”

  The young man made to protest in confusion, but Orranyn sent him off with a gesture.

  Chess turned back to Fletcher. “How long will it last?”

  He spread his hands. “The heat? Twenty-four hours. The weather, I don’t know; weeks, months, perhaps, altogether. But it will be worst for a much shorter time. Days, perhaps.”

  “What do you mean by the worst? What exactly happens?”

  He moved his shoulders. “Winds, to start. On the Face, they reached over a hundred miles an hour.”

  This was incomprehensible; she had expected him to say “very high winds,” or “gales” or “hurricane,” if he knew such terms. But miles an hour was a measurement applied to the movement of objects. The wind was no object. Rowan tried to imagine an object caught in such a wind; but its speed of motion would depend not only upon the wind force, but on the size, shape, and construction of the object. Perhaps the greatest danger would come from loose objects, such as bushes, or bits of lichen-tower, flying at high speed. She thought of ships’ sails, when a sheet gave way from stress. The loose end moved suddenly free, and powerful, like a great thrashing hand, smashing everything before it

  Sails. She stood up suddenly. “This is wrong.”

  “What?” Chess asked.

  Rowan looked around the camp, at the tents now almost all erected: vertical walls of skin, with no great masts, no yards to brace them. The lines and poles would never hold. “We have to dig in.” Chess had stood up beside her. “Wind’ll knock all this down?”

  “Yes.”

  Chess called out. “Stop everything! You, you, and you, over here!”

  Rowan looked down at Fletcher. “Where will the wind come from?”

  “At first, east to west, toward where the heat was. A few hours later, northeast to southwest. Sometime later, southwest to northeast.”

  Rowan spoke to Chess. “We dig into the ground, wide holes, and erect the tents’ skins as roofs over them, with a low peak, running northeast to southwest. Cross-lines for bracing, inside and out.”