A Journey of the Heart (16 page)

"Let's go," said Maara.

"Now?"

"Now. Before she changes her mind."

As quickly as we could, we got our things together. Maara bound the northerner's sword alongside my pack and slung his shield over my shoulder. By the light of a quarter moon, we picked our way down the steep trail and headed south, toward home.

By midmorning I was tired and hungry and out of sorts. The heavy shield chafed my shoulder and bumped against my back at every step. I could have done without the spoils of war, I thought to myself. I was so preoccupied with the burden of the man's shield on my body that I scarcely felt upon my heart the burden of his death. I didn't think of him at all until we stopped at last, early in the afternoon.

Maara took the shield from me and leaned it against a tree. It was old and battered, its colors faded, but still visible around the rim was a border in blue, dark and light entwined, and in the center a magical animal of some kind. The golden eyes of a ghostly figure in grey and white, all legs and tail, stared back at me from a face half hidden by a leafy branch.

"It's beautiful," said Maara.

"Yes."

"He was a chieftain."

"How do you know?"

"The chieftain's shield bears the image of the guardian of his clan."

"What kind of animal is it?"

"Perhaps a wolf. Perhaps no animal anyone has ever seen. It may have come to one of his ancestors in a dream."

I stepped outside myself and listened to the two of us talk about this man, who the day before had awakened to his last day of life. Though the image of his face in agony remained vivid in my mind, I began to see another face, the face of an ordinary man.

I thought we had stopped only to rest and to have something to eat, but Maara intended for us to camp there. She had found us a sheltered place by a sheer rock wall, in a clearing hidden at the heart of a wood. A stream meandered through the clearing. The soft sounds of running water and the wind in the trees made me sleepy. While we ate our meal of salted meat and barley cakes, I could hardly keep my eyes open.

"Sleep a little," Maara said.

I didn't argue with her. I was asleep almost before I lay down.

He was sitting by his hearth.

His house was not made of stone like the one I lived in as a child, nor of wood like Merin's house. His house was round, with walls of wattle daubed with mud and a roof of hides stretched over a pole framework like a tent. The fire burning on the hearth at its center lit his face but left the edges of the room in darkness. He made a gesture to me to sit down, and I took the place across the fire from him. There was a bearskin on the floor, soft to sit upon.

I heard the sounds of grief outside the house.

"My wife," he said. "My child."

In his voice I heard his love for them, the love that brought him into Merin's land, where his death awaited him.

"You too, someday," he whispered.

"Whether it was his spirit or your own heart that spoke to you in your dream," said Maara, "take it as a warning."

"Of course it was his spirit," I said.

"It may have been."

"It was." A stubborn anger began to burn in my chest.

"Whether it was or not, it was still a warning."

"A warning? Of what?"

"When strangers come into Merin's land to steal food for their children, will you let the children of your own people starve to feed them?"

"The children of Merin's land have plenty," I said. "We've never starved."

"Has not even old Gnith known a time of hunger? If she has not, you are a fortunate people. Isn't it possible that you owe your good fortune to the power Merin has gathered around her?"

I had to admit that it was true.

"And when your enemy stands before you," she said, "will you think of the grief of those who love him? Will you stop to weigh their grief against the grief of those who love you before you take another life? If you do, it will not be his loved ones who will grieve."

I felt she was scolding me for something I had not yet done.

"That's unfair," I said. "When I killed the man who would have killed you, I doubt I was thinking of anything, but if I was, it was of my own grief."

She smiled at me. "I thank you for that, but I'm not thinking of him. I'm thinking of the next time."

"Why would I do differently the next time?"

"Yesterday you stepped into the unknown. In that new place, you had no expectations. You had no doubts. Now you know what awaits you there. You know, or think you know, what to expect."

I struggled with myself a little before I could open my heart to what she was trying to tell me.

"Why do you so want to believe it was his spirit that came to you?" she asked me.

In my dream I had felt from him no anger, no malice, only his sadness. He seemed to bear me no ill will.

"If it was his spirit," I said, "then he has forgiven me."

"Listen to me," she said. "You have no need for his forgiveness. You have no use for it. Wanting it will weaken you, and needing it may be your downfall."

I didn't understand.

"When you take up a weapon," she said, "you take up the power of life and death. This power resides, not in your weapon, but in yourself. Part of that power is your willingness to take a life, and part of it is the willingness to sacrifice your own. Every warrior offers herself willingly, and nothing done on the battlefield need be forgiven."

My mind understood, but my heart protested.

"All the same," I said, "his forgiveness would make me feel better."

She looked at me closely. "What do you feel?"

"Sorrow," I replied. "I'm not sorry that I killed him, but sorry that he had to die, that anyone had to die."

We were sitting in a patch of sunlight on the soft leaves of the forest floor. Just then the sun slid down behind the rock. I shivered. Maara got to her feet, cleared the leaves from a place against the rock wall, and made a fire. While I gathered enough firewood for the night, she prepared our supper. Soon our fire was burning brightly and barley cakes were baking on a hot stone.

"Are we going home tomorrow?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Why?"

"Did you want to stay with Vintel's band?"

"No." I had been reluctant to leave Sparrow, but I had also been relieved to get away from that noisy crowd of people. "Wasn't Vintel angry at our leaving?"

"Vintel was delighted to be rid of us."

We ate our meal in silence. In the wood the dark came quickly. The pale twilight sky still shone down on us through the branches overhead, while night gathered under the trees. Firelight flickered on the rock. I watched the play of shadows over its rough face.

Maara broke the silence. "Do you understand now why Vintel's warriors follow her?"

As much as I hated to praise Vintel for anything, I answered honestly, "I believe so."

"Why?"

"When she walked alone into the northerners' camp, I was so proud of her courage that I would have followed her into battle without a second thought."

Maara nodded. "Vintel is powerful. Her warriors trust her power. They understand it. Her power comes from her hatred of the enemy and from her love of war. That's why it will never mislead her."

Something uncomfortable prickled at the back of my mind.

"Vintel will never make the mistake of feeling pity or compassion for her enemies," Maara said. "Deciding who is her enemy and who is not will never give her a moment's pause. To Vintel, the stranger is always the enemy. She will never doubt herself, and so she will never hesitate to act."

Now I thought I understood what she was getting at.

"Are you afraid I will?"

"I know you will."

"Yesterday I didn't hesitate."

Maara brushed my words aside. "Your power is nothing like Vintel's. Her desire is to match herself against the power of her enemies. Her power comes from that desire and from her determination to prevail. Your power comes from something very different."

I was a little relieved that she thought I had a power of my own, but the suspicion that she found me wanting in some way unsettled me.

"Tell me," she said. "If you had been our war leader yesterday, what would you have done when the scouts told us about the northerners' camp? Would you have led your warriors against them?"

"I don't know," I said. "I suppose so."

"So you think Vintel did the right thing when she decided to attack them?"

It had never occurred to me to question Vintel's decision. "What else could we have done?"

"We could have done nothing. It was clear that they had laid a trap for us, but we didn't have to fall into it."

"We didn't fall into it," I said.

"Didn't we?"

Then I remembered, and a chill ran down my spine. Though in the end we put the northerners to rout, they had very nearly routed us.

"Vintel took a risk," she said. "It may have been too great a risk. But for you and Taia, I believe the day would have gone against us."

"Then Vintel made a mistake?"

Maara shrugged. "The day didn't go against us, did it? And there's something else to consider. What if Vintel had decided against the attack? Could she have kept control of her warriors once they knew of the northerners' arrogant display of Breda's shield?"

I hadn't thought of that. I doubted that even Vintel could have held her warriors back from answering such a provocation. Surely it was better for them to fight together under Vintel's leadership than as an angry rabble.

"Then Vintel did the right thing after all?"

"Whether by cleverness or luck," she said, "Vintel led her warriors to victory."

I nodded, but something in her voice made me doubt that she was agreeing with me. I gave up trying to decide if Vintel had been right or wrong.

"Is all now well?" she asked me.

"Sparrow said the northerners will go home. She said their hearts are defeated. If she's right, then all is well."

"I believe she is right," Maara said. "The northerners will go home. But of course that's not the end of it."

"It's not?"

"What about next year?"

"Next year we'll fight with them again. Next year it will be the same as it is every year."

"Will it?" said Maara. "The northerners have gone home empty-handed and with hearts filled with grief. All winter, along with their empty bellies they will nurse their grievances, and in the spring, not only their hunger, but their hatred will drive them when they make war on us again."

Her words frightened me. For all our speculation about what we could have done differently, what had happened seemed inevitable. Until then I had believed that everything had happened for the best. Now I began to doubt.

"What should we have done?" I asked her.

A gust of wind stirred the branches of the trees. I looked up and caught a glimpse of the night sky, splendid with stars, through the canopy of leaves over our heads. When I looked at Maara again, I saw that she wasn't going to answer me, not because she wanted me to find the answer for myself, but because she didn't know the answer. I felt the earth shift under me, leaving me off balance.

"I sometimes think I'm not the best teacher for you," she whispered. "I ought to be teaching you to be more like Vintel."

"I don't want to be like Vintel."

"I've known only one other person who had the kind of power I feel in you," she said. "She was very old, a great leader in her time, not a war leader, but a woman of great wisdom. I wish you had someone like her to teach you, because yours will be a difficult power to master, and if you fail to master it, it will be a dangerous power."

Another gust of wind rattled the leaves overhead, and a scattering of rain pattered down around us. I shivered, chilled not by wind or rain, but by fear awakened by her doubts. It took me a few moments to recover my courage and to remember how I had felt when I asked her to apprentice me. I had been so certain of her then, that she should be my teacher, that she already was my teacher, and the power of the oak grove had agreed with me.

"When I chose you, I chose well," I said.

She said nothing.

Once my fear had subsided a little, I began to resent her for having caused it.

"You frightened me," I said.

"Good." She turned suddenly to face me and gripped my shoulder hard and shook it. "You ought to be afraid."

At first her fierceness startled me. Then I saw her fear.

That night I lay awake for a long time. A hard wind was blowing, sending leaves down upon us in showers until we were all but covered by them. Before morning the rain would come.

Maara's sleep was restless. As she always did, she lay with her back to me, and I snuggled against her for both warmth and comfort. Once or twice I drifted into a half-sleep in which it seemed that Maara and I were having a conversation that went round and round in circles, never making sense and never reaching a conclusion.

At last I slept.

I fell into a dark dream. I was lost, alone in a wood. A raw wind drove the rain through my cloak until I shivered with cold. I looked for shelter, but there was none. Then my warrior stood before me. She lifted a corner of my cloak, and as if she had lifted a veil from a lamp, a light shone out from under it. I felt its warmth envelop me.

When I woke, I found I was wet through.

"We might as well go home," Maara said when she saw I was awake.

"Now?"

"Would you rather lie here in the rain? We can be home in a few hours."

"Let's go," I said.

As cold as I was, my dream had left a warm glow around my heart.

We arrived at Merin's house not long after sunrise. If it hadn't been raining, I would have suggested that we bathe in the river. We were both filthy with the dirt of camp life, our hair too tangled even to be finger-combed. Maara's clothes were bloody from the battle. So were mine, from nursing the wounded. Both of us still had on our faces traces of the blood of dead men, but I had begun to shiver, and all I wanted was a bath in warm water, dry clothing, and a seat by the fire.