The Outskirter's Secret (2 page)

Rowan declined to place herself or her
dearest friend in any such position.

She tapped a location on the table-chart.
"This is my best guess—here, where the banks of the brook are steep
on one side, and brushy on the other. We can set up an ambush, come
down on them from the banks and trap them against the undergrowth.
We'd have them completely by surprise. We ought to get into
position soon, and we mustn't travel down the brook itself; we
would have to wade sometimes, and we might be heard by a scout
already in position. Is there someone here who knows a forest path
well enough to lead us there through darkness?" At this, the
dark-haired boy's eyes widened still further, and he nodded
mutely.

Rowan heard Bel shift uncomfortably and
guessed the reason, but said nothing to her.

The old woman spoke up again. "An' if that's
wrong? If they're not there?"

Rowan spoke regretfully. "If we try to ambush
them at the brook, and they've all taken the hill route, then the
town is lost. We can come back and try to fight them in town, but
they'll be here before us. They are excellent fighters, all, and
our numbers aren't superior enough to make up the difference."

She straightened and addressed the villagers,
scanning the room to meet each gaze individually. "Three options,
then, and you can weigh them for yourselves." She named them,
choosing a face for each possibility. To Dalen: "Ambush at the
brook, with a very good chance of success if that's their route,
disaster if it isn't." To the old woman: "Split into two groups,
one in ambush, and one waiting near the hill, with a fair chance
for one group and a poor one for the other." To the young farmer:
"Or all go to the hills, with less than an even chance if that's
their route, and no chance at all if it isn't."

Bel spoke. "There's another way."

Some turned toward her, but Rowan did not,
not wishing to direct too much attention toward the Outskirter. She
said only, "And what's that?"

"Abandon the town." Now all heads turned,
including Rowan's.

The Outskirter remained leaning at her ease,
sopping stew with her biscuit as she spoke. "They don't want your
lives, they want your property. They'll take your livestock, all
the stored food they can carry, anything pretty and portable, and
anything with workable metal. Then they'll leave."

"Burning houses as they go?" someone
asked.

"That's right."

"And our fields?"

At this Bel shrugged.

Rowan brought attention back to herself. "If
any fires are started, they'll be hard to control. You'll certainly
lose some of your fields."

"But you'll keep your lives," Bel pointed
out. "You can build again."

"There is that," Rowan conceded reluctantly.
It was a legitimate option.

The idea was attractive to some, and
tentative, murmured discussion began. But when his opinion was
requested, Dalen drew himself up carefully, dark eyes growing
darker. His reply to the quiet question was delivered in a tone
chosen to carry: in effect, an announcement. "That's the coward's
way."

"That's true," Bel admitted,
matter-of-fact.

For an instant, something in her manner
attracted him, and he gave her a quick, puzzled glance, a half
smile of half-recognized kinship, then turned back to the
assemblage. His voice was neither mocking nor scornful, but
permitted the saying of the thing to communicate his opinion.
"Scattering at the first threat," he said. "Ants have more
honor."

Rowan felt constrained to point out,
"Scattering at mere threat is honorless, true; but scattering in
the face of undefeatable force is sensible."

"And these Outskirters," he asked her,
pointing with his chin to the chart, "they're undefeatable?"

She sighed. "No. But it will be
difficult."

And on that question, the gathering
divided.

One voice raised an opinion; another
interrupted and was interrupted by a third. The old woman set to
tapping one gnarled finger on the chart, muttering explanations to
a girl behind her, who shook a headful of wild red curls,
disagreeing in rising tone. Two burly men from the back of the room
sidled forward to argue over some feature on the map, someone in a
far corner began to complain in a baritone whine—and the crowd
deteriorated into clots and pockets of discussion.

Rowan discovered Bel hunkered down beside her
chair, and leaned closer to hear her speaking under the noise.
"You're talking as if you plan to fight alongside these
people."

"I do."

The Outskirter shook her head broadly.
"That's not sensible. If we want to reach your fallen Guidestar,
that deep in the Outskirts, we're going to need to travel with a
group." She glanced about and came closer, speaking into Rowan's
ear. "We could try to join these war bands' tribe and travel with
them for a part of the way. But they won't accept us if the raiders
recognize you as someone who fought against them."

"I assume that's the case."

"Why don't we just leave, and join the tribe
when the fighting's over? It's not our battle."

"It is my battle," Rowan said, then turned to
look her friend directly in the face. "Bel, for the last week these
people have fed and sheltered us while we rested, befriended us,
and let us replenish our supplies free of charge. They've been kind
and generous."

"They'd do those things for any
steerswoman."

"True. And in this case, the steerswoman is
myself. I cannot simply abandon them to disaster."

"It would make our way easier." Bel jerked
her head at the squabbling crowd. "Our mission is more important
than these people."

"No. My mission is for these people, and for
others." Rowan studied the Outskirter's stubborn expression, then
saw it slowly alter, as Bel read on Rowan's face, as clearly as if
it were spoken, the request that the steerswoman was unwilling to
make. Rowan had forgotten, again, how easily her own expressions
betrayed her thoughts.

She was abruptly ashamed, as if she had
undertaken a planned manipulative tactic. The idea was abhorrent.
She looked away.

"Bel," she began, consoling herself with
simple statement of fact, "at this moment the village's situation
is precarious. As long as that's so, as long as I feel that the
addition of even one extra fighter might make a difference," and
she turned back, "I will fight."

Bel glowered at her for a long moment.
"Precarious," she repeated, and with an expression of vast distaste
gave herself to thought.

The noise in the room began to lessen.
Through some internal process, the villagers were slowly coalescing
into a unified group. Their leader was not Dalen, as Rowan had
half-expected, but a pale, jittery woman of middle age with
smoldering eyes, who spoke fervently, passionately, using short,
quick gestures.

"Rowan?"

Rowan turned back to the Outskirter.
"Yes?"

"The war bands will come down the brook."

Rowan sighed in relief. "I rather thought
they might."

"It leads right into town, and they don't
know they're expected. The idea of attacking at dawn is too
attractive."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me; I want to reach the
Guidestar, and I don't care to watch you die," Bel said vehemently.
"You tell your villagers to use bows, as many as they have. The
Outskirters won't have archers. An ambush with bows, and the
village will win easily, and one fighter more or less won't
matter." She looked up at Rowan and enunciated each word fiercely.
"Now will you leave?"

"As soon as I pass this on."

Bel rose, and brushed her trouser legs as if
they were filthy. "You're lucky that I like you so well."

"Yes," Rowan admitted. "Yes, I am."

Bel stalked back to her position, and Rowan
rapped the table to gain the room's attention. A hush fell
instantly, and the villagers turned to her, now a unified force
with a commander and a single, all-important purpose. They lacked
only strategy. The steerswoman gave it to them.

O
n the evening
before Rowan's departure from the Steerswomen's Archives, the air
had been sweetly cool outside, warm and faintly dusty in the
northeast corner of the Greater Library. Three cushioned chairs
stood close beside the snapping fireplace. Rowan sat in
one—uneasily, on the edge, bending forward again and again to study
one or another of the many charts that lay on a low table before
her. In the second chair, Henra, the Prime of the Steerswomen,
nestled comfortably: a small, elderly woman of graceful gestures
and quiet self-assurance. Silver-brown hair fell in a loose braid
down her breast, and she wore a heavy robe over her nightshift,
looking much like a grandmother prepared to remain all night by the
bedside of a feverish child—an appearance contradicted by the cool,
steady gaze of her long green eyes.

The third chair was empty. Bel sat on the
stones of the hearth, cheerfully feeding the fire to a constant,
unnecessarily high blaze. "Enjoy it while you can," she said. In
the Outskirts, open flame attracted dangerous creatures by
night.

The charts loosely stacked on the table had
been drawn by dozens of hands, and their ages spanned centuries.
Each map showed a sweep of mountains to the left, a pair of rivers
bracketing the center, and a huge body of water below all, labeled
INLAND SEA
. From chart to chart,
across the years, scope and precision of depiction grew: the edge
of the mountain range became delimited, the river Wulf slowly
sprouted tributaries, Greyriver later did the same, and the Inland
Sea began to fulfill its promise of a far shore by acquiring a
north-pointing peninsula.

Each map also noted an area labeled
THE OUTSKIRTS
; each showed it as a
vague empty sweep; and each showed it in a different location. Set
in order, the maps revealed the slow eastward shifting of the
barbarian wildlands.

Bel regarded the charts with extreme
skepticism. "I don't doubt that the women who drew the maps
believed that that was where the Outskirts were. But did they
actually go there? And were my people there? And a word like
'outskirts' might mean many things. Perhaps they just intended to
say, 'This is the edge of what we know.' That would explain why it
keeps moving."

"I don't think so. Look at this." Rowan had
pulled one map from the bottom of the stack: a recent copy of an
older copy of a now-lost chart from nearly a thousand years
earlier, purported to have been drawn by Sharon, the founder of the
Steerswomen. On it, the Outskirts were improbably shown to begin
halfway between the tiny fishing village of Wulfshaven and the
mouth of Greyriver, where the city of Donner later grew.

Rowan indicated. "Greyriver, deep in what was
then the Outskirts; Sharon knew that it was there. The term
'outskirts' did not represent the limit of what she knew."

Bel puzzled. "How did she know it was
there?"

"No one knows."

"Is it shown accurately?"

"Yes."

"She must have gone there."

"Perhaps. Most of her notes have been lost.
Nevertheless, to Sharon, Greyriver was part of the Outskirts."

The Prime spoke. " 'Where the greengrass
ends,' " she quoted, " 'the Outskirts begin.' Those were Sharon's
words."

Bel made a deprecating sound. "Hyperbole,"
she said.

"What?" Henra was taken aback; Rowan was not,
and she smiled over her chart. She had learned not to be surprised
when the barbarian made use of sophisticated ideas.

"Hyperbole," Bel repeated. "Exaggeration. The
greengrass doesn't just end. It runs out, eventually. Either your
Sharon didn't know, or she wasn't talking like a steerswoman,
because it's not an accurate description. Perhaps she was trying to
be poetic."

Henra recovered her balance. "I see."

"Well." Rowan sighed and returned to her
work, sifting through the charts before her, uselessly, helplessly.
There was no more to be done; all was prepared, as well as could
be, all packed and ready for the first leg of her journey.
Nevertheless, she reviewed, and reviewed again.

Rowan was to leave first, and travel eastward
cross-country to a small village on the far side of the distant
Greyriver; Bel would go south to the nearby port city of
Wulfshaven, there to attempt to maintain the illusion that Rowan
was still at the Archives, and later to leave ostentatiously alone,
by sea. The plan was designed to deflect from Rowan the passing
attention of any wizards.

The wizards and the Steerswomen had coexisted
for long centuries; but the wizards, by blithely refusing to answer
certain questions, had consistently incurred the Steerswomen's ban.
Their refusal had engendered in the Steerswomen a deep-seated,
slow-burning resentment that had grown over the years, eventually
becoming as pervasive as it was ineffectual. The feeling was
largely one-sided: for their part, the wizards tended simply to
ignore the order entirely.

But the previous spring Rowan herself had
managed to attract their notice, and merely by doing what every
steerswoman did: asking questions.

She had not known that her investigation into
the source and nature of certain pretty blue gems, decorative but
otherwise useless, would be of any interest to the wizards. But
when she and Bel were first attacked on the road by night, then
trapped in a burning building, then waylaid by a ruse clearly
designed to divert the investigation, it became obvious that the
wizards were indeed interested, and more than interested—they were
concerned enough to take action, for the first time in nearly eight
hundred years, against so seemingly harmless a person as a
steerswoman.

In the course of what had followed, many of
Rowan's questions about the jewels had been answered, although none
completely. And the course of her investigations had gifted her
with answers to questions unasked and unimagined.