The Outskirter's Secret (27 page)

"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 particularly 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 be."

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 him," 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."

"Whose name did he have?"

"Emmary, Karinson, Gena."

Rowan hunted among her collection of names.
"Merryk's brother?" Another connection emerged. "And Kammeryn's
line name is Gena."

Zo nodded, her dark hair sifting forward and
back with the motion. "Kammeryn's nephew."

Rowan laughed. "That's a good name to
have."

Zo winced. "But a sad way to get it."

Deely had stopped braiding, becoming
fascinated by the looping flight of a hunting hawkbug overhead. He
laughed, found a stone on the ground, and tossed it clumsily into
the air. It went nowhere near its mark; but astonishingly, the
hawkbug dove for it, contacted it, then fluttered to the ground
among the flock. Goats shied from the thrashing in the grass.

Zo caught Rowan's expression of distress and
laughed. "Don't worry, it isn't hurt. It thinks it's caught
something too heavy to carry. When it figures out it's just a
stone, it will let go and fly away." It did so as Rowan watched. It
was near enough for her to hear its voice for the first time: a
high, exasperated chirring.

"A little over a year ago," Zo told Rowan, as
Deely resumed braiding, "our tribe had a clash with another, over
pasturage. We couldn't back off, there was another tribe too
nearby, and nowhere else to go. We had to fight, and we did, and
won.

"But Emmary had vanished in the fighting."
She paused. "He was a warrior, but he had been planning to cross
over soon. He had trouble with his eyes, and it was becoming worse.
When the time came to move, Emmary was still missing, and assumed
dead. We left." Deely had completed five thin braids and began
weaving them close to his scalp.

"We learned later," Zo continued, "that
during the fighting, Emmary had been cut off from our tribe. When
the other tribe fled, he was forced to move ahead of them, in
hiding. By the time he could get free of them, he had lost our
position. He was wandering for weeks and never found us.

"He tried to steal a goat from the other
tribe and was wounded, though he escaped. The wound turned bad, and
a rot set in. He had almost nothing to eat for days. When Fletcher
found him, he was dying."

"Fletcher couldn't help him?" Rowan tried to
imagine it: alone, starving, sick, then found in the wilderness by
a kindly stranger.

"Too late." Zo was silent for a moment. "He
should have crossed before, really. I don't know what Berrion was
thinking, keeping him on.

"Well. Fletcher gave him food and tended him
as best he could. Before he died, Emmary told Fletcher how to
conduct a proper Outskirter funeral."

Rowan's stomach gave a twist. "Casting?" She
recalled Bel's description.

"That's right. And he brought back part to
the tribe, for his war band to cast; that's proper. So, when
Fletcher appeared with a tale of aid given, with Emmary's names,
and with Emmary's own hand in a sack made of his cloak—no one could
deny him. Fletcher asked to stay permanently, and the council was
so moved that they gave consensus immediately." She stopped,
blinked, and, astonishingly, began to laugh. "And they were sorry
afterward!" Tragedy and hilarity wrestled on Zo's face; she quelled
her laughter into breathy chuckles and struggled against the grin
on her face. "Oh, Rowan," she said, "if you could have seen him! He
was such an Inner Lander!"