The Outskirter's Secret (33 page)

T
here here
were furious ambushes among the tents, sudden encounters; a force
of six enemies made a stand by the fire pit and were coldly and
systematically eliminated; wild-eyed mertutials, past warriors all,
defended the children's tent, destroying would-be assassins before
any younger fighters had time to assist; and at last the camp was
secured.

Kammeryn took stock. "Who's still
fighting?"

"Most of Kree's band is at twelve," he was
told. "They have assistance. Last signal said they can hold."

"Good."

Another relay spoke. "There are single
raiders spotted at four, about five of them. They made off with ten
goats. Last report, maybe ten minutes ago."

"None since?"

"No."

"And Kester?"

"No report."

Kammeryn was pacing the edge of the cold fire
pit. He stopped and scanned faces.

"Quinnan."

"Seyoh?"

"Go to four."

The warrior left, at a run. Kammeryn resumed
his pacing, his tall, straight figure striding like an old soldier
on guard, his eyes distant as he mentally assembled information.
Across the pit, standing quietly by Mander's tent, Rowan did the
same. What's happening at six? she wondered; and a moment later
Kammeryn voiced that question.

"The band you sent is out of sight, no relay
between."

"Fletcher."

"Seyoh?" Fletcher had been standing in an
exhausted slouch, dazed. He came upright instantly, feverishly
alert, breathing through his teeth.

"Go toward six. If they're near enough,
relay. If not, find them, come back with a report. Don't join the
fight, I want information."

Fletcher nodded, one quick jerk. "I'm
off."

He was not: Jann stepped in front of him.

"Seyoh, I'd like to do that," she called, her
eyes narrowly watching Fletcher's face. She did not trust him, or
credit the trust her seyoh placed in him. Fletcher stared down at
her as if he could not quite recall who she was.

The matter was trivial; Kammeryn gestured
with annoyance. "Go." Jann departed. The seyoh turned away.
"Nine?"

One warrior had just returned from there.
"Secured. Half our people, half strangers."

The seyoh nodded to himself, then took a
moment to meet the eyes of one of the warriors who had returned
with Rowan: the small, muscular man. Kammeryn acknowledged his
presence, and the help of his tribe, with another small nod. The
man replied in the same fashion.

A girl, the one child near walkabout age,
dashed into camp; she had been pressed into relay duty. "Twelve,"
she said. "Twelve is secure. Some of them are coming in."

"Have them move to ten."

"I can't, they don't know the signals."

Kammeryn glanced at the stranger again. "Go
back to your post," he told the girl. "When they reach you, send
them to me."

Kammeryn and Rowan each contemplated their
respective images of the tribe's present defense: the circle was
half secure, half uncertain. The camp was silent. Kammeryn paced.
Presently he asked, "New reports?"

There were none. "The children?"

"Safe," Chess called.

"Mertutials?"

"We lost some. Most of the rest are helping
Mander."

"Wounded?"

Chess grunted. "Plenty. Warriors, mertutials,
strangers."

The man at Rowan's side turned at Chess's
words, then caught the seyoh's eye. He received a gesture of
permission, and Chess conducted him to the tent where Mander was
tending the wounded.

In the distance: voices, approaching from
position twelve. Their sound was rhythmic.

"Who knows about the flock on nine-side?"

Rowan spoke up. "They ran from our fight,
toward seven, or maybe six. Except for about twenty, who broke
toward nine."

He mused. "No one has mentioned them. That's
where the first strike was. We'll assume that twenty lost." He
paused and looked again at the nearby faces: waiting mertutials and
warriors, two relays. His eyes glittered. "Prisoners?" No one
answered. "I'll assume none. If one shows up, tell me
instantly."

The voices reached the edge of camp. They
were singing. Kammeryn turned.

The song had no words, only a tune, simple,
and a rhythm, repetitive: a song to march by.

Seven warriors entered camp, their swords
sheathed. Three led. At left: a blond man, narrow-bodied, with a
thin, foxy face. At right: a strong woman of startling height, her
hair a short wild cloud of curls, her eyes black and laughing.

Between them, with one arm around each of
their waists, their arms linked behind her shoulders, and half her
face gory from a scalp wound: Bel.

She brought the troop to Kammeryn, where they
halted. Bel stood a moment looking up at the seyoh. She grinned. "I
think we can count the Face People as out." She unlinked from her
friends and stepped aside. "This is Ella."

The tall woman turned to Kammeryn. "Seyoh,"
she said, dignity fighting triumph in her eyes.

"Kammeryn," he supplied, cautiously. First
names only.

"My people tell me that they found ten goats
in the company of some men who definitely didn't own them. The
goats are on their way back. Please let your people know, so they
won't kill mine before they can say Bel's names."

Kammeryn gestured; the relays went to pass
the word.

Ella drew a breath. "What's your
orientation?"

"You came from twelve."

"Right." She looked about, setting the
configuration in her mind, then gestured. "We deployed two bands at
your six. No report, but we know there was only one band of Face
People there. I'd be damned surprised if it weren't secure by now.
How many did you send there?"

He was watching her face, speculatively, with
great interest. "One band," he said. "With yours, six is
secure."

She raised her brows. "Might be some heavy
losses. The Face People are a nasty crowd."

"I have a runner returning shortly."

"Good. We began with two bands at your six,
one at eight, one at nine, and one at twelve. One more scattered
along your three-side."

He became concerned on her tribe's behalf.
"That's a lot of people to send out."

Her face darkened. "We had a grudge. We met
that crowd before, and they did us damage. We wanted them
dead."

Jann arrived, breathing heavily. "Six is
secure," she reported. "The wounded are on their way in. Three of
ours, and—" She caught sight of Ella and addressed her. "—and four
of yours. And you've lost five of yours, I'm sorry to tell
you."

"And ours?" Kammeryn prompted.

"None from six."

Kammeryn and Ella regarded each other.
Kammeryn spoke. "When you return to your tribe," he said, "tell
your seyoh that I am Kammeryn, Murson, Gena."

She studied his face. "Thank you."

Kammeryn took Ella and two of her people to
his tent for more discussion. The rest of those who had arrived
with her sighted their comrades by Rowan and Fletcher and went to
greet them happily.

Bel approached and paused five feet away from
Rowan. The two stood considering each other. Rowan's relief was too
large for laughter, or embraces. She felt she needed something to
lean back against.

Bel tilted her head. "How much of that blood
is yours?"

Rowan looked down at herself. "I have no
idea. And yourself?"

Bel fingered her scalp tentatively. "I should
get this stitched. How many did you take down?"

"I forgot to count."

"Good. You should never count. It'll only
make you conceited." She paused, then grinned. "I took
fourteen."

And then Rowan could laugh.

Rowan's only injuries were a huge bruise on
her right forearm, a smaller one on her left, and a number of badly
strained muscles arranged in an annoyingly random configuration
about her body. She stood by while Parandys, whose normal
occupation was combing wool, spinning, and dyeing, trimmed Bel's
hair with a knife and carefully sewed the wound with fine thread
and a thin bone needle. After watching the procedure, Rowan went to
Kree's tent and retrieved from her own gear the little packet of
five silver needles. These she bestowed upon Mander, indicating
that they were his forever. They were instantly put to use.

The steerswoman and her companion were set to
work, carrying cloths and water, passing implements to Mander and
his assistants, and doling out large and small drafts of erby,
which served to rapidly numb the senses. Fletcher and Averryl were
in and out, supporting or carrying wounded warriors; when the
number of arrivals slackened, Rowan looked again and found Averryl
working alone, Fletcher absent.

After a lull, more wounded arrived from
position six: Ella's people.

One of their number had a thong tied around
one forearm, twisted tight with a knife handle. Below the
tourniquet, her arm was a chaos of bone and loose muscle, the hand
a crushed ruin.

Two of her uninjured comrades posted
themselves at her sides, as Mander waited for his implements to be
cleaned and recleaned in boiled water. Rowan, feeling useless and
helpless, urged the woman to drink from the cup of erby, which she
refilled as soon as it was emptied.

Mander sat on the ground beside his patient,
amiable. "What's your skill?"

The warrior replied through pain-clenched
teeth. "Killing my enemies."

Mander shook his head. "Other than that."
From this moment, she was a mertutial. Mander was asking what her
new work would consist of.

The woman did not reply, so one of her
comrades prompted her solicitously. "Goats . . ."

"Herding?"

"Diseases," the woman said, and Rowan
administered another draft. "Diseases of the goat."

Mander was interested. "Ah. Well, now,
diseases of the goat have much in common with diseases of humans,
did you know that?"

"I could hardly care less." She spoke a shade
more easily, and her muscles became looser: the alcohol's
effect.

Mander directed her friends to position the
arm on the ground away from her body, and the woman stiffened in
anticipation. "Would you like to know how I chose my job?" Mander
asked.

Her eyes were squeezed tight. "I would like
you to do your job, and then leave me alone."

The healer continued. "It was like this—" He
recounted, with great detail, an immense battle the tribe had faced
some ten years before, and his own role in it. The tale was well
delivered, and Mander depicted himself as a properly valiant
warrior. The wounded woman began to relax, showing a certain amount
of grudging interest in the drama of the fight. At the culmination
of the story, Mander received a wound much like the one he now saw
before him.

"The healer," he said, handing Rowan one of
the silver needles to thread for him, "botched the job. A rot set
in, and she had to remove more of the arm two days later. She
botched it again, and had to take more. It was an outrage!" He
adjusted his position, nimbly using his bare feet to brace the
wounded arm, and applied pressure. "You can believe that I cursed
her! I cursed her up one side and down the other, down the river
and back again. I wish I could remember all the curses I used; I'm
sure I'd go down in legend as a true poet.

"Eventually she shouted back at me, 'If you
think you can do better, do it yourself next time!' " He nodded
briefly as Bel arrived with the tools on a cloth and set them down.
"I said: 'Ha! I could do a better job with my
teeth
!' "

The warrior threw her head back and laughed
out loud, helpless, her body completely slack; the laugh became a
sudden scream, which silenced as she fainted.

Mander completed the rest of the job quickly
and efficiently, then spoke quietly to the woman's friends as he
rinsed his hand and dried it on the towel that Bel held for him.
"She won't lose any more of that arm," he told the warriors. "I
stole that old healer's job, and I'll keep it until the day I die."
He clapped one of their shoulders in parting. "Because I'm the
best."

It was full night when Rowan emerged from the
infirmary tent. Bel had left sometime before; Rowan had not seen
her depart. Rowan had remained at Mander's side, serving, as others
did, as his extra hands, until someone had tapped her on the
shoulder and curtly ordered her to get some rest. It was not until
she stepped into the night air that she realized that the person
who had dismissed her was Kree; that Kree had spoken exactly as she
would have spoken to one of her own war band; and that Rowan had
accepted the order as completely and instinctively as Kree's own
warriors did.

The steerswoman wended her way among the
tents by memory, only half-aware that she was guiding herself by a
clear mental map of the camp, hovering in her exhausted mind. The
map led her to Kree's tent; but her bleary perceptions did not
notice the person who was standing outside its entrance, until he
spoke. "Rowan?"

She paused. "Fletcher." She rubbed tired
eyes, as if clearing them would dispel the night-dark itself. Aware
that he was present, she now sensed him by hearing: his breathing,
the creak of leather, small rustles of fur and cloth, all arranged
and configured to the particular height and shape of his long body.
He stood by, quietly occupying the air.

Before she could ask her question, he asked
it himself, of her. "Are you all right?"

She enumerated her small injuries. "And
you?"

He shifted. "A little slice down one side;
that's minor. One of those weasels whacked me on the back. Maybe he
cracked a rib; Mander wasn't sure. Someone stabbed me in the shin,
but not deep." He spoke without gestures, and quietly. "A lot of
people are dead."

Rowan nodded. "I suppose we won't know who,
until the morning."