The Steerswoman's Road (46 page)

With a gesture, Rowan caught her glance and beckoned. Bel
was not a person to take insult casually, and Rowan thought it best to distract
her as quickly as possible. Bel turned her glare unaltered on the steers-woman,
but approached, edging her way through the seated warriors. The healer
departed, with some reluctance, at a gesture from the seyoh.

Bel seated herself beside Hanlys, glumly. “What?”

Rowan addressed both Outskirters. “As I understand it, the assistance
we gave the wounded warriors, and the fact that Jermyn willingly asked for my
name, give us the right to assistance in turn. This tribe is going east, Bel; I
assume you want us to travel with it?”

“Until they choose another direction, yes,” Bel said,
looking with sidelong dislike at the seyoh.

Her unspoken opinion was wasted on him. He rubbed his sharp
nose. “And you’re welcome to. If nothing else, you’re both amusing.”

Bel gathered herself to retort, but Rowan spoke first. “Sometimes
I think that half of the Inner Landers’ interest in steerswomen is the diversion
we supply,” she admitted.

Bel quieted herself. “And these people know the lay of the
land,”

she added, reluctantly. “You might ask for information to
add to your empty maps, the parts we won’t see ourselves.”

Hanlys replied to Rowan’s questioning glance. “Of course.
Can’t hurt us any. Let’s do it now.”

Rowan rose, intending to fetch her pack, but the seyoh waved
her to sit, then caught the attention of the serving woman, whose duties were
now finished. “Ho, you! The steerswoman’s gear!” The woman delivered a flat
glare, then wandered off.

Rowan noticed the healer standing to one side near a
particularly tattered tent, conversing with a pair of elderly persons of indeterminate
gender. All three wore ill-fitting clothing, ancient, barely serviceable, and
unclean, save in the healer’s case. The steerswoman recollected from Bel’s
coaching that there existed two categories of Outskirters within a tribe:
warriors, who defended the tribe and its flock and conducted raids; and
mertutials, who did not fight, but attended to matters of daily
maintenance—cooking, cleaning, various kinds of service. These then, with the
woman fetching Rowan’s gear, and two others tending the sleeping children in
their tent, comprised this tribe’s mertutials. Bel had not mentioned that the
work carried so little prestige.

Hanlys turned back to Rowan. “How far are you going?”

“Dust Ridge.”

He shook his shaggy head. “Never heard of it.”

“Perhaps four months’ travel, eastward,” Rowan told him, “assuming
we meet with few difficulties.”

“A long way. I don’t know anyone’s been that far.”

“I do,” Bel put in. “My father. And I’ve been most of the
way myself.”

Behind Bel, three warriors adjusted their positions and
began gaming with a pair of dice. Jermyn, who had been seated nearby, rose to
leave, but they cajoled him and beckoned. He hesitated, then joined the game
with a studied gaiety that did not reflect in his eyes.

The seyoh spoke to Bel, expressing his opinion of the ways
of her father’s land. “A hard life, and hard travels so far out.” He shook his
head. “Things needn’t be so difficult.”

Bel leaned forward, brows knit. “A hard life is good. It
keeps a warrior strong.”

“Ha. It’s fighting makes a warrior strong. And good fight deserves
good reward.” He tapped the ground between them, where the diagram had been
obscured, emphasizing his point. “What do you gain when you battle out there,
hey? A few more goats, is all, and the right to run them in the direction you
want. Till you meet another tribe won’t let you by, or wants a few more
stinking goats themselves.”

Bel’s answer was cold. “The herd is life.”

He laughed and spread his hands. “Not here.”

The mertutial woman reappeared, and Rowan took the pack with
an unthinking “Thank you,” at which Hanlys grunted amusement. Bel shot him a
glance, but said nothing.

They spent an hour bent over the charts, as the seyoh helped
the steerswoman amend them. His knowledge, supplemented by occasional comments
by other warriors, included eastward areas to the distance of perhaps eighty
miles. Rowan had been under the impression that Outskirter tribes generally
covered a wider range than this, but she forbore to mention it, not wishing to
prompt a possibly insulting response from Bel. Rowan also marked areas to the
north and south that she would not be crossing; the more complete she could
make her maps, the better for future travelers. She became engrossed in her
work.

Eventually Hanlys noted, “Your friend doesn’t seem very happy.”

With some difficulty, Rowan pulled her attention from the
chart and saw that Bel had walked away from the center of the camp to stand
facing out into the darkness, alone. As Rowan watched, Bel began walking slowly
to the left, her face invisible. “No,” Rowan agreed, puzzled. “I should think
she would be. She’s going home.” She took a moment to wipe the ink from her
fingers with a rag from her kit, her eyes still on the lonely figure.

The seyoh made a sound of resignation. “Well, it’s no surprise.
She’s not comfortable with us. She’s different.” He shrugged, in a vaguely
eastward direction. “Probably doesn’t understand our ways. Her people are far
from civilization.” He caught Rowan’s eye and winced apology at speaking
against her friend. “They’re just a bit stiff-necked out there, old-fashioned,
see. They can’t help it. Try not to hold it against her; I don’t. We’ve
accepted you both, and you both have our hospitality. That’s Outskirter honor.”
And he nodded his head with careful dignity.

“I see.” Rowan did not believe him; Bel was anything but
stiff-necked. Clearly something was bothering her that she did not feel free to
articulate.

Rowan considered. She wrapped her pen and inkstone in the
rag, rolled her charts, and returned them to their case. “Excuse me,” she said
to the seyoh, and went to find her friend.

In the dimness at the edge of camp, Bel was a collection of
gray, shifting shadows. Rowan found her more by hearing than sight: the crunch
of gravel beneath the Outskirter’s boots, the creak of leather and the soft
hush of her breathing.

She was walking the limits of the camp, slowly, moving quietly.
Rowan heard the hiss of grass as the breeze swept in from the meadow, the
shivering rattle when it met the forest’s edge, and sensed Bel’s attention
shifting at small inconsistencies of sound: a clattering as a dead twig tumbled
from the high branches, the fluttering pass of a trio of bats, the rustle and
snap as some tiny predator found tinier prey.

“What are you doing?”

Bel was disgruntled. “What no one else is doing.”

Rowan added up the clues of her behavior. “You’re standing
guard.”

“That’s right.”

“The others don’t seem concerned.”

“They’re fools.”

The steerswoman fell in with her friend’s careful pacing. “How
long will you keep this up?”

“Until they put that fire out.”

Goblins were attracted by fire at night, Bel had often told
the steerswoman. Rowan looked back at the camp. The flickering light was
blocked from sight by two low canvas tents. Its faint glow was visible only
high above, where it eerily outlined the branches of the overhanging trees.

Bel had also said that there were no trees in the Outskirts;
they were not, then, beyond the admittedly vague limits of the Inner Lands. “I
don’t think goblins are common in these parts,” Rowan said.

“They don’t have to be common to be here.”

They continued their slow pacing of the perimeter. The
sounds shifted from those of wind and open meadow to the night sounds of
forest, cool and close. Voices drifted from the camp: a single person, speaking
in declamatory style, others laughing. “You don’t like this tribe,” Rowan
observed.

Bel’s voice was tight. “No.”

They were completely alone in the darkness. “Why not?”

Away from the camp, Bel’s answer came immediately. “They’re
not good Outskirters. And it’ll do no good to tell them so.”

“You’re the only Outskirter I know well,” Rowan observed. Underfoot,
the gravel changed to soft pine needles. “It’s hard for me to look at you and
know how much is unique, how much common to all Outskirters. What’s wrong with
these people?”

“What’s wrong with these people is your people. The Inner
Lands. This tribe has been weakened by them. Things are too easy here.” Bel’s
posture shifted: a slight drop of one shoulder, then the other, the brief
weaving motion Bel often made when thinking. “I wouldn’t mind if they decided
to live completely like Inner Landers, in farms and towns and such, because
that’s a useful way, too, even though it’s weak. But what they’ve done is taken
some Inner Lands ways, and lost some of the true ways ...” She turned abruptly
and, slapping Rowan’s arm once, pointed back to the camp. “Look. Where is their
herd, where are their handicrafts? Raiding is fair; if you can’t defend your
goods, you don’t deserve them. But if you only live by preying on the weak,
then you’re weaker than your prey. These people would die without the Inner
Lands nearby. They’re not good Outskirters, just bandits.”

“I see ..”

“And Hanlys is a warrior, did you notice?” Her voice was outraged.
“Yes ..”

“Well, that’s wrong. You choose a seyoh from the mertutials.
If your leader knows only how to fight people, and not how to fight the land,
or hunger, or disease ...” She made a sound: a harsh breath released through
her teeth, a sound of disgust. “This is what you get. These people are stealing
your goods, while they steal our name. I wish a troop of goblins
would
come
down on them.”

Rowan sought the right word. “They’re ... degenerated?”

“They’re primitive.”

Through gaps in the ring of tents, Rowan studied the crowd
of warriors around the campfire: men and women clean though unkempt,
rough-mannered but friendly and lively. She thought she could see part of Bel
in them, but did not mention it.

But then she thought of the raiders’ disinterest in the
death of Jermyn’s wife, of their abandonment of her remains to scavenging animals,
and she began to see that these Outskirters did lack something that Bel
possessed in full: perhaps a depth of heart, or breadth of understanding.

“Do you want to leave them?” After taking so much trouble to
win their assistance, it seemed unlikely.

“No,” Bel confirmed. “But don’t expect me to tell them that
I like them.”

“I won’t.” The very idea distressed Rowan. “The tribe is moving
in the morning,” she pointed out. “If you stand guard all night you won’t
travel well.”

“That’s true.” The Outskirter stopped herself abruptly, then
let out an amused “Ha!” She looked up at the steerswoman, shadowed eyes
glinting starlight. “If we sleep near the center of the camp, then any goblins
that come will get at these fools first, and we’ll have plenty of warning.”

Rowan found herself laughing, despite the possibly grim vision.
“There is that,” she conceded.

Bel clapped her shoulder. “Let’s do it. They can take their
chances.”

They returned to the center of the camp and found entertainment
in progress. A huge red-haired warrior was pacing by the fire, singing a
humorous song in a booming voice. Rowan and Bel took seats beside the offending
fire.

The song told of an Outskirter scout who seduced a farmer’s
daughter, inspiring her to steal her father’s possessions, one by one, as
gifts to her lover; a clever, saucy tale—and one that Rowan had heard a dozen
times in the Inner Lands, with a tinker in the role of the Outskirter.

The hatchet-faced woman rose next, to recite a
heavy-rhythmed poem which included many lovingly depicted gory battles, whose
points or purposes remained obscure. The warriors listened intently, but the
steerswoman noted one face not watching the recitation. It was Jermyn. During
the previous song, he had showed ostentatious hilarity; now he sat, expression
blank, eyes on the ground. One of his dicing companions nudged him to direct
his attention. He did not respond.

Bel and Rowan were seated across the fire from him; Bel was
following Rowan’s gaze. “He should sing a song for his wife. Or tell a story,
or a poem; something to mark her passing.”

“I don’t believe that he wants to,” Rowan observed. Jermyn’s
companions continued to display no sympathy for his loss, and he seemed to
wish to pay it no attention himself; finally mastering his emotions, he
fabricated an expression of interest and turned up his face toward the
performer, to display it.

Had Bel not spoken the next words, Rowan would have: “It’s
wrong.”

“Yes.”

The woman’s recitation came to a thudding end, and in the
space that followed, someone seated far back from the fire underwent a degree
of cajoling, as friends called for an amusing story. The person reluctantly
began to rise to his feet, a lopsided grin on his face.

Bel stood. “I’ll do it.” She stepped forward.

Her appearance was a surprise, exciting quiet comments from
the warriors, some of dubious tone. Bel ignored them and took up her position
by the fire, to the right, where the fewest people sat behind her. Rowan saw
her in profile, face flickering pale in firelight, starlit darkness behind.

The tune was slow and gentle, filled with the rich, long
notes that Bel’s voice carried best. The lyrics followed no standard form that
Rowan recognized; they wandered, with no clear rhymes, only suggestions of
assonance, falling at unexpected points in the melody, line endings now
lagging, now running ahead of the natural symmetry of the tune.

“Who has seen her, following the wind,

From end to end, long hills

Winding, black and midnight when her voice

Comes shadowing down the sky?

I know her eyes from ages past, and this