The Steerswoman's Road (56 page)

It did not matter. She told Bel, and she told herself, “I
can do it. I did it, and I can do it again.”

Bel said nothing.

Rowan spoke bitterly, a fury directed only at herself. “I
knew what the grass was saying to me. If that man had come at me, I would have
seen him, I could have taken him!”

Another realization struck her abruptly, and her anger vanished,
replaced by shame. “Bel,” she said, “you can’t forever fight for two, guard
two, feed two.” She gave a weak laugh. “I can hardly believe it; that you’ve
done this much, this long, for me ..”

“I’m doing it for myself.”

“Perhaps. But ...” Briefly, patterns and pieces fell
together in her mind, then fragmented. There was reason and sense behind the
Outskirts; it was a place, as surely as was the Inner Lands, with elements
interlocking: wind, grass, water, life ..

“I don’t care to be a burden to you,” she told her friend. “Starting
now, I will ... I will cease to be some
package,
that you have to deliver.”

Bel considered, studying Rowan’s face; and then she nodded
satisfaction. “Good. It’s about time.”

Rowan dreamed of the sea. he water was gray and sunlit
silver, alive with small waves moving clean and regular as mathematics. Above,
the sky was a perfect clear dome of blue, where stars were faintly visible,
although it was full daylight. High overhead the Harp stood, Vega gentled to
dim comradeship with the coolly brilliant sun.

She stood on a deck, the wind two points aft of starboard,
her ship running fast on a close reach. The vessel was shaped like a cargo
ship, but small, no more than fifteen feet abeam. Perfectly fitted, it was of
simple design, without ornamentation, but constructed of the richest of woods,
dark-stained and gleaming, showing everywhere the handiwork of master
craftsmen.

Facing aft, she saw that the poop was deserted. Without looking
elsewhere, she knew that there was no one else aboard.

She controlled her ship by thought alone.

She was in no way surprised by this. It seemed to her that
it was proper, but it was immensely difficult. Mere wishing was not sufficient;
every detail of control must be held consciously, simultaneously. The angle of
the rudder, the set of the sails, the particular tension on each sheet—she was
aware of each, as aware as if by touch, and each must be maintained, or moved,
in perfect respect to the currents of wind and water, by force of will and wisdom.

Constant, interlocking, interdependent, the details filled
her mind completely, but other than these, her thoughts were few. Within this
work, there was no room for such things as personality, identity. In command of
all, she was herself diminished. Time passed in her dream, and as slow as
stones, a feeling began to grow in her that she had another task at hand.
Eventually she understood that it was that she must also chart her course.
Taking navigational sightings, the subtle interplay of numbers—all seemed
beyond her now. Yet it must be done.

Turning her body and making the few steps to the plotting
table were actions identical in kind to her control of the ship itself, and had
to occur without lessening her other awareness. Standing still at the plotting
table freed her to see what was lying on it, and she found that she possessed
no calipers or rulers, no pens, no charts. Alone on the table lay only a huge
leather-bound book.

A single ribbon marked a place. She eased slack into the jib
sheet, adjusted the rudder more tightly against the current, and caused her
hands to open the book.

Words: line after line, for page on page. Straining to encompass
their meaning, she began to see that the words comprised specific, detailed
instructions. Her course was here, described not by maps and headings, but by
single words, one after another. Each individual action that would take her to
her destination was laid out, precisely, step by step, moment by moment. She
need make no choices, but only enact.

She was satisfied. The handwriting was her own.

And in her dream, it now seemed that she had been running in
this fashion for a very long time. In her dream, it seemed fitting.

For an unmeasured length of time she traveled so, the sun never
moving, the sea and stars never changing. Her mind was completely inhabited by
the innumerable small and large details of control—constant, blending,
endless—following her route without the need of thought, trusting the book and
her previous self for the truth of her course and destination.

A moment came when she again added awareness of her hands
and eyes to the sum of her task, and again a measure of her self faded briefly,
then returned, as she turned another page.

Her eyes rested on the new words as she waited for comprehension
to occur. She became aware that it was taking long to do so. Something had
changed.

She struggled dully to stretch her attention to include more
of the page, to piece together the lines of ink into comprehensibility. For an
instant she succeeded, and the marks resolved

Into broken lines, skewed letters. Huge, clumsy words
trailing wildly down the page. Fragments of sentences, in a hand as blunt and
awkward as a child’s.

She was incapable of dismay. She turned herself back to her
task. The ship hesitated, shied, settled. Her journey continued.

And beneath her endless work, behind her unwavering concentration,
deep within her slow, cool thoughts, Rowan recalled from that book only three
facts:

That the broken words had held no meaning to her; that they
filled the rest of the book, to the very end; and that the handwriting was Bel’s.

Very quietly, someone spoke her name.

“What?” She was on her feet, her question was spoken, and
her sword was in her hand, before she realized that she was awake.

Bel was a silent shadow beside her, watching the darkness.
She pointed with her chin, a motion only dimly sensed.

There was a flickering smear of light in the distance,
yellow in the blackness and the blue-tinged starlight. “Brushfire?”

Bel did not reply, concentrating on the glow. She seemed to
be listening, but not to the steerswoman.

Rowan studied the light. It was broadening. With no
referents, there was no way to guess its size or distance. No breeze brought
its scent; the air was still, humid, dead.

Something flared at its edge—a patch of tanglebrush,
catching all at once, with a sudden, distant roar. Something moved across the
light, then something else, then many things ...

“Come on!” Bel was gone, running to the fire. Rowan followed,
redgrass snagging at her trouser legs. She saw Bel pause, sweep once with her
sword, and then continue. When Rowan reached the place she tripped over something
in the grass, something in two pieces, that thrashed.

Over the rising roar of the flames, Rowan heard sounds:
rusted hinges, a rhythmical clatter. There was a wordless cry from Bel, the
sound she made in battle, but no clash of metal.

Rowan hurried on. Figures were visible in the firelight,
flailing, converging on two points.

Something snagged at her left arm from behind, and Rowan
spun to the right, momentum freeing her and adding force to the stroke of her
sword as she came around again.

She had aimed at the height of a man’s neck; the stroke
swept harmlessly over the goblin’s head. She let her sword spin her again,
aiming for the creature’s waist as she came around again.

It was gone. Then something raked at her scalp and tore her
tunic down the back. She stumbled forward, turned left, struck out blindly in
an upswing.

The blow caught the goblin under one arm, which separated
from its body with appalling ease to fall twitching to the ground. The creature
did not seem to notice. It clutched out with its remaining hand, and Rowan made
a quick stab into its chest. It did not stop or fall or pull away, but pushed toward
her, driving her point deeper. Its hand jerked forward at her; she ducked her
head out of reach, and the hand clutched at the sword itself, trying stupidly
to shove it aside. The edge bit deep into the finger joints.

Rowan thrust harder, tried to bring her blade down to slash
the torso open. Too much resistance; she twisted instead and felt the point
make a small slicing arc within the goblin’s body. She gasped at the effort. “Gods
below, don’t you know when you’re dead?”

It squealed and rattled, seemingly in frustration only, then
freed its hand and reached again for her face. She kicked at its stomach, then
pulled out her sword as it fell back.

A sound behind her. She turned and swung down at the next
creature’s shoulder. Her blade hit shallowly, then skittered off. The thing
had hide like horn.

She dodged, struck at the arm joint from beneath, dodged,
struck again. The creature closed on her as if it still had limbs to clutch her
with.

For a frozen instant its face was inches from hers. By
firelight she saw its features: hard brown flattened skull, six black knobs
trailing down in a double row—eyes. Its mouth thrust forward at the end of a
pointed chin, opening and closing, horizontally and vertically, four curved
rasps as long as fingers at each corner.

She brought her sword up close to her body, caught the
goblin under the chin, thrust back into its neck. The head fell back, the body
forward.

An arm came across her from behind, serrated down its
length, points angled inward. She pushed herself into the elbow, levering the
wrist out with her hilt. Something snapped, and she was free. She turned back
to face the fire.

The one-armed creature was flailing its remaining arm from
the shoulder, its elbow and hand flapping uselessly. Rowan kicked it again,
sending it into one of its fellows, and another came at her from the right. She
knocked its arms aside, sliced off its head with an angled upstroke, did the
same with the crippled one as it rose, did the same with the third, turned when
a rattle told her there were more behind her again

And she stopped counting.

She was moving constantly, too fast to think or plan,
trusting the only strategy she knew would work. She dodged, took off their
hands at the elbows, their arms at the shoulders when they reached for her,
used the moment that followed to strike off their heads. The difficulty was in
the numbers; in the time that she dealt with one, another was coming from
behind, a third stepping over the first ...

None of the creatures learned from the deaths of its
fellows. They were stupid, like insects. They tried to grab at her slashing
sword as if it were a club, lost their hands, their taloned fingers, and their
lives by their own stupidity.

And the legs of the headless fallen continued to move. She
tripped twice, once to end tangled among the thrashing dead limbs, and one of
the living creatures fell on her, its mouth rasps closing on her sword arm ...

Then its head tilted freakishly forward and rolled off over
her shoulder. For an instant she saw a man above her, his wide dark eyes full
of battle fury. He spun away.

Before she could rise, another goblin tried to fall on her
and impaled itself on her sword. Rowan cursed. Using both hands, she swung
sword and goblin over her, to smash the creature against the ground to her
right.

For an instant, nothing attacked. She freed her weapon and
set on another goblin, striking at its neck from behind.

It did not work; tough plates shielded the back of its neck.
The goblin turned, and she struck again, up under the chin, and this time it
did work. She seemed to have time, so she relieved it of its arms as well, as
it staggered and fell.

She went for another, slipping her blade around it to reach
the front of its neck ...

After the third time doing this, she realized that she was
now attacking them from behind, that their attention was on someone else.

There came a moment when the one she reached for fell before
she struck it, and through the open space she saw the man again. In the
three-second lull he looked at her in amazement, then shouted “Ha!” as if in
greeting. He turned right, kicked a goblin that was almost on him, dispatched
it with an efficient version of Rowan’s technique, and turned again to deal
with another on his left.

Rowan eliminated three more, from behind. The fourth was
facing her but seemed undecided, as if it had forgotten something. It lost its
head while it was waiting, and she met the man’s eyes again across the creature’s
fallen body.

The onslaught was diminishing. Rowan had time to see that
the fire was to her left; it had become a long undulating line trailing ahead
of her. Behind, it had spread out into a fan. The flames seemed reluctant to
move into the redgrass in her direction, and she realized that they were
following an easier path along a growth of resinous blackgrass.

A goblin between herself and the fire line turned, surprised
to see her. She felled it, and saw that others were moving between her and the
flames, all their attention on the blaze. They seemed to be trying to touch it,
but were driven back again and again by the heat. Their weirdly jointed arms
snapped forward toward the flames; their heads rocked dizzily. They jittered on
trembling legs.

She thought to go after them, had an instant to wonder if
she ought, then turned to try and assist the stranger in his work.

“Get back!” It was Bel’s voice. Rowan could see a knot of action
beyond the man, realized that Bel was working her way toward him, saw that the
man was working his way toward Rowan, and understood that her own job was to
secure their escape route.

She turned and found that a handful of the creatures were coming
in from the darkness, squealing and clattering as they scrambled toward her.
She sidestepped one, heard a grunt from the stranger as he dealt with it,
eliminated the next herself, and stepped back when a third stumbled over a
tangle of quivering corpses. She trod on its neck, which snapped with a sound
she found deeply satisfying.