The Steerswoman's Road (70 page)

The old woman crinkled her nose roguishly. “Erby,” she said,
then jerked her head toward the tent. “Let’s take it inside.”

Rowan began to recognize a universal behavior. “Is it
liquor? I didn’t know Outskirters made alcohol.” She gathered her materials and
reluctantly followed the enthusiastic mertutial into the tent.

“Alcohol, ha! This is not just alcohol, young woman.” Chess
pushed aside a couple of bedrolls and settled herself familiarly onto the
carpet. “This,” she announced, “is the stuff, the stuff itself, of celebration!”
Chess was being entirely too loquacious to suit Rowan; the steerswoman
suspected that something was afoot.

The old woman set the jugs down and directed Rowan to a seat
opposite her. When Rowan hesitated, she fussed. “Now, a good fight like that
deserves celebration, don’t you think? Come on, come on!” Her waving encouragement
became ludicrous.

Not wishing to offend Outskirter customs, Rowan complied,
cautiously. “What is it? How is it made?”

From somewhere within her clothing, Chess drew two shallow
mugs. “Always the questions, I never stop being amazed! Well.” She held up the
small-mouthed jug, eyes sparkling in nests of wrinkles. “This,” she announced, “comes
from redgrass root, same as bread. You make it like you start to make bread,
then stop, and let it sit for a good long time.” She poured a measure into each
cup: clear, colorless fluid.

“And this”—she took up the wider jug—“used to be goat milk.”
She waved one finger in a saucy negation, an appalling effect in one her age. “But
it’s not anymore!” She added the contents to both cups: pale white liquid, with
small floating yellow clots.

Rowan peered into her cup dubiously. “There’s something
going on in there.” The clumps were shifting, and more were visibly coalescing.

Chess emitted an Outskirter’s “Ha.” She took a sip. “Something
going on, for sure, and it’ll keep going on inside.” She smacked her lips, then
gestured at the steerswoman. “Now you.”

“Well ...

“Come on, come on! A fighter like you can’t be afraid of a
little drink!”

Rowan took a very little drink. Her tongue was instantly
coated with a sour, cheesy ooze. The fluid component of the erby converted to
fumes before it reached her throat, and a cold, airy gap abruptly came into
being between her mouth and the back of her head. She coughed.

Chess slapped her knee. “What a fight! I never saw anyone
move like that!”

Rowan waited for her tongue to reappear. “Thank you,” she
said. “Who was your mentor?” Chess drank again.

“Formally speaking, as you know it, I had none,” Rowan began;
at Chess’s urging she took another cautious sip. It was necessary to pause and
swallow the gooey clots separately from the liquid. “Specifically,” Rowan tried
to continue, then swallowed again to clear her mouth, “Bel instructed me in how
to fight against Outskirter weapons.” The airy space had spread to the floor of
her brain; the top of her skull seemed completely disconnected from her body, a
decidedly peculiar sensation.

“That Bel!” Chess enthused. “I never saw her fight, but I
can tell, just from the way she walks, from the way she carries herself. No one
should ever cross her. She’ll slice you up and enjoy herself doing it.” She
drank again.

“I’ve seen her do exactly that,” Rowan replied.

Chess waved at her. “Come on, do another. I did one, now
you.” The regularity of the procedure disturbed Rowan; it definitely possessed
a formal aspect ...

Dubiously, she sipped again. There were more clots in her
cup than had been there at first, and the liquid itself had become stronger. It
survived long enough to pass down her throat, and began to define for her the
specific shape and configuration of her stomach. “It’s ... it’s very
interesting ...”

The entrance darkened as someone passed into the tent. Rowan
was surprised at the difficulty she had in recognizing Bel. She greeted her
friend with relief. “Bel, come in! Chess has brought some—Chess, what is it
called?”

“Erby,” the old woman supplied. “And you should join us.”

“How far are you into it?” Bel asked.

“Three sips each,” the mertutial replied, and Rowan’s suspicions
coalesced.

Bel shook her head. “I think I’ll decline.” She ambled over
to her pack, began to rummage inside it.

Rowan blinked at the old woman, seeing her with difficulty
through expanding and dispersing spots of blue light. Chess was smiling a
thin, happy smile, perfectly content. “Bel,” Rowan began. “Excuse me,
Chess—Bel ... what exactly have I gotten myself into?”

Bel turned back, suppressing a grin. “You’ve gotten yourself
into Outskirter customs.” She approached. “Pardon us, Chess, while I instruct
this foreigner.” Bel stooped down beside Rowan. “Drinking erby muddles your
mind and puts you at a disadvantage. When people agree to drink with each
other, they agree not to gain an advantage. If one person drinks, another has
to, at the same time.

“If you’re in a group, you pick one person, catch his or her
eye, and drink; the other person has to drink, too. You make sure to pick a different
person each time, and spread the effects. If it’s just two people,” and her
grin escaped control, “you have to drink anytime the other person does. And she
has to drink when you do. You stay even.”

Chess ostentatiously took a large sip. Rowan hesitated, then
did the same. The cheesy substance insulated her tongue from the effects of the
alcohol, half of which ventilated her throat again; the other half found a new
route to her brain, by way of her eyeballs. “I see,” Rowan said, although
literally, she could not, quite. Bel was a shadow against faintly blue light. “How
does one ever stop?” She decided that the need for this information would soon
be urgent.

Bel’s form weaved in the air. “If one person doesn’t take a
sip, the other has nothing to match. If the second person also doesn’t take a
sip, the first has nothing to match. Then it’s over.”

“Ah.” Experimentally, Rowan drank again, saw Chess do the
same. “But,” Rowan said, “but, what if one person never stops?”

“Oh, she will,” Bel assured her, “one way or the other.”

Bel seemed to vanish; Rowan watched as Chess charged both
cups again, from each jug. “Why,” Rowan asked, “don’t you just put it all in
one jug? Is it,” she searched for the word, “a ritual?”

“Ritual, perhaps; a ritual of necessity,” Chess replied.
Rowan was amazed that the elderly mertutial could enunciate so clearly. “If you
put it all together at once, it’ll turn itself into cheese and vapors. Can’t
drink it then.”

“Well,” Rowan said. “Well.” She studied her cup; her vision
began to clear, although it acquired a liquid quality. The air on her body
seemed tangible; her skin prickled. Her eyes possessed no bodily connection
whatsoever to her face. “So this is how Outskirters celebrate?”

“Sometimes,” Chess informed her, then gestured with her own
mug, “when you’re with a friend you can trust.” She sipped, smacked her lips
again.

Conforming to custom, Rowan drank. “Well,” she said again,
then forgot her planned statement: Chess, something about Chess. She found it. “I
certainly can trust you, Chess. You cook everything I eat. If you wanted to kill
me, you’d have done it by now.” After the fact, she hoped the comment did not
constitute an insult.

But Chess considered the statement seriously. “Yes, indeed I
could have, Rowan the clever fighter! I couldn’t fight you with a sword!” She
blinked. “Not now, that is.”

“You were a fighter,” Rowan observed, “once.” Of course she
had been; all mertutials had been, once.

“One of the best, if you believe it.”

Rowan was relieved to discover a basis for conversation. “How
many people,” she asked, “have you killed in your life?” She would be
interested in the answer.

The mertutial let out a gust of breath. “Hoo. Plenty.” She
sipped; Rowan sipped. “By the time I was twenty,” Chess continued, “I’d killed
twenty. I decided then to make thirty by thirty; but by the time I was thirty,
counting seemed silly. You can’t kill people just to keep up a tally.”

“No, indeed,” Rowan said. “You might need to kill a friend,
to maintain the numbers.”

This was apparently the wisest thing Chess ever heard. She
nodded, and tapped Rowan’s knee. “True, true,” she said. “You have to be
careful who you kill.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“But twenty by twenty,” Chess went on, “that’s something. Because
I didn’t kill anyone at all before going walkabout. So, you see, that’s twenty
in six years.”

“A truly remarkable achievement.” Rowan was proud of the
phrase. She drank again.

“I started off strong,” Chess said, after matching Rowan. “I
took down three when I went walkabout.”

Walkabout. Rowan decided that she wanted to know about walkabouts.
“How did that happen?”

“Well.” Chess arranged herself to tell a story. “It was me
and Eden, two young girls, off alone on the veldt ...” Rowan struggled to imagine
it: Chess, with her remarkable collection of wrinkles, straggled hair and all,
once a young, strong girl. Abruptly, an isolated corner of her mind, a calm and
intelligent segment, caught up the concept and gifted her with a mental image
brighter and clearer than the true one before her eyes: Chess would have been a
small girl with wiry cords of muscles, quick of reflexes, determined of will.
One little package of danger and death, never faltering ... And Eden

Chess began to recite:

“Odd Eden, awkward and tall,

Chess chided, cheering;

‘Fear no foe, make no fault,

We will be warrior women together ...’”

Rowan listened, as Chess and Eden spent days crossing the
fearsome wilderness: two children, alone in the Outskirts. They stayed within
signal distance, but the signals passed were for recognition only: I am here.
Each, alone, found and faced small, single dangers.

Until the day they crossed, unknowing, pastures held by another
tribe. Eden sighted a guard, tried to angle away; the children had no quarrel
with the strangers. But for reasons unknown, the guard decided to attack, and
Eden found herself pursued. By the time she determined that escape was
impossible, by the time she turned to face her enemy, Chess was at her side.

“Hurrying, then holding, Chess halted.

Eden must attack alone,

And deliver death; but Eden was daunted,

Faltering, failing, filled with fear ...”

Chess stepped forward and dispatched the enemy, rescuing her
partner. Then from the grass around the girls three more warriors appeared,
intent on destroying their comrade’s killer. Eden struck down one of them
quickly, with a blow born more of panic than intent. Chess injured another,
then assisted Eden against a woman who called out a name as she fought: the
name of her beloved, dead by Eden’s sword. When that foe fell, Chess returned
to the man she had injured. She gave him the freedom to escape; he did not take
it, but turned to face her, and was brought down by a fighter all of fourteen
years old.

“Then Eden,” Rowan said when the poem ended, “Eden failed
the test. She didn’t become a warrior.” She was as breathless as if she had
fought by the side of the children.

“Not that time.” Chess refilled both cups. “She had to go
again two years later, with Kester.” She looked up in sudden surprise at the
memory. “And she rescued
him!”

Rowan clapped her hands together. “Good for her!” She found
herself serious. “But walkabout, walkabout is dangerous.” She drank again,
thoughtfully: a toast to the bravery of children.

Chess nodded and took a contemplative draft. “You need good
warriors. You need people who can face danger. If someone thinks he can’t ever
be a warrior, well, he can go straight to mertutial, and the tribe will thank
him for his sense. Like Deely. Deely was born on the far side of the line—that’s
how we say it.”

Rowan was following the tracks of some idea; she couldn’t
quite recall what idea it was, but the tracks seemed very clear. “People die
sometimes.” That wasn’t quite it. “Children. When they go out on the veldt.”

“Oh, yes.” Chess was saddened. “Sometimes.”

“When Fletcher went on his walkabout,” Rowan began, then decided
she didn’t like the grammatical structure of her sentence: how did the
Outskirters say it? “When he went walkabout,” she corrected, “his partner—” She
paused to recover the thrust of her statement. “Did his partner die?” The
thought of the death of a child abruptly forced a false sobriety upon her. The
wavering tent walls became suddenly stable, although the air remained murky.
Rowan felt it was very important to pay respectful attention.

“Ah!” Chess nodded, slowly, with heavy deliberation. “Mai,”
she said. “Mai, Jannsdotter, Alace.”

That was the idea Rowan had been pursuing: Jann’s daughter,
as she had suspected. “And Jann blames Fletcher.”

“Jann and Jaffry do, yes. You see,” Chess said, raising one
finger, “he should have come straight hack. He shouldn’t have vanished, stayed
away, then come trailing in months later. It looked bad, like he had run.” She
looked into her cup as if it held an answer. “Like he had run,” she repeated.

Rowan considered long before asking the next question. “Did
he?”

Chess weaved as she thought, a motion similar to Bel’s characteristic
movement. “Who’s to say? I’m sure there was more to the story than he told.”
She took another sip.

Rowan forced herself to do the same, attempting to cling to
her clarity of thought. “He didn’t want to come back,” she said, remembering
Fletcher’s comment in Kammeryn’s tent.

“He was hurt,” Chess said.

“Injured? How badly?”

Chess shook her head. She thumped her chest. “No, inside. In
his heart. Because of what happened. I think he wanted to die.”