The Steerswoman's Road (80 page)

“From where she stands to where I stand

Is but a hand, a link, and a lock,

But there are doors, mine poor for being

Always wide—”

Rowan thought it odd to hear of a door and a lock in a song
sung by a tent-dwelling Outskirter. Tent entrances were sometimes loosely
referred to as doors—but they had no locks.

All known Outskirter history began with the days of Einar,
the first to use poem and song, easily passed on to later generations. She wondered
what events lay lost before Einar’s time.

“I lose my days in days of days.

I know my time by nights of yes or no,

In going, stepping into dark,

And standing, marking yes or no—”

Bel’s home tribe believed that Einar, for the love of the
ghost, never made love to a human woman, and thus left no descendants. Kammeryn’s
tribe believed that Einar did take part in normal romantic intercourse, but
that his unnatural relations with the spirit-woman drained the power of life
from his seed. Rowan found both versions credible: Einar’s devotion to his
mysterious love was utter, complete. Such an intensity could not exist without
effect upon Einar himself, either emotional or physical. But Einar seemed not
to care about the state of his soul, or, by implication, of his body. He only
loved, totally; and hundreds of years later, the wiry, rough man now present
held up that love for all to see, as the mirror of his own.

“... And she will tell me, when she speaks again: the cry

Of stars, the sweet of light, the secret tongue of numbers.

When last I sang she smiled, and I will sing again

While all the world and winter rain complete,

Until fleeing has no home but her words,

Last known, last awaited, last spoken, last heard.”

The song ended. There was silence. With no further ceremony,
the small man immediately left the center, walked to the edge of the crowd, and
vanished.

Rowan and Fletcher walked slowly back to camp together. Without
looking, she was sharply aware of him as a long angular form of bone and muscle
moving quietly at her side. She had instinctively lengthened her stride; he
had shortened his. Their steps matched.

“He must have been a very strange man, Einar,” Rowan said at
last, thinking aloud.

“How’s that?”

“His words work so oddly ...” She struggled to express it. “They’re
beautiful, but so ...” She found a word, but it was very unsatisfactory. “So
imprecise ...”

“You’re thinking like a steerswoman,” he told her. “Think
with your heart.”

She smiled. “People don’t think with their hearts.” But it
was purely to her emotions that the song spoke. “You must have heard that song
often. Do you understand it?”

He thought. “No. I can’t deny it’s beautiful. But I can’t
deny it makes little sense. The secret tongue of numbers—’” He stopped short. “Ha!”

“What is it?”

He grinned down at her. “Tongue, language. You know the secret
tongue of numbers, don’t you, steerswoman?”

She was taken aback. “In fact, I do.” They resumed walking. “But
Bel’s home tribe says it ‘the secret
tang
of
numbers .. “

“Tang, tang,” he mused. “How do numbers taste, Rowan?” She
did not hesitate. “Sharp.”

They arrived at the tent. “Coming in?” he asked.

She paused. “In a moment.”

When he was gone, she reached into the pouch at her belt and
removed a small object. She stood regarding it for a moment, then stooped to
the ground once, rose again. She remained awhile, smiling to herself, alone
within the fading sweet of light, awaiting the first cry of stars.

At breakfast, Bel’s preoccupation was no longer in evidence. “I
see you’ve finished the new stanzas,” Rowan observed.

Bel scooped bread gruel into her mouth with a folded slice
of meat. “Done,” she said around the food.

“What’s in them?”

“You’ll hear tonight.”

Rowan spotted Fletcher, standing off to one side of the fire
pit, looking very puzzled. He caught sight of her, glanced about, and surreptitiously
gestured to her. Bel noticed his behavior. “What’s Fletcher up to?”

“I think,” Rowan said, setting down her bowl, “that he wants
to speak to me, and alone.” Fletcher was now standing in pretended nonchalance,
simultaneously gazing at the sky and trying to see if the steerswoman had
caught his signal.

When she reached him, he pulled her aside, out of sight
behind one of the tents. “Here, come here, take a look at this.” He showed her
what he held in his hand.

A crudely carved hit of tanglebrush root. “Where did you
find it?” the steerswoman asked.

“On the ground. But look, don’t you see, it’s a dolphin!” Rowan
examined it again. “It’s not a very good one ...”

He was agitated. “Yes, but it’s still a dolphin. Rowan,
there’s probably not an Outskirter here who’s seen or even heard of dolphins.”

“I see. And where did you find it, again?”

“Just lying around.” He seemed to consider her altogether
too slow.

“Look, don’t you think it’s significant? A dolphin? Out
here?”

“I do indeed,” she said. “And where
exactly
did you
find it?” Exasperated, he threw up his hands. “On the ground. Outside of the
tent. No one around. But where did it
come
from ?”

“On the ground,” she clarified innocently, “by the entrance?”

“Yes—”

“Fletcher, in the Outskirts, there’s only one sort of thing
that gets left by a tent entrance.”

He dismissed the idea with a wave of one hand. “No, I
thought of that, see; but no Outskirter would know about dolphins—” And he
stopped, his mouth still open on his uncompleted sentence.

“—and so that means that it wasn’t left by an Outskirter,” Rowan
finished.

“But,” he began, and several varieties of confusion and disbelief
worked their way across his long face. Rowan watched until she could stand no
more, then finally burst into laughter. “But,” Fletcher said again, looking
from the object in his hand to her face, over and over.

To stop laughing was impossible, and she laughed helplessly
until she felt she needed support, found none from the tent beside her, and had
to drop to a seat on the ground. Fletcher watched her, still gape-mouthed, and
his disbelief slowly became amazement.

“Fletcher, you fool,” she said finally, breathlessly, “you’re
supposed to reject the first gifts. Then they improve. Now you’re stuck with
just a rather bad wooden dolphin ...”

“But,” he managed again. Half of his mouth was shaping
itself into a grin.

“Oh, no, you don’t back out now! You picked it up, and you
kept it. You’ll just have to face facts, and do your duty; although, as we say
in the Inner Lands, I believe you’ve sold yourself cheaply ...” She sat,
hugging her knees, grinning, looking up at him.

With a visible internal shift, he completely recovered his
balance. “Sold myself cheaply, is it?” he declared, turning the dolphin over as
if examining it for the first time, peering at it with one squinting eye. “Well.
Well, we’ve got a saying in Alemeth that covers this, too, you know.”

“And what’s that?”

And he was down beside her, blue eyes inches away from her
own, with a wise and canny look that did not quite cover the joy behind. In the
space between their faces, he held up the carving: a crude, inartistic trinket,
hurriedly made. He said, just before he kissed her, “‘You get what you pay for.’”

That evening, Kammeryn’s entire tribe was present at the gathing
for tales and songs. Warriors, mertutials, even the children, to the smallest
who slept in its mother’s arms: over one hundred and thirty people,
outnumbering all those who had chosen to attend from the other tribes.

The others were puzzled, and there was a certain degree of
glowering disapproval from the Face People present; but this was Rendezvous,
at however unlikely a time, and no one believed that a threat was implied.
Instead, a sense of anticipation appeared, grew, and slowly worked its way
throughout the crowd: something important was about to happen.

Kammeryn had given his people no specific instruction, but
when his tribe was called on, they passed one name along themselves, as
comment, request, announcement. The words were like audible flickers, flashing
across and around the slope: “Bel should speak,” and “Bel has a good tale,” and
“Let Bel through!”

The Outskirter rose up from the seated ranks of other Outskirters
and made her way to the fire’s side. She gazed once at the sky, thoughtfully,
then turned it a second, sharper glance, as if calculating the amount of light
left to the day, and the time it would take to recite her poem. Then she
shifted her stance to that formal yet easy posture she assumed when
performing, scanned the crowd, and began.

Familiar now with the tale and the telling, Rowan watched
the people, seeing more clearly the currents of emotion shown in their postures
and their expressions. They listened first evaluatively, withholding judgment,
waiting for Bel to earn their approval by her choice of story and her grace of
language. This she did quickly, and they became rapt in the strange events
surrounding the mysterious jewels.

When Rowan’s own name was first mentioned, Bel made a broad
gesture in the steerswoman’s direction; to the other tribes, Rowan, dressed as
an Outskirter, was merely another stranger in a tribe of strangers. Fletcher
was at her side, half-reclining, his shoulder against her knee; now he sat up,
and there appeared between them a three-foot distance, leaving the steerswoman
separate and clearly identified. Rowan sat a bit straighter herself and acknowledged
with a nod the gazes turned in her direction.

They turned to her at particular moments in the poem:
puzzled, when first she was presented and defined; sympathetic, when the need
for deceit required that Rowan resign from the Steerswomen; approving, when
Rowan decided to abandon flight, to face and fight the wizards’ men pursuing
her; and full of a strange, feral joy when Rowan, a helpless prisoner facing
two wizards in the heart of their own fortress, reassumed her order, and from
that moment on spoke only the truth, even to enemies. Truth was the rightful possession
of every steers-woman; and despite the differences between their lives and
hers, her ways and theirs, each person present came to understand this, and approve,
for the sake of Rowan’s own form of honor.

But it was Bel who won their fullest admiration: one of
their own, who had crossed a distant, incomprehensible country, survived fantastic
dangers, and returned with a tale for her people, and a warning.

During the recitation, Rowan noted among Kammeryn’s people a
number of comings and goings, certain shiftings of position. She had attributed
this to the people’s familiarity with the events being related, assumed they
felt no need to remain in place for the entire story. But halfway through the
poem, Rowan recognized what had happened.

They had shifted around her. Now, all around, sitting closer
to each other than was either casual or comfortable, were the warriors of
Kammeryn’s tribe, gathered together in a single body, with the steers-woman
among them as one of their number. And slightly in front of Rowan, to her
right, there was one empty seat in the heart of the warriors, awaiting the
return of the teller of the tale.

Bel reached the end of the poem as Rowan had first heard it;
but now came the new stanzas.

“The call will come one cruel day.

Outskirters will answer force with anger,

Meeting magic. The might of wizards

Has never faced a fighter’s fury.

Wizards’ words and warriors’ power

Never yet stood strength to strength.

“No one knows as a warrior knows

That the heart of humankind is held

By strength, by striving, striking down

Any and all who stand against us.

Foes and force, we do not fear them.

No one knows as a warrior knows.”

Bel began to move, to pace, walking slowly, and one hand
with one pointing finger swept the crowd, indicating each and every individual
Outskirter.

“Who will hear,” she asked of them,

“—or have the heart

To stand beside me, to stay, and strike?

Outskirters all now understand:

War will come. With weapons wielded

All as one must answer evil.”

Bel dropped her arm and ceased pacing; and now it was only
her face that challenged them.

“The call will come, and I shall call it.

The need will be known, by these three names—”

—and she stood alone before them all: small, strong, wise,
and unafraid. “I am Bel,” she said, “Margasdotter, Chanly.”

“The tale in your poem has stirred the warriors’ blood.” The
old woman shifted. “This may not be a good thing. Now they’re eager to fight,
but their seyohs have yet to decide if they may do so. You have caused us
trouble.”

“I am not causing trouble,” Bel replied. “I am telling you
of trouble on its way. When trouble comes, warriors want to fight; that’s the
way of things.”

The tent was Kammeryn’s own; the persons present were the
seyohs of the six tribes at Rendezvous. Rowan and Bel once again sat within a
circle of Outskirters; but on this occasion, none of the surrounding faces
were near Rowan’s age. The youngest person was a man of late middle years,
nearly bald, with a beard braided to his waist. His right arm lay slack in his
lap; at some time in the past, it had been rendered useless. The eldest person
was a wizened woman, partially bald herself, with blind eyes gone blue-gray
with cataracts. It was she who served as the meeting’s moderator.

“If warriors look for trouble,” she pointed out, “and do not
find it, they sometimes create it.”