When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior's Path Read online

  “Get under the covers,” I said. I lifted up the blankets for her.

  She did as I told her, but when I started to get up, she took hold of my hand. “Stay with me,” she said.

  I got into the bed with her, and she came into my arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right.”

  “I miss her.”

  “I know.”

  I stroked her back lightly with the tips of my fingers and felt her relax against me.

  “That feels good,” she said.

  She lay so quietly in my arms that after a few minutes I thought she had fallen asleep, but when I tried to shift her weight off of me so that I could get up, she reached for me, and her fingers brushed my cheek.

  “Stay,” she whispered.

  She pressed her body against me. I felt her breath on the side of my neck just before her lips touched me there. Her fingers stroked my face, then pressed against my cheek to turn my face toward her. Her thumb brushed my lips, and her lips found the corner of my mouth.

  A sweet ache began at the top of my spine and spread over the back of my head and down my neck. Her touch on my face made my skin tingle. When her fingers drifted down the side of my neck, I heard myself take a quick breath. It took me a moment to understand what she was doing, and when I did, my body had already taken me beyond a boundary I didn’t know existed until then. Her lips found mine. This time it was not the light and teasing kiss she had given me at the harvest festival. This kiss had fire in it. It caught the tinder around my heart. The aching grief that lingered there began to burn.

  I must have responded. I know I didn’t pull away. The tenderness in her touch made me want to cry. Every disappointment, every fear that had cast its shadow over me, she drove away. Only the feelings she created in me mattered. I felt her lips on me, and her hands, and every place she touched began to burn, until my body moved with her, wanting more of the sweet fire.

  She began to rock against me. She slipped her leg between my legs and pressed against me until I felt the fire begin there too. Nothing about this feeling was familiar.

  “Touch me,” she whispered.

  She took my hand in hers and brought it under her shirt, between her legs. When I touched her, she sighed softly and opened to me. I had never touched anyone but myself like that, but she was not made much differently from the way I was made, and she showed me what she needed by the way she moved. As I touched her, I felt the echoes of the pleasure I gave her in my own body. At last her body stiffened, and she put her hand over mine and pressed my fingers hard against her. Even when it was over, she kept my hand where it was for a while. Then she reached for my belt.

  I almost stopped her. If I could comfort Sparrow’s heart by comforting her body, I was glad to do it, but I remembered that not long before, she had lain in this bed with Eramet, and I could never be Eramet to her.

  Sparrow felt me hesitate. “Please. Let me touch you.”

  “I’m not the one you want.”

  “You’re my friend,” she said. “Eramet is dead. Tonight you are the one I want.”

  I let her slip my trousers down. She touched me gently, too gently, but when I tried to press myself against her hand, she pulled away from me.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry,” she whispered into my ear.

  I heard the smile in her voice. Her breath on my face sent a shiver of pleasure down my spine.

  Sparrow understood pleasure. She knew it was my first time, and she was careful with me. If she wished for Eramet, I never knew it. She took her time. She gave me time to get used to feelings that were new to me. She took me to the brink and let me fall, willing to let me find my own way, in my own time. With Sparrow I was safe, as I would be with no one else, because I didn’t love her, and she didn’t love me.

  Afterwards we lay quietly together. My feelings surprised me. As a child, I had played with other children the games all children play when they begin to discover their own bodies, but I had never had a sweetheart. I’d always thought that what Sparrow and I had given to each other was something only lovers shared. Now I knew differently. While Sparrow’s grief still awaited her, as my loneliness awaited me, for a little while we found respite in each other’s arms.

  § § §

  We woke early. Sparrow gave me a shy smile.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “What for?”

  “For being my friend.”

  The room was freezing, and neither of us was in a hurry to get out of bed. We snuggled down under the covers and huddled together like children.

  “Today will be better,” Sparrow said.

  I waited to see if she would tell me what she meant, but she was already thinking of something else.

  “Did I ever tell you how I became Eramet’s apprentice?” she asked me.

  “No.”

  “She stole me, right out from under the nose of my mistress.” Sparrow chuckled at the memory.

  “Your mistress?”

  “When I was a slave in Arnet’s house.”

  She said it so casually that I thought I must have misunderstood her.

  “What?”

  “When I was a slave,” she said. She saw my confusion. “You didn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “I thought everyone knew. I’m the only person here without a name.”

  I had thought Sparrow was a childhood name, the kind of name that sticks to a person no matter how many names she may have been born with or earned for herself afterwards.

  “My mother was a slave,” she said. “I was born in Arnet’s house.”

  “Who is Arnet?”

  “Namet’s older sister. Eramet and I were children together.”

  I was still trying to make sense of what she’d just told me. Sparrow misunderstood my silence.

  “I thought you knew.” A chill had crept into her voice, and she turned away from me. “I should have known that Tamras, Tamnet’s daughter, would not befriend a slave.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve never known anyone who was a slave, but it makes no difference to me. You’re my friend now.”

  Sparrow wouldn’t look at me. Her face had the same closed expression I remembered from the day I arrived in Merin’s house, when I first told her my name. I fumbled under the covers until I found her hand and held it tight in both of mine.

  “Forgive a backward country girl her ignorance,” I said.

  In spite of herself, Sparrow let a smile lift one corner of her mouth. “Not so backward anymore.”

  I felt myself blush. “Tell me about Eramet,” I said.

  Sparrow’s body relaxed, and her eyes gazed past me, seeing not this little room, but another place, another time.

  “I knew her all my life,” she said. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love her. When she left Arnet’s house to be fostered here, I thought I was going to die of loneliness.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Eleven or twelve, probably.”

  “Were you lovers then?”

  “No,” she said. “I wasn’t old enough to understand those feelings yet. I wish I had been.”

  I smiled at that, but a troubled look came into Sparrow’s eyes.

  “After Eramet left,” she said, “the Lady Arnet’s son began to make use of me. I was too young, and it hurt.”

  And there it was—a glimpse of the two faces of life. As with so many things, so it was also with desire. While one face of desire gave great pleasure, the other gave great pain.

  “Oh,” was all I could say.

  “Never mind,” she said. “It was a long time ago.”

  She was eighteen years old. How long ago could it have been?

  “It didn’t go on for very long,” she said. “When I began to become a woman, the Lady Arnet took a fancy to me. She refused to share me with her son.” Her eyes gleamed with mischief. “Then I got my revenge. I made his life miserable.”

  “How did you do that?�
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  “I knew him very well. I knew all the things he wanted. Those things I got his mother to deny him. I even knew the woman he wanted, and I told my mistress things about her that made her believe the girl was quite unworthy of her son.”

  I thought about Namet, who was now an elder. If Arnet was Namet’s older sister, she must have been very old when she took Sparrow into her bed.

  “How old was Arnet then?”

  “As old as Namet is now, I imagine.”

  “And she took a child for her lover?”

  “I wasn’t her lover,” Sparrow replied. “I was a slave. I was there for her pleasure, not my own, but at least she never hurt me.”

  “What about Eramet?”

  “Eramet was my lover,” she said.

  I heard her voice catch, and I was sorry I had reminded her of her grief, but she went on with her story.

  “Two years ago Eramet returned to Arnet’s house a warrior.”

  “Was that when she stole you?”

  “She didn’t steal me exactly,” Sparrow said. “She tricked the Lady Arnet into giving me to her.” Sparrow smiled a little secret smile. “When Eramet came home, she took one look at me and took me to bed.”

  “What did the Lady Arnet think about that?”

  “She didn’t know about it.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I was happy.”

  For the first time that morning, tears came into Sparrow’s eyes. She brushed them away.

  “The Lady Arnet owed a warrior’s service to the Lady Merin. She asked Eramet to perform that service, so that she could keep her own daughter at home. Eramet had served in Merin’s house as an apprentice. The Lady Arnet hoped she wouldn’t mind going back.

  “It’s the custom in Arnet’s house for a warrior to receive a gift when she performs such a service. Eramet said she would be glad to go, and she asked the Lady Arnet if she could choose her gift. The Lady was so pleased that Eramet was willing that she said to her, ‘Choose what you will.’ The Lady expected that she would choose one of the fine swords hanging in the warriors’ hall or perhaps a little piece of land, but Eramet chose me.”

  “Wasn’t the Lady Arnet angry?”

  “She was furious, but what could she do? She couldn’t take back the word she’d given.”

  Something occurred to me that frightened me a little. “What will happen to you now? Did you belong to Eramet?”

  “No,” said Sparrow. “Eramet took me as her apprentice, and slaves can’t be made warriors in Merin’s house. By taking me as her apprentice, she made me a free woman.”

  I saw how many things had bound Sparrow and Eramet together—the ties of a shared childhood, the loyalty between warrior and apprentice, the bonds of love, and the gift of freedom. How would Sparrow ever undo the tangle that tied her to the dead?

  Something else occurred to me. “Will someone here apprentice you, do you think?”

  Sparrow frowned. “I hadn’t thought about it. Vintel needs a companion, but you’re the one she wants.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “I thought she asked you.”

  “She did,” I said, “but it was after Maerel died, and I had no one to companion while my warrior was away. I was the only one handy.”

  Sparrow brushed my cheek with her fingertips. “Vintel isn’t blind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know?” She took my face in both her hands and kissed my mouth. It was a sweet kiss. “You’re lovely.”

  I was embarrassed. “No I’m not.”

  “You are,” she said. “If you ever grow a little, you’ll be quite a beauty.”

  I heard a noise behind me and saw Sparrow look up at something over my shoulder. I turned to see Maara standing in the doorway.

  “The Lady wants you,” Maara told me.

  14

  The Queen’s Mirror

  The Lady smiled at me. “Sit down,” she said. She was sitting up in her bed, wrapped in a blanket. Although a fire burned brightly on the hearth, the room was very cold. The Lady’s servant had been combing her hair. It lay loose over her shoulders, dark as a raven’s wing. When I came in, the Lady dismissed her.

  I hesitated, unsure of where to sit, until the Lady patted the edge of her bed. When I sat down, she handed me a blanket. I was glad to have it. I had put on two pairs of trousers, my warmest shirt, and a woolen tunic, and I was still cold.

  “Your warrior was right,” the Lady said.

  “Yes.”

  “You never doubted her?”

  “I never doubted that she told us the truth,” I said.

  “So you never feared that you would pay the price of treachery?”

  I didn’t know what to say to her.

  “Did you believe I could do you harm?” she asked me gently.

  I chose my words carefully. “My warrior told me that people may do a thing when they’re afraid that they wouldn’t do if they thought it over.”

  The Lady knit her brows in a troubled frown.

  “You have nothing to fear from me,” she said.

  “Why did you hold me in my warrior’s place?”

  I was relieved to hear no hint of petulance in my voice. It sounded like the most innocent of questions.

  “I couldn’t have kept her locked in the armory week after week. How else could I have held her here?”

  The Lady was watching me closely. Perhaps she was trying to learn how I felt about what she’d done, or perhaps she was trying to create in me the feelings that would best suit her.

  “Your warrior expected me to ask her to offer her own life as a guarantee,” the Lady said. “Sometimes it’s best not to do what someone expects.”

  “I wish you had spoken to me about it afterward.” It was the plain truth, simply said.

  The Lady’s face put on an injured look. “You should have come to me with your worries. I would have been glad to ease your fears.”

  It was all very well now to say I should have come to her, but at the time I didn’t feel that she would welcome me. I knew it would be unwise to show the anger I still felt toward her or the distrust that came from my anger.

  “I thought you would do what was best,” I told her.

  She seemed pleased with my answer. The injured look disappeared, and I saw the woman I believed her to be, the woman who would do whatever was necessary for the safety of her people, even if some of her people paid too great a price.

  “If there is ever anything you wish to ask me,” the Lady said, “you must not hesitate.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you have any questions for me now?”

  I shook my head. What good would it do me to ask a question when I couldn’t trust the answer? Then I thought of something.

  “What will you do with the prisoners?” I asked her.

  “The prisoners? What do you think I should do with the prisoners?”

  The amusement in her voice told me that she didn’t expect an answer. I gave her one anyway. “I think you should let them go home.”

  “Go home? Why would I do that?”

  “To show them we have no fear of them.”

  “So I should take them to our northern border and turn them loose?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I were to do such a thing, what guarantee would I have that they will leave us in peace?”

  “Give them food to carry with them. Enough to see their families through the winter. Why would they trouble us if they had all they could carry?”

  “Should I also give them back their weapons?”

  Her words mocked me, but I answered her with sincerity.

  “No, Lady,” I said. “That would be foolish.”

  “Tell me again why this is a good idea.” This time her voice had less amusement in it and more curiosity.

  “Sometimes it’s best not to do what someone expects. Besides, what else can you do with them?”

  “I could send them to the mines in exch
ange for salt or copper.”

  “When?”

  “Next spring, when the caravans arrive.”

  “Then you will have to keep them through the winter.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ll have to feed them anyway. And the men will be unhappy to have the trouble of watching them.”

  “It will give the men something to do,” she said.

  “And many of the prisoners are in ill health. They may spread disease among us.”

  The Lady’s eyes grew dark. “I would be within my rights to kill them all.”

  I think she meant to frighten me. I had been frightened enough already. I would not frighten again so easily.

  “You could do that,” I said, “but I’ve heard stories about the blood of the slain poisoning the ground. And when their people hear what became of those men, they will be angry.”

  “No,” she said. “They will be afraid, and they will leave us alone.”

  “If as many of your warriors were taken alive from the battlefield and then put to the sword, what would you feel?”

  I saw the answer in her eyes.

  “These men have people at home who love them,” I said.

  “Yes,” said the Lady. “Just as Eramet had people here who loved her.”

  “The man who killed her was defending his friends.” I hoped Sparrow would forgive my speaking for him. I hesitated for just a moment before I said, “He has already lost his hand because of it.”

  “What?”

  “Has no one told you?”

  She said nothing, but her surprise revealed the answer. I wondered why Vintel hadn’t told the Lady what she’d done.

  The Lady got up from the bed and went to stand before the fire. For several minutes she was silent, preoccupied with her own thoughts. Then she turned back to me.

  “What has your mother told you of the war?”

  “That her sisters died,” I said. “And I’ve heard the songs sung about it.”

  “The songs are sung to heal our hearts, but they never do. All they do is cause the young to believe that war is a glorious adventure.”

  “I never believed it.”

  “No,” she said. “I can see you don’t believe it, and that is your mother’s doing.”

  I supposed it was. For all my dreams of becoming a warrior, war had never seemed a glorious adventure to me. All my life the shadow of war had lain over my mother’s heart.