When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior's Path Page 5

  Still I didn’t move or make a sound. I didn’t understand why she hadn’t called to me, why she had approached the grove so silently. Until I understood I would stay where I was.

  “You can come down now,” she said.

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Were you going to stay up there all night?”

  She struck a light from her firestones, and a spark fell into a nest of dry grass. In a few minutes she had a small fire burning.

  “Aren’t you coming down?” she said.

  Climbing down was going to be more difficult than climbing up had been. “I think I’m stuck.”

  She came over to the tree and looked up at me.

  “Do the best you can,” she said. “I won’t let you fall.”

  I couldn’t see where to put my feet, but I managed to climb down part of the way. Then I came to a place where I could find no foothold.

  “Slide your foot down the trunk,” she said.

  I did as she told me. When my hands were about to lose their grip, I felt her hand under my foot.

  “Bring the other foot down,” she said.

  I rested as much of my weight as I dared on her hand while I searched for a new foothold. I thought I had found one, but when I put my weight on it, my foot slipped, my hands lost their grip, and I fell. She caught me as if I weighed no more than a sack of barley and set me on my feet.

  I didn’t know whether to thank her or be angry with her.

  “Where were you?” I asked her.

  “Are you hungry?” she said.

  She found our pack and took from it the flatbread we’d baked that morning and some sour apples, picked from a wild apple tree. After we had eaten, she said, “Tell me what you learned.”

  Then I understood that by leaving me alone there, she had meant to teach me something. I thought about what I had done, but first I wanted an answer from her.

  “Where were you?” I asked her.

  “Close by,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Within sight of this grove. I’ll show you the place in the morning, if you like.”

  “You were watching me?”

  “I saw you when you came out to look around. I couldn’t see you when you were under the trees, but I could see the grove and anyone who might approach it.”

  I didn’t understand then what I was feeling that caused me to question her, but I believe she did understand.

  “I wouldn’t have left you alone,” she said.

  Her words cut the string of doubt that bound my heart. My fear had made me feel that she’d abandoned me, and when I understood that she had been there all along, watching over me, I could have hugged her for giving me that reassurance.

  “Did you sleep?” she asked me.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It felt dangerous.”

  “You have good instincts,” she said. “What did you do?”

  “What you saw. I watched for anyone approaching.”

  “What did you do when it got dark?”

  “I sat still and worried that something had happened to you.”

  I saw a smile lift the corner of her mouth before she turned away.

  “Is that all?”

  I remembered my fear, and now it seemed so silly that I had to laugh at myself. “I watched my mind make a wolf out of that rock.”

  I pointed to the rock beside the stream and to the fern frond beside it.

  “Look,” I said. “It even has a tail.”

  “You saw a wolf there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is the wolf your guardian?”

  I had never heard the word before. “My guardian?”

  She shook her head at me and made a tut-tut sound. “You tell me I must know my clan, and you don’t know your guardian?”

  “No,” I said. “What’s a guardian?”

  “A protector, and something more. They remind us of what we once were, of what we still are.”

  “Is the wolf my guardian?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She sat gazing into the fire, thinking something over.

  At last she said, “When you saw the wolf, were you afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to think of something else,” I said. “Something that would drive the fear away. I thought of you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I feel safe with you.”

  It was the truth, and I didn’t hesitate to tell her so, but it seemed to trouble her. A worry line appeared between her brows. Before I could ask her what was wrong, she leaned forward and threw dirt on the embers of the fire. Suddenly we were in darkness.

  “Look for your wolf now,” she said.

  I watched the rock transform itself. The wolf’s tail appeared, her eyes sparkled, and her ears flattened against her head. Her lip curled, to reveal the gleam of teeth. The wolf stared at me, and I stared back.

  “Speak to her,” Maara whispered.

  I had forgotten she was there, although she was so close to me that I could feel the warmth of her skin and smell the apples on her breath.

  “Ask her what she wants from you,” she said.

  I began to form the question in my mind, but almost before I asked it, I received an answer. As clear as Maara’s soft voice beside me, the wolf spoke.

  “No harm to me, no harm from me,” she said.

  She melted into the dark, and the rock was a rock again.

  “She’s gone,” I said.

  “Did she speak to you?”

  “Yes, she said—”

  “Don’t tell me. Her words were for you.”

  I put my hand over the place in my chest where my fear had been. It felt warm and full of light. It was not that I no longer feared the wolf. Wolves had haunted my dreams from childhood. In wintertime they came to take our sheep, and I had often lain in bed shivering with fear as I listened to their voices howling down the wind.

  I had no desire to meet a real wolf, even if it was my guardian, but I also knew that some being that was not myself had spoken to me from the mind of the wolf I’d called out of the rock. I had never before experienced anything like it.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I wanted you to learn to be alone and to be alone in the dark. It seems you’ve learned much more than that.”

  “I also learned that I’ll have to redo the stitching on your buckle. That’s how I knew you were here.”

  “I was wondering about that,” she said.

  § § §

  “Does she treat you well?” Sparrow asked me.

  “Of course.”

  “She didn’t in the beginning,” she reminded me.

  That time seemed very long ago.

  “What’s she like?” Sparrow asked.

  “She appeared a bit odd to me at first, but I suppose I must have become used to her.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Well,” she said, “does she ever talk? Does she treat you like a servant? Does she punish you when you make a mistake?”

  “She’s always been kind to me. She’s never punished me. And as for treating me like a servant, sometimes it’s all I can do to persuade her to allow me to do things for her.”

  I thought I caught a glimpse of envy in Sparrow’s eyes.

  “Does Eramet punish you?”

  She didn’t answer me.

  § § §

  It was late. Maara and I had spent the evening sitting in the great hall. Few people ever spoke to her. It may have been because she was a stranger, though her manner also put them off. Whether she was aware of it or not, she tended to glower when she was in a crowd of people. That evening she was eavesdropping on a conversation about what had been happening along our northern border. When she saw me yawning, she sent me up to bed.

  I slept lightly, and I woke as soon as she came into the room. I raise
d the wick in the lamp I had left burning, to give her more light, but when I started to get up, to help her get ready for bed, she told me to go back to sleep. She undressed and slipped into her sleeping shirt. Then she pinched out the flame of the lamp and got into her bed.

  As I lay there in the dark, I felt Maara’s presence in the room, familiar and comforting. When she was with me, the world was as it should be. I hardly remembered the woman with angry eyes who wouldn’t have me near her.

  “Why didn’t you want me?” I asked the question the moment it came into my head. If I had stopped to think about it, I might have said it differently, or I might not have said anything at all.

  For a time she didn’t answer. I thought she might already be asleep, but at last she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “When I first came to you, you said you didn’t want a companion.”

  “Oh.” She was quiet for so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer me. Then she said, “I was wrong to do that. I’m sorry.”

  “You must have had a reason at the time.”

  “If I did,” she said, “I’ve forgotten it.”

  6

  Missing

  All summer the northern tribes left us in peace. At harvest time their warriors came to raid the farms along our northern border. The time had come for Maara to take up her sword and shield and join our warriors on the frontier. She refused to take me with her.

  “Why?” I asked her.

  She didn’t answer me. She concentrated on the folding of her pack.

  “Please,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Are you afraid you can’t depend on me?”

  “No.”

  “Why, then?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “You’re not ready.”

  “I thought I was doing well.”

  She stopped what she was doing and looked at me.

  “You’re doing very well,” she said. “Next year you’ll be ready, but not now.”

  As disappointed as I was that she wouldn’t take me with her, this was the first time she’d ever praised me in so many words, and the pleasure it gave me stopped my protests.

  “Let me go part way with you then,” I said.

  “Maybe,” she replied.

  In the morning we went north together. We stopped well before dark and made our camp. We were still a long way from our northern border, but we had gone as far as she would let me go. We ate our supper early. I had run out of things to chatter on about. I already missed her.

  She asked me for a story. She took me by surprise, and I began the first one that popped into my head.

  In ancient days, when only women were warriors, lived a young girl and her mother in a cottage at the edge of the forest. All around the cottage were meadows where they grazed their sheep, and in the springtime flowers of great beauty grew there. The forest was a dark and dangerous place, the abode of wolves. In wintertime, the hungry wolves came in search of sheep, and every year they killed at least a few.

  All her life the girl had feared the forest. One summer day, when the flowers in the meadow had all bloomed and faded, she sat near her flock in the shade of an old oak at the forest’s edge. The day was hot, and soon she slept. The sound of singing filled her dreams. She awoke, and still she heard it. Sometimes one voice, sometimes many, echoed among the trees.

  The girl followed the sound. Deep she went into the forest, deep into the dark beneath the trees, until she came to a clearing where flowers grew. They were all the colors of the night—the violet of twilight, the pale silver of the moon, the rose of dawn. In her delight, she fell to her knees and began to pick them.

  She had forgotten that it was the song she’d followed, but when the singing stopped, she remembered. She stood up and put the flowers she had gathered into the folds of her tunic. Then she began to be afraid. She turned for home but could not find her way. Night was falling.

  As the darkness deepened, she saw the amber eyes of wolves glowing in the shadows. The wolves drew near, until they were all around her. The whole pack of them pressed in on her, so that she could not tell one wolf from the other.

  They began to run, and she had no choice but to run with them. It felt to her as if her body ran on all fours, as if she were gathering her arms and legs beneath her before springing forward with a power she had never had before. Her eyes could see as well in darkness as in daylight. Her ears attuned themselves to every sound. She heard the wings of night birds as they pursued their prey, the scurrying feet of mice, the beating hearts of hunted animals, and their last cries.

  New smells too came to her on the air—the rotting of the forest floor, the breath of leaves, the bite of water as they passed a brook, the scent of each wolf, as distinct as the faces of the people she knew. She ran and ran until she had no memory of herself, and her waking life became a dream that shimmered at the edges of her mind.

  In the morning the girl awoke beneath the oak tree. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she caught sight of a wolf as it vanished into the forest, but it may have been only the shadow of her dream.

  She knew her mother would be worried, so she hurried home. Before she went into the cottage, she stopped by a brook to wash her face and hands. When she leaned over the water, out of the folds of her tunic fell flowers the colors of the night—the violet of twilight, the pale silver of the moon, the rose of dawn.

  I must have scared myself with that story, or perhaps I was already afraid for my warrior, but that night I had bad dreams. I woke to see her sitting by the warm ashes of the fire.

  “Were the wolves after you?” she said.

  A little smile played around the corners of her mouth. I didn’t mind her teasing, and her smile lifted my heart.

  In the morning she left me. I was in no hurry to go home. I didn’t want the others to see the tears that came too easily. I camped that evening not far from Merin’s house. It wasn’t until the next afternoon that I felt ready to face the household.

  I tried to tell myself that I was only disappointed to be left behind, but at last I had to admit to myself how much I missed her. I had been alone in Merin’s house until my warrior needed me, and then I wasn’t lonely anymore.

  § § §

  The Lady was angry with me.

  “Did you know she was going to the frontier?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. “She told me she was going to join the others.”

  “But she left alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t think it strange?”

  “No,” I said. “She told me—”

  “Did it never occur to you that she might be lying to you?”

  “No,” I said. “She doesn’t lie.”

  The Lady shook her head at me. “You have no idea if she has lied to you or not. From what you’ve told me about her, she says so little that it would be difficult to catch her in a lie. And sometimes the greatest lies are found in what people fail to say.”

  I was confused. “She told me she was going to join the warriors who went north with Vintel a week ago.”

  “And why did she not leave with them a week ago?”

  I couldn’t answer her. I didn’t know.

  “Did she tell you why she wouldn’t take you with her?”

  “She said I wasn’t ready.”

  “Well, that may be true enough,” she said. “Or it may have been an excuse to get rid of you, so that she could go back to wherever she came from.”

  That possibility had never occurred to me.

  “When did she leave you?” the Lady asked me.

  “Yesterday morning,” I replied.

  The Lady looked alarmed. “How far did she take you, that you were two days coming home?”

  “She didn’t take me far.”

  I wanted to reassure the Lady that my warrior hadn’t taken me into danger, but I was embarrassed to admit to her why I had stayed away so long.

  “I turned my ankle a bit on
the way home,” I said. “I rested it for a day so that I wouldn’t make it worse.”

  Though it was true I’d turned my ankle, I had done it earlier that day, and it hadn’t bothered me much.

  Suddenly the Lady’s face changed. She had been impatient with me. Now she smiled and put her arm around my shoulders.

  “My dear,” she said. “You are so young. I know how she must appear to you. She is a warrior. She is strong and brave and skillful. She is everything you want to be, and she has been teaching you, although she has no obligation to.”

  My mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “Of course I knew about it,” she said. “There is little I don’t know about what happens here.”

  The Lady put her hands on my shoulders and turned me to face her.

  “Your mother is my dearest friend,” she said. “Your family and mine were the first to take this land. Together we have held it for many generations, and we will hold it for many generations more. I’ve put my trust in you, believing that of all the people in my service, you would not be turned against me.” She looked long into my eyes. “Do you belong to your warrior or to me?”

  “To you,” I said.

  It was the only answer I could give her, though it hurt my heart to say it. I felt Maara’s disappointment, as if she could have heard me, yet by her oath she belonged to the Lady just as I did.

  The Lady smiled. “Good,” she said.

  “What do you believe she’s going to do?”

  “I have no idea,” she replied. “Maara may be just what she claims to be, or she may not. If I had known she was leaving for the frontier, I would have sent someone with her, to see that she joined our warriors there. If you had come home yesterday, I would have sent someone after her, but as it is, all we can do now is wait for news. If she joins Vintel, I will know it within the week. If not, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

  “I can’t believe she would betray us. I would trust her with my life.”

  “And with all our lives?”

  “She almost lost her life in your service,” I reminded her.

  “She made her oath to me. She did no more than keep it.”

  “Why did you accept her oath if you were so afraid of her?”