The Gate to Women's Country (34 page)

Kostia gave him an offended look and shut the door between them, silently, leaving the bottle on the wagon seat.

Chernon laughed as he poured his cup full again. So much for fortune-tellers. He gave Septemius a sidelong look, surprising a troubled expression on his face. “You don't believe in this stuff, do you, Magician? You, particularly? You make your living fooling people, don't you?” Chernon had long since decided that he need not worry about what Septemius might think or say or do. No one would give any credence to a traveling showman, and
when the warriors took over, the old man and his girls would do what they were told.

“Oh yes,” the old man admitted. “I do. Making people think they see what they do not see. Making people believe I have done what I have not done. I know all the lies people tell themselves. I help them lie to themselves; it is my craft. And I, Septemius Bird, say to you, Chernon, that when Kostia and Tonia lay out the cards, they often tell more of the truth than I care to know.”

“Lucky for me, then, that I laid them out for myself,” Chernon replied, clucking to the donkeys. He wanted to get where they were going. “Well, the cards are true enough, Septemius. Time will pass. I may have to cut some wood along the way, for our campfire, and this will no doubt fulfill the prediction of destruction. I should have turned up the Summer Priestess though, you know that? The one with the hidden face. When I meet Stavia, I will see her body”—he laughed, a crapulent, lubricious sound which betrayed much more than he meant it to—“but maybe not her face. None of them in Women's Country show us their real faces, do you know that?”

“It surprises me that you do.” There was more asperity in Septemius' response than he had meant to allow. This time he refilled Chernon's cup.

“Oh, we're not stupid, Magician. I've thought about it a lot, you know? I had books there for a while, before Stavia decided to play me false by not letting me have any more. I managed to get away with one for myself. It belonged to my sister Beneda, and I swiped it from her. She didn't miss it. Beneda
is
not much for reading, anyhow.”

“Do you still have it?” Septemius asked, curiously.

“Oh yes. I have it with me. It tells all about animals and people, before the convulsions. I have read of elephants and crocodiles, of Laplanders, tropical islanders, and people who lived on boats on great rivers. At one time, life was varied, Magician. It was not all alike as it
is
now.”

“It may still be varied,” the older man replied. “Across the desolations, who knows what may exist?”

“Who cares, if we can't reach them? Here it
is
all the same. Women's Country inside the walls. Garrisons outside the walls. Gypsies and bandits moving among us like the jackals I read of in those books. And itinerants, of
course, like you. Showmen. Magicians. Actors and acrobats. And scavengers who dig metal out of the ruins of old cities and wagoneers who seem to spend most of their time transporting things from place to place.” He clucked again to the donkeys and smiled, a cynical smile. “I've thought about it. It seems very simple on the surface, but there's more here than we can see, Magician, though we've no way to get at it.”

Septemius shivered, without letting it show. When Chernon said “we,” was he referring to the warriors? “I don't understand what you mean.”

Chernon smiled again, disagreeably, Septemius thought. “Well, there's this, for example. The women depend upon us to defend them, don't they?”

The old man nodded, unwilling to trust his voice.

“So, they should be interested in our keeping the garrisons up to strength, right? I mean, we're their shield. Without us, they'd be overrun by the garrison of some other city, or chipped away at by bandits.” He stared at Septemius, waiting for the answering nod before going on.

“Well, they should be most concerned about keeping us strong, but they aren't interested in that. All they're interested in is getting us to come home. Whenever I think about it, I think of two wheels, turning in opposite directions. These big, big wheels, one inside the other, whirling, making a kind of deep, humming sound. Sometimes I can almost hear it.”

Septemius cleared his throat. “Isn't what you're seeing the inevitable conflict between personal and societal needs and desires? The society of women needs you to defend them, yes. But the individual mothers and sisters in that society want their own sons and brothers home, where they'll be safe. So, they do the best they can with both. They honor the warriors, but they do everything they can to urge their own loved ones to come home. It seems perfectly understandable to me. As a system, it doesn't work badly, does it?”

“It weeds out the ones who wouldn't be much use on the battlefield,” the boy agreed. “Or most of them, anyhow. And that gives the women in the cities some men to work for them. I suppose they need that. I remember Minsning, my mother's servitor, from when I was a kid.
He made me cookies and played horsie and I can't imagine him being any good at fighting. But that's not what I meant. I mean, there's more to the system than we know about.” He hiccuped slightly, unaware that the wine was making him say more than he should. “The whole garrison thinks so. Michael… Stephon… they say the women have these secret meetings all the time, Council meetings.”

Septemius laughed, sincerely and convincingly. “It seems to me I've heard of secret meetings in garrisons! Isn't there some kind of secret society, some group of initiates? The Brotherhood of the Ram? Haven't I heard about oath taking at the foot of the monument on the parade grounds?”

Chernon flushed. “That's different. That's very much like the women going to temple. More… more religious.”

“Well, maybe the Councilwomen are religious, too, but I don't think that's why they have secret meetings. The reason is simple enough, I'd guess. It's the Council that has to allocate the food and scarce supplies, Chernon. They try to do it fairly, so far as I can see, and that probably takes a good deal of discussion which is better held in private so that people don't get upset. It isn't unlike the meetings your officers hold. Your Commander makes his decisions in private, too. He doesn't ask the centuries what they think before he decides how he'll go into battle.”

Chernon thought this over, wrinkling his nose and upper lip. It sounded plausible, but then many womanish things sounded plausible. He was of no mind to accept it. “If you say so,” he said, not believing it. If it were that simple, Michael would have known it. One thing all the warriors were agreed upon and most of them resented: The women did things and knew things that were secrets. Powerful secrets.

Septemius watched the boy's face, his heart sinking within him. He had expected… well, what had he expected? A youthful romance? An infatuation fueled by separation and imagination into something transcendent? A joyous fling?

None of the above. Something calculated and chill,
though powered by lust which was probably honest enough.

Septemius sighed. Oh, he did not want to be involved in this at all.

It was a three-day ride southwest along the shore to Emmaburg, under the best conditions. The fortified sheep camp which Stavia had specified as the end of their southern journey was two days' farther south and east. At that point, they would be south of the desolation, and a four-day trip toward the northeast would take them around it to Peggytown. Fortuitously, Peggytown would be having carnival shortly after they arrived. The shore route was very little longer than the more usual route—east from Marthatown to the Travelers' Rest, east and a little south to Mollyburg, and then southwest to Peggytown. All roads in this part of Women's Country made a circle around the desolation, with Tabithatown and Ab-byville away in the north and Melissaville and the other cities more toward the east.

Septemius had no real worries concerning the route as far south as the sheep camp. He did not like the idea of the four days from there to Peggytown. There was a road, but it was one not much traveled. There were forests and hills and broken lands. To the north was the desolation, and to the south were people he remembered as unpleasant. So he fretted as he drove, wondering if this were not one of those times when any bargain was a bad one, a time of no good choices. From time to time he had to look into the back of the wagon, at old Bowough's rosy cheeks, to convince himself he had behaved even halfway ethically.

A
T THE SHEEP CAMP—WHERE SHE WOULD HAVE
met the servitor from Tabithatown if she had not sent him word not to come—Stavia spent her spare time treating several of the women and servitors for various conditions either brought about or exacerbated by their daily occupations. She told one rash-pied woman to return to Emmaburg and stay away from sheep in the future because she was allergic to the oil in the wool. She treated abrasions and cuts received from thorn and rough stone. She had a look at the animals, as well—though there were medics better trained than she in animal troubles, none of them had been south recently—and suggested salves for eye infections and treatments for insect bites. Then, when that was done, she inspected the gardens and fortifications and wrote a generally laudatory report to be sent back to the Council at Emmaburg. The Emmaburg Council had set up the camp, and if all went well the camp would expand and grow into a daughter-town.

“Any trouble with bandits?” she asked.

“Somebody spying on us,” the camp manager told her, rubbing the wrinkles on her forehead as though she might rub them away, then taking a swipe at her graying head where unruly locks broke out of the sensible braid. “South of us. We catch sight of them now and then, shadows sneaking around behind the bushes, mostly around about dusk. A few sheep have disappeared, too, maybe a few more than we can account for. I think we can say definitely more than we can account for. Most of them have been young rams.”

“Could be coyotes?”

“We see coyotes every now and then. They don't bother the flocks too much in the daytime. They'd prefer to be night raiders, but we bring the sheep back into the folds when it gets dark. No, the sheep that vanish are the ones that graze at the edge of the flock, wander off a bit, then suddenly they aren't there anymore.” She didn't sound disturbed by this.

“Ah,” said Stavia unhelpfully.

“Way I figure it is, the ones that get picked off are the ones that don't stay tight, which are the ones we want to be rid of anyhow.”

“Ah,” Stavia said again, in sudden comprehension, half remembering something she had read, years ago. “Selection! You're selecting for herding instinct.”

“I'm selecting for sheep that get very uncomfortable if they aren't jammed up against about four more of their kind,” the manager admitted, still rubbing away at her forehead. Speaking of which, I've got something to show you.” She opened the door at her side and went through into a yard Stavia had not yet seen. Against the wall was a pen, and in the pen were some strangely shaped sheep.

“Dogs,” the manager said, giving her a sidelong look.

“What?” Stavia stared at them in disbelief. They were dirty white, woolly, with the convex noses and loppy ears of the sheep she had been staring at for days.

“Dogs. I don't know where they came from, but one of the herders came in the other day and here were the three of them, mixed right in with the sheep.”

“I thought they were sheep!” Stavia leaned over the pen and the animals stared at her, tails wagging slowly.

“Look almost like sheep, don't they? Let me tell you. I got real curious, so I kept one female and the male here and let the other female go out with the flock. Told the shepherds to keep an eye on her. Long about dark, they were coming back and a coyote ran out of the bushes, trying to grab off a lamb. That dog was right there, between him and the lamb. Couldn't budge her. Every time he shifted, there was this dog between him and the lamb.”

“They're not herders?”

“Didn't try to do any herding. Nope.”

“Up north they've got some herder dogs. I've heard about those.”

“Me, too. Lots of times wished I had some.”

“But these are something else? Sheep protectors, sort of. Strange.”

“Before the convulsion there were sheep here, we all know that. Otherwise we wouldn't have them now. So maybe before the convulsions there were different kinds of sheepdogs here, too. Herding dogs and this other kind. They look all soft and babyish, like puppies!”

“You think they survived all that time back in the mountains?”

“The deer did. The bear did. Foxes, too.”

“Two females and one male isn't much to breed from.”

“I've told all the shepherds to keep their eyes open. If they see any more of them, they're to let me know.”

Stavia shook her head, reaching a tentative hand into the pen. A pink tongue came out and licked her fingers. Dark eyes completely surrounded by white woolliness blinked at her. “Tame,” she said. “Completely tame.”