The Outskirter's Secret (25 page)

Rowan pulled Bel aside as they were entering
Kree's tent for the night. "What is it?" Bel asked.

Rowan waited a moment, permitting the members
of the war band to finish entering, before she spoke. "I have a
question."

Bel glanced once at the disappearing
warriors. "Yes?" They stepped farther from the entrance.

"If you're on walkabout and your partner gets
in trouble, it's your duty to rescue him, correct?"

"That's right."

Stars were appearing above. The breeze
whispered. "If you fail, are you held responsible for his
death?"

Bel raised her brows, an action barely
visible in the gloom. "It happens fairly often. If people suspect
you failed through incompetence, yes. You might face a blood duel
when you return. Or if you refuse to help through cowardice, then
that's the same as murder, and you can be executed. But those
things are hard to prove; it's just the two of you, out there
alone. Usually, no one's held to blame." Bel shifted uncomfortably,
and Rowan suspected that she would not like what she heard next.
"Remember, the candidates are children."

"Children?"

"Around thirteen years of age is usual. Some
go earlier, some later."

Rowan found the idea appalling. "But Fletcher
went last year, and he wasn't a child."

"No, he was." Bel shook her head broadly.
"It's a passage: if you're an Outskirter, then you're a child until
you go walkabout, and a warrior after. Formally, as far as the
tribe was concerned, Fletcher was a child."

"And his partner was some thirteen years
old."

"Yes. It's sad."

Rowan was thinking of Fletcher's expression
when, against his will, his thoughts were forced to dwell upon his
journey. And she remembered another face that carried a look that
was as quiet, as dark, as deep. "Is Jaffry the only child Jann
has?"

Bel looked up at her with interest. "I don't
know."

In the morning, Rowan was again the last in
Kree's tent to rise. As she stepped into the cool sunlight,
something crackled under her foot. She looked, and then stooped
down to examine it.

It was a statue, some eight inches tall,
cleverly constructed of split and woven redgrass reeds and blades,
depicting a goat rearing on its hind legs. The artist had used the
variations in grass color to good effect, creating the shadows of
musculature, suggesting the sweep and swirl of long hair in the
wind, outlining wild eyes.

But it had been destroyed: torn, crushed,
ground into the dirt. Rowan looked about for someone to question,
then hesitated. The condition of the statue was ominous, suggesting
a malicious ritual. If this was the case, she suspected that any
question asked of a casual passerby might be refused. She had been
careful to avoid testing the Outskirters' acceptance of her
steerswoman's privilege. Should she now be required to place one or
another tribe member under her ban, the tribe as a whole would be
less comfortable with her presence among them.

Rowan rankled at the necessity of limiting
her natural scope of questions; but she needed to travel among
these Outskirters. Until she was certain of the tribe's indulgence,
she must bend to any suspected requirements.

Bel, Rowan decided, was the safest source of
either explanation or explication of limits to investigation. Rowan
decided that the next time she could find a quiet moment alone with
her companion, she would ask, at the very least, whether asking was
permitted.

I
t was a long
time before any such quiet moment was found; the following morning,
the tribe moved again.

In the space of an hour, the
cloth-and-leather city vanished. Tents became trains, possessions
became packs. Excited children and complaining goats were ushered
into flocks. The unseen outer circle of defenders drew invisibly
closer. Scouts scattered beyond, and the inner circle was doubled,
its nearer members close enough to hail with a shout.

There were no shouts. Wide-armed signals were
passed back and forth, inward and out. Rowan wanted to ask their
meaning, but restrained herself, and set to the task of deciphering
them by context.

Kammeryn's arm swept an arc in the air,
crossed it, then arrowed to the horizon. The signal echoed its way
through the herders, to the inner circle, to the outer, to the
distant scouts: a visible, silent reverberation. The tribe moved:
walkers, train-draggers, herders, and goats, all tracking across
the barren land toward new pastures to the east.

Rowan and Bel traveled among a contingent of
pack-carrying warriors: Orranyn's band, which included Jann,
Jaffry, Merryk, and Garvin. Bel was instantly at ease, trudging
along companionably, chatting to Merryk about the usefulness of his
assorted weaponry.

Rowan, by contrast, felt very peculiar
indeed. She was accustomed to solitude; but here were no less than
one hundred and fifty people moving together through the
wilderness.

Kammeryn led: a tall and dignified old man,
striding at an easy pace, his aide two steps behind him. Flung far
to the seyoh's left and right were two persons assigned to the
signal relay, one a mertutial, the other a warrior—the job was
appropriate for either category. Behind Kammeryn were warriors with
heavy packs, followed by warriors and mertutials dragging
train.

Rowan and Bel traveled behind this group,
within a second contingent of pack-carrying warriors. Behind them
walked persons carrying much lighter packs, including two war
bands, whose chiefs occasionally checked over their shoulders for
signals from the rear relay, posted alone far behind.

The morning was clear and windy, cold air
cutting down from the sky, so that the surrounding walkers provided
no shield for persons traveling in the heart of the tribe. Rowan
bundled herself into her cloak, listening with curiosity to the
conversations around her: family discussions, wry observations, and
a few flirtatious comments tossed back and forth from various
positions within the tribe. This was no army, Rowan told herself;
despite its defensive configuration, it remained in motion, as it
had been in stillness, a community.

At noon, Chess and her assistants distributed
meat and bread, and the tribe ate as it walked. Children began to
tire, and some of the smallest were loaded onto trains, there to
doze, oblivious. After the meal, conversation lagged, and Jann,
Garvin, and Orranyn began to amuse themselves by singing as they
walked.

When the tribe stopped for the night,
arrangements were casual. The evening was fair, though chilly, and
only three tents were erected: the seyoh's, the healer's, which
also served as a dormitory for the least hardy elders, and a group
tent for the fourteen children. Some children, Hari among them,
complained at being consigned to the tent, and two of them, Hari
and a gangly girl near walkabout age, were permitted to remain with
the adults.

To Rowan's surprise, Hari did not choose to
sleep with his mother's war band. He arranged his bedroll among
Orranyn's people, next to Garvin, who accepted the boy's presence
without complaint.

"Garvin is his mentor," Kree replied to
Rowan's question.

"What does that mean?"

"It means," Bel put in as she approached,
carrying two bowls of food, "that Garvin is the person in charge of
Hari's education. Every child gets a mentor, at about Hari's age."
She handed one bowl to Rowan and settled down beside her.

Rowan looked at the contents: a thin slice of
goat meat, tightly rolled and crusted with an unidentifiable
substance, arranged on top of toasted cubes of what proved to be
crunchy bread. All were cold. "No hot food?"

"Not tonight."

Fletcher arrived, with his dinner and Kree's.
He sat down with such a wild splaying of joints that Rowan expected
nearby persons to be scattered like twigs. Miraculously, he avoided
bumping anyone; the effect was incongruously graceful, after the
fact.

Rowan continued to Kree: "You're not teaching
Hari yourself?" She noticed Fletcher watching her closely.

"No," Kree replied. "Mothers don't mentor
their children. We tend to be biased. It's easy to become
slack."

"My mother was my mentor," Bel said, taking a
bite of meat.

"Well, that's rare."

Rowan crunched some of the bread cubes. They
had a sweet, smoky flavor. "Who decides who is whose mentor?" She
tried the meat.

She did not hear Kree's reply, as all her
concentration was suddenly occupied with preventing herself from
gagging. It was the flavor of decay, dried decay, that coated her
tongue with cloying dust. She sat very still and slowly exhaled
through her nose. The odor of her own breath was like rotted,
oozing redgrass.

She saw Fletcher watching her with a wide,
close-lipped smile of pure enjoyment. She forced herself to
swallow. "You were waiting for that," she accused him. Her teeth
felt dry.

"Oh, yes."

Kree and Bel exchanged puzzled glances.

"What is it?" Rowan asked.

He set to his own dinner with apparent
pleasure. "You take redgrass stalks, and toast them over a fire.
Then you grind them and roll the meat in it. I don't think there's
any real food to it—people can't digest redgrass, it just goes
through the same. It's done purely for the flavor."

Rowan looked at her dinner and grimaced. "I
wonder why they bother?"

"Variety," he said. "It's goat meat for
breakfast, goat meat for lunch, and goat meat for dinner. You get
your variety however you can."

After the meal, as the darkness began to
gather, Fletcher and Kree took themselves to Mander's tent, to
check on the exhausted Averryl. Around the encampment, mertutials
cleared away crockery, and people began to bed down for the
night.

A pair of children wove their way from their
tent through the sitting and lying Outskirters, to arrive at
Rowan's side: Sithy, and a little boy so young as to still be
unsteady on his feet. "Chess says," Sithy began; she paused as if
regretting her bravery, then continued, "Chess says give this to
you." It was the longest speech Rowan had ever heard her make.

"What is it?" Rowan took the tattered object.
It felt faintly greasy in her fingers, without leaving residue,
rather like the gum soles of her own boots. She peered at it in the
deepening twilight.

"Chess says—" And Sithy paused so long that
Rowan wondered if she forgot the question. "Says you like . . .
things," the girl finished. The little boy beside her watched both
faces in turn, with wide blue eyes too fascinated to blink.

"I do like things," the steerswoman reassured
them. "I like to find out about them. Do you know what it is?"

"No . . ." The girl's voice was barely
audible.

"Where did you find it?"

"Bodo found it." Sithy gave her companion a
shove, which sent him reeling. He recovered, and tottered back to
her side.

The object, colored a pale brown, was shaped
like an empty sack, about the size of Bodo's head. The inner
surface was slick; the outer had a rough texture. Rowan took a
closer look and tested the material with the edge of a fingernail.
Particles came off, too small to see in the gloom. She rolled them
between her fingers: sand, or something very like it.

"Bodo," Rowan said, "where did you find
this?" The child looked at her with the same silent astonishment he
might have afforded a talking dog.

"In the grass . . ." Sithy supplied.

"I found it in the grass!" Bodo suddenly
announced, with perfect articulation and much volume. Either the
memory or the act of declaration itself amused him beyond control.
He emitted a series of gleeful squeals interspersed with precise
ho-ho-hos.

Rowan placed her left hand in the sack and
attempted to restore it to its original shape: oval. "Bel," she
called.

Bel excused herself from a discussion with
Merryk and Jann and approached. "What?"

"Is this a goblin egg?"

Sithy's jaw dropped at the concept, and she
shook Bodo silent.

Bel took the sack and immediately shook her
head. "No. Goblin eggs are white. And thinner." She attempted to
examine it, but the light had diminished past usefulness. She
handed it back to Rowan. "You'd better wait until morning to study
it."

"I suppose you're right." Rowan considered,
then brought the object close to her face. A faint scent wafted out
of its interior—musty, cloying, like the gland scent of some
unidentifiable animal; but over this, a sharp tang she recognized
immediately: the sea.

She addressed the children. "Thank you. I do
like things, and I'm very glad to have this." She waited until the
pair had departed, then said to Bel, "I think it's a demon
egg."

Bel thought for a moment, then nodded. "Let's
tell Kammeryn."

K
ammeryn sent
warnings to the scouts, then informed the chiefs, who carefully
instructed their war bands: Watch, listen, report any signs of
demons instantly. But the night passed with no news.

In the morning, Mander, the healer, searched
Rowan out and found her reexamining the tattered object by
daylight. The steerswoman gained no new information, other than
confirmation of the object's color.

Mander spoke without preamble. "How do your
hands feel?"

Rowan looked up. "My hands?" She flexed the
fingers and found them slightly stiff from dryness, which she had
attributed to exposure to the cold wind the previous day.

Mander took her left wrist and studied the
hand with a proprietary air. "Bodo's hands are itching, fingers and
palms. I think it's from that thing he found."

Recalling Bel's description of a demon
spraying corrosive fluid, Rowan became concerned. "How bad is he?"
Her own palms began to itch—a purely emotional reaction.