The Outskirter's Secret (8 page)

Except for the tanglebrush, Rowan had yet to
note any evidence of the depredations commonly attributed to the
Outskirts. How soon, she wondered, would it alter? How quickly, and
how completely?

She rolled up the map and replaced it. It
slid inside its mates and down into the case with a hollow thump,
one of the sounds in all the world that Rowan found most
satisfying. "Very well, then," she said, "until we do meet a tribe,
let's cover as much ground as quickly as we can, alone."

The clouds had moved in sometime after
Rowan's second watch the previous night; now they deepened and
darkened. The breeze hesitated, backed, and a light sprinkle of
rain swept in, then departed. In the east, the sun disappeared as
it rose.

Rowan gauged the wind expertly, checked its
direction against her memory of the previous night's sighting of
the Guidestars. It was blowing from the west, steadily. Weather
moved generally from west to east, and despite the gray above, she
knew from the wind and sky that there was fairer weather coming. As
she recognized this, the rain returned, falling more steadily.

"This could last into the afternoon," she
told Bel. "I hate to lose the time, but we might do well to move
into that bit of forest ahead, set up a rain fly, and wait it
out."

Bel was disappointed, but agreed. "We can use
the time to practice swordsmanship. If you fight against Outskirter
weapons, you'll need to change your technique."

"I'm sure you'll teach me what I need. And if
I find the time, I can try to chart this area more carefully." And
they trudged eastward together, through the light drizzle and the
shifting air, to the shelter of the woods.

It rained for twelve days.

B
y noon on the
first day of rain, a steady downpour had established itself,
relenting only occasionally and briefly. The air was hot and heavy,
and the weather, slow as treacle, moved up the land from the
southeast. Travel was postponed, for that day and for the next. The
third day began with a lull and a brief west wind that tried and
failed to clear the gloom. Then lightning skirted the eastern
horizon, and by noon all was again steamy heat and rain.

The two women coped as best they could,
stripping to their underlinen to endure the humidity. Rowan dropped
to a seat on her bedroll under the tarp. "Does this sort of weather
happen often?"

"Sometimes. But usually in the spring. Never
this late in the year, not that I can remember." Bel was seated
beside her, crowding close to avoid the water dripping from the
edges of the canvas, attempting to dry her hair with one corner of
Rowan's felt cloak.

Rowan stepped back out of the shelter and set
to cleaning a pair of rabbits that had fallen to her snares
overnight. Water intermittently drizzled onto her head as branches
above bent and sprang under accumulated weight.

"Well. The weather makes fools of us all, so
they say." The rabbits were two bucks, fat and well fed. She
wondered if she would be able to start a cooking fire in the damp;
they had dined on cold food for the last three days. Rowan began
designing a fire shelter, and mentally tallied the number of birch
trees she had noticed in the area. Birch bark burned when wet.

"Some people can guess the coming weather,
sometimes," Bel said, muffled under the cloak. "You're usually
good."

"Perhaps it works differently in the
Outskirts." The Steerswomen had no more reliable information about
weather than did the folk. There were rules, usually dependable,
but rules were not principles, and so could not be trusted.

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight," Rowan
mused as she slit one buck with her field knife. The rain had
broken briefly at sunset the previous evening, and the sky had
gifted them with a wild glory of orange and poppy red. And the rain
had returned with darkness.

Bel watched Rowan at work, then rose. "Let me
do that."

"No, I'd rather. I'm deathly bored." Study of
rabbit anatomy was a small diversion.

"I know." The Outskirter reached among her
gear and pulled out a sheathed sword, one of two she carried
alongside her pack. "Look at this instead, then tell me what you
think of it." Puzzled, Rowan took it from her hand and relinquished
her place in the drizzle to Bel.

The sheath was cured hide, similar to that of
Bel's other sword; small differences in markings told Rowan that
this was not the weapon Bel commonly used, but a new
acquisition.

"Where did you get it?"

"At Five Corners, a week before I met up with
you."

The hilt was of horn, and the guard. Rowan
drew the sword. It was black, edged with dull-colored metal. She
felt the flat. "It's wood."

"Except for the edge."

Workable metal was at a premium in the
Outskirts. "An Outskirter sword?"

"That's right."

There were no trees in the Outskirts. "Where
did the wood come from?" The grain, barely visible black on black,
curled wildly in tiny interlocking swirls.

"It's a tanglebrush root." Bel gathered a
handful of rabbit entrails and flung them far in a fast sidearm
motion. Rowan thought briefly of scavenging raccoons. "Tanglebrush
sends down one large root, about so long." Bel demonstrated with
bloody hands; something over four feet. "If you burn off the bush,
you can dig up the root. Then you cure it with slow heat."

Rowan hefted the weapon. It seemed well
balanced, though the width of its cross section made it move
through the air more sluggishly than a metal sword of similar
length. "You have a steel sword."

Bel nodded broadly. "And you won't find many
like it among the tribes. I won it from someone, who won it from
someone else—it must have come from the Inner Lands, a long time
ago. And that's why you have to learn how to fight against a
tangleroot sword. People will try to win your sword from you."

Rowan traced small figures-of-eight in the
air; her elbow and the sword's point were splashed with running
drops off the edge of the tarp. "They'll try to confiscate it?" She
wiped the blade and set to admiring the weapon's design: an
interesting solution to problems of scarcity.

"They won't sneak up on you and snatch it.
That is, no one in any tribe that we travel with will." Bel severed
her rabbit's neck and held up the head and attached skin, taking
pleasure in the neatness of her work. "It's a formal tradition. If
you covet someone's weapon, you have the right to challenge him to
a duel."

Rowan disliked the idea. "Not to the
death?"

"No. That's wasteful." Bel balled up the head
and pelt and tossed it after its viscera. The skin spread in the
air as it lofted, like a flying squirrel. "To disarmament, to a
killing blow stopped at the last moment, or to surrender. The
winner gets the choice of weapons."

The better fighter acquired the superior
weapon. Rowan nodded thoughtfully and turned to careful study of
the sword, considering weight, length, resilience, and possible
advantages and disadvantages in strategy.

She did not care to lose her sword. Of all
those she had used or owned, the sword she now carried was the only
one with which she felt something approaching the true unity of
fighter and weapon. She had no intention of permitting anyone to
take it from her.

The sword was one that Bel had stolen for her
during their escape from the fortress of the wizards Shammer and
Dhree: a standard-issue guardsman's sword, stolid, unadorned,
seemingly unremarkable. But although there was no magic power in
Rowan's new sword, she suspected magical processes behind its
construction. It was lighter than its length suggested, and a shade
stronger than its weight would lead one to assume. It held its edge
longer, and under stress it revealed the slightest hint of flex,
permitting her to use more aggressive maneuvers, moves that would
risk breakage in a common sword, or cause its user to be trapped in
a disadvantageous stance.

With her knowledge of these differences, the
steerswoman now found during practice that her strategies became
incomprehensible to her opponents, while maintaining to herself an
elegant interior logic. She began to enjoy using the weapon and
became, for the first time in her life and to her great surprise, a
superior swordswoman.

"Let's go."

The steerswoman looked up. Bel was cleaning
her hands with dirt and leaves. The rabbit carcasses, legs tied
together with a strip of skin, were draped over a low-hanging
branch.

"What?"

"Let's practice."

"In this weather?"

The Outskirter raised her brows. "You plan
never to fight in the rain?"

Rowan laughed. "Very well, then." She stood,
tossed the Outskirter weapon hilt-first to Bel, and found her own
sword.

They moved into a larger clearing nearby, and
as they faced off, Rowan took a moment wryly to note the oddity of
the scene: rain spattering through the trees all around, a murky
humid sky lowering above, tendrils of ground mist snaking and
vanishing, whirling around the legs of two women who were
carefully, intently assuming a battle stance—both damp as otters,
and clad only in their underlinen. Then Bel made her move.

They stepped into the drill as if stepping
into a dance, patterned and familiar, as Rowan studied the action
of the Outskirter weapon, trying to reason out its weaknesses and
turn them to her advantage.

Eventually Bel stepped back. "No."

"What?"

"You're trying to use your edge against my
flat."

Rowan used the respite to regain her breath.
"Your flat is wood. I thought to be able to chip away at it and
weaken the sword."

"It'll take you forever." Bel pushed wet hair
from her eyes. "And I have more weight, and more strength. You'll
exhaust yourself." She beckoned, raised her sword. "Try again, with
your usual style. But slowly."

Artificially slow movement was more tiring
than swordplay at normal speed, and Rowan's muscles trembled as her
weapon met Bel's careful downstroke. Rowan parried, and as ever,
the superior resilience of her sword began to absorb some of the
power behind Bel's blow, affording Rowan an easy escape.

She began to take it: a shift of weight, a
half step back, preparing to take advantage of her opponent's
longer recovery time—when Bel said, "No. Come
in
."

Reluctantly, Rowan moved her weight into the
stroke, found her strength overmatched, slid her blade up Bel's,
instinctively shifting to the strongest section of her own
sword—

At Bel's word, they paused: face-to-face,
edge-to-edge at guards. "I don't like getting this close," Rowan
told Bel.

"I know. Now twist your edge. No,
away
from my guard, and use all the
strength you can." Rowan complied, to no visible effect whatsoever.
"Good." Bel stepped back and dashed the water from her eyes with
one forearm. Rowan vainly attempted to wipe her fingers dry on her
singlet, to improve her grip. "Now again," the Outskirter said when
both were finished, "full strength, up to speed. And then
halt."

Rowan tried to repeat the moves: downstroke,
clash, flex and slide, step forward, guard-to-guard, and vicious
twist—

"That's right." They disengaged. "Now look."
Bel held up her sword for Rowan's inspection.

Where the blade joined the guard, the metal
edging showed the faintest dent. Rowan put her hand over Bel's and
turned the sword in the grayish light. On either side of the dent,
the metal had lifted slightly from the wood. Bel indicated it.
"That's the weakest point on an Outskirter sword," she said, "where
the metal comes up to the hilt guard."

Rowan considered the implications. "And it's
the strongest part of my sword."

"That's right. You'll never see two
Outskirters with wood-and-metal swords using this technique,
because it sets weakness against weakness. But for you, it's your
strength against their weakness." She took up her position.
"Again."

A long drill, and they did not stop this
time. Applying the new technique, Rowan found that she shifted
stance more often, more completely, and more abruptly than was her
former habit. She struggled to adapt; then she caught the feverish
rhythm, moved with it, felt her effectiveness grow, and a strange
wild joy rose in her. She began to love it.

"Halt!" Bel called out, and pulled away.
Rowan found she was exhausted without having been aware of it. She
leaned forward, hands on knees, and drew long deep breaths. Bel
came forward and displayed her weapon.

At the guard, one side of the edging had
completely lifted from the wooden blade, in a short battered curve.
"When you reach this point, try to get your edge under the loose
end, and work it up."

Rowan wiped her forehead against her
shoulder. "If I pull away, I'll leave myself open."

"Don't pull out—get under the edging, and
then slide your blade alongside your opponent's." Bel took both
swords and demonstrated the configuration and movement: a
scissoring action. Rowan could see that in battle the force would
peel away the metal from the wood.

She was impressed. "I can completely destroy
the other fighter's weapon."

"That's right."

"That's quite an advantage." Something
occurred to her. "When you won your metal sword, were you using a
wooden?"

"Yes."

"How did you ever manage to win?"

The Outskirter grinned and stepped back.
"Like this."

They set to again, the same drill, and Rowan
found her moment: parry, flex and slide, forward, hilt-to-hilt—

Bel shifted, spun, vanished.

Battered metal lay lightly across the back of
Rowan's neck. Bel's voice came from behind. "You'll have to watch
out for that one."