The Outskirter's Secret (9 page)

T
hey resigned
themselves to traveling in the rain.

Every second day, they stopped early to dry
their clothing by damp, smoky fires, which they extinguished at
dark. They practiced swordplay until Rowan had successfully
destroyed the tanglewood sword; Rowan updated her logbook, its
pages limp with dampness in the shelter of the tarp; and Bel found
occupation for idle hours in trying to learn to read and write,
clumsily scratching letters in the muddy earth with a stick.

They counted miles.

"This can't continue," Rowan stated. The
older forest was slowly being left behind, tall spruce and birches
grudgingly abdicating to scrub pine, briar, blackberry.

Bel made no reply, disentangling herself from
a net of brambles.

"It's going to take forever." They were
making less than fifteen miles a day.

"Isn't Hanlys's information of any use?" Bel
asked.

Rowan made a wordless comment of
disgruntlement. The raider tribe's seyoh had proved to have a very
vague understanding of mileage. "The brushland should break—at some
point," Rowan said. "Then some wide greengrass meadowlands with
occasional young copses. It's going to take longer than we
thought."

Bel did not reply; Rowan knew that the
Outskirter's thoughts, like Rowan's own, were on their food
supply.

From the start, Bel had maintained that the
Outskirts had no game, and that only association with a tribe, with
its attendant herd, could insure survival. Rowan, accustomed to
occasionally living off small game and wild plants during the more
isolated segments of her routes, had accepted the statement only
half-seriously.

But when she noted the appearance of the
stiff, rough-edged redgrass, which the deer never touched, and its
slow intermingling with the green of panic grass and timothy, she
also began to note the disappearance of smaller animals. The
rabbits, the mice, and even certain birds, were gone.

"Grouse," she enumerated to herself, as she
struggled through the briar. "Quail, titmice. Finches."

"What?"

Rowan had not realized that she had spoken
aloud. "Where are the birds?" To give the lie to her observation,
an egret lifted in the distance, rising above unseen water, white
wavering wingstrokes dim against the mist-laden gray of the
sky.

"You won't see many, deeper in the
Outskirts," Bel replied. "If a tribe moves close to the Inner
Lands, flocks of birds will follow it, but only for a while."

Rowan paused to wipe sweat and condensation
from her face. "Perhaps we should head for that water. There may be
ducks."

"Can you catch a duck?"

Rowan made a vague gesture. "Probably. I know
the theory, but I've never tried it."

The water was an east-running brook, slow and
shallow, and there were no ducks; two more egrets fled to the sky
at the travelers' approach, and three smaller birds, possibly
herons. In autumn, with no nestlings, they had no reason to return.
Rowan caught frogs, and one snake, while Bel watched from the banks
with immense amusement.

They built a fire shelter out of brush, and
Rowan eventually started a damp, smoky fire with some of the birch
bark she had wisely saved from the forest, now far behind. The
flame needed constant attending, due to the smallness of the
bramble branches with which they fed it.

They cooked; they ate; they calculated.

"We have enough food," Bel said, "to get back
to the Inner Lands from here. We should think about it."

Rowan had already been doing so. She sighed.
"How long do you think we can extend what we have?" She had
traveled on short rations before, and knew her own limits. She did
not know Bel's.

"Let's check your maps."

They abandoned their meal to stand
head-to-head; Bel held the sides of their cloaks together to
provide shelter for the chart. Rowan traced with one finger the
intermittent tracks to the east of Greyriver. "There's something
here . . . a few houses, not really a village. Farms."

"Is your Steerswomen's privilege always
dependable?"

Rowan winced. "No. But nearly always, yes.
And it's harvest by now; most people will be more generous. Can you
tell if there's likely to be a tribe nearby?"

"There's
likely
to be one, anywhere east of here. But I
haven't seen the signs yet."

"What signs do you look for?"

"Goat muck, cessfields, and redgrass eaten to
the roots. Bits of corpses, if there's been trouble."

Rowan replaced her map and they returned to
their dinner. "How likely are we to end up in bits ourselves?"

"If we approach them right, they'll wait to
talk first. We'll only end up in bits if they don't like our
answers." Bel took another bite of food, appreciatively. "The smoke
doesn't help the frogs," she observed, "but it's good for the
snake."

It was late afternoon, and the travelers
considered themselves in place for the night. Rowan wiped the
grease from her fingers and rose to set up the rain fly, musing on
Bel's several plans for gaining the acceptance of a tribe. "How is
it that I never knew that you had three names?" she wondered as she
worked.

"I never told you any of my names at all,"
Bel pointed out, and Rowan recollected with surprise that this was
true. When first they met, Rowan had overheard Bel's first name
being used by an Outskirter tribe that was peacefully patronizing
the inn at Five Corners; the steerswoman had simply addressed the
Outskirter by the name she had heard, as a matter of course.

"Bel, Margasdotter, Chanly," Rowan repeated
to herself, reminding herself of the elements: given name,
matronym, line name. "Perhaps," she mused aloud, "I should choose
two more names for myself. Anya was my mother, which makes me
Anyasdotter; and for a line name—" She stopped, catching Bel's
expression.

The Outskirter sat stiffly, her face all
glower. "That's not a good idea."

Rowan recovered. "I'm sorry." Then: "But why
isn't it?"

Bel wavered, then returned to eating. "If you
name yourself as an Outskirter," she said, her words barely
comprehensible around a mouthful of snake, "you're saying that you
are an Outskirter. People will expect you to act like one, and they
won't forgive you any mistakes you make in proper behavior." She
paused, then continued reluctantly, and more clearly. "And making
up a line name out of the air would be saying that our lines mean
nothing. It's an insult."

The steerswoman was contrite. "I didn't
intend it that way."

"I know. But they won't. Don't try it."

The greengrass vanished.

It was as subtle a process as Bel had first
described to the Prime: first one noticed occasional patches of
redgrass, then more, and eventually one realized that for some
indeterminate length of time no greengrass had been seen at all.
Certain other green plants remained, however: thistle, with
autumn-brown stems, and purple blossoms faded to white; milkweed,
sending up drifting silk into the air on mornings of less rain; and
dandelion, heads ghostly gray, rain-beaten to damp drab blots. All
of them, Rowan noted, plants with airborne seeds.

The redgrass surprised her by growing taller
than ever it had in the Inner Lands, where it was routinely pulled
as soon as it appeared. Here, it became knee-high, then waist-high,
stiff tall reeds with abrasive blades growing in a three-ranked
pattern, and fat beardless seed heads. At first Rowan thought it a
different plant altogether; rain seemed to dull its colors, soaking
and darkening the bright red faces of the blades to dull brownish
brick. They waded through it, its blades clutching and tugging at
their clothing.

They came to a place where a patch of grass
had strangely faded to gray. Bel passed it by, but Rowan lingered,
curious. She touched one pale blade, and it disintegrated, leaving
sooty smears on her fingers; she touched a shaft, and it split,
oozing clear fluid that stank with a foul, greasy odor.

Bel paused and looked back at her. "Don't
bother with that," she advised.

"What is it?" Rowan parted the grass to peer
into the center of the patch, despite the stench. There was a
clearing within.

"It's probably a corpse," Bel said,
approaching. "Or part of one. It looks like someone's been cast
there."

Rowan drew up short. "Oh," she said, now
disinclined to investigate. But she had already reached the center,
and it held no human remains. "It's a fox."

It was long dead, desiccated skin over
delicate bones, fine fur faded, sprawled under a tangle of rotted
reeds. No scavengers had dined on it; natural corruption had had
its way, and the only breaks in the crusted pelt were the result of
the more unpleasant internal stages of decay, long past, when the
body had swelled and burst.

"One of those animals we heard by the raider
camp?" Bel moved closer to study it, tilt-headed. "It's a
strange-looking creature."

They left the gray patch behind, Rowan
brushing her fingers across the wet grass tops as she walked, to
clear off the scent and the fluid. "The fox is a small predator,"
she said, falling into a steerswoman's explanation. "It's shaped
like a dog, and graceful as a cat. It's beautiful when alive, and
its pelt is highly prized. I wonder how it died?" Then she answered
herself, body continuing to walk as her mind stopped short,
surprised. "It starved to death. It must have wandered too far from
the Inner Lands, and found nothing to eat . . ."

"What does a fox eat?"

"Everything we'd like to, but can't
find."

Three days later, they found signs of a
tribe.

They had crested a rise and stood looking
down into a shallow, rolling field half-obscured by shifting mist.
The ground was stubbled, redgrass cropped to the roots and dying in
a patchwork mottle of yellow and brown; occasional smears of pale
gray emitted their particular, distinctive stench. Fog and curtains
of rain hid the far horizons while intimating replication into the
distance, suggesting to shocked eyes that the desolation continued
past the limits of sight, forever.

Rowan stood stunned. "What happened
here?"

The scene seemed to please Bel, who regarded
her with mild surprise. "Goats."

"Goats did all of this?" Rowan reached down
to pull at a bit of longer grass by her feet. It did show the marks
of grazing: fibrous blades stripped and abraded to strings, stiff
reeds chewed through at varied heights.

Farther from Rowan's position, the grass had
been cropped shorter, and farther, shorter still. The field below
appeared entirely lifeless.

Bel had begun to amble down the slope; Rowan
hurried to catch up.

"Watch your step," Bel said, the instant that
Rowan's left foot slid violently out from under her. A quick clutch
at Bel's shoulder saved the steerswoman from landing prone in a
puddle of unidentifiable ooze.

Bel helped her to a steady stance. "You have
to step solidly," she instructed. "You can walk around it now, but
later you won't always be able to."

They continued down into the field. "What was
that?" Rowan asked.

"Goat droppings."

Rowan stopped and turned back to it. "Then
the goat was ill."

"No. It's always like that." Bel found
herself walking alone. She stopped, annoyed. "Rowan, you're not
going to study goat muck, are you?"

Rowan intended to do exactly that. "This was
not a healthy goat." She found a twig and prodded at the
translucent puddle. It was infiltrated with short wet fibers. "I
wonder what it was eating?"

Bel made a gesture that included the entire
visible landscape.

As they descended, Rowan noted that not every
plant had been consumed. Tanglebrush bushes, ranging in a loose,
staggered line, seemed denuded, but closer examination revealed
that they had merely rolled their leaves tightly closed against the
rain. She spotted movement among the bushes, and cautiously called
Bel to a halt. "What's that?" A bobbing object, splotched black,
brown, and white.

Bel looked, then smiled. "That's dinner."

The goat seemed pleased to find human company
in the barren wilderness. It greeted them with happy relief—and met
its death too quickly to recognize betrayal. As the travelers
cleaned the carcass, Rowan considered the differences between it
and its Inner Lands cousins. There were many.

Its hair was not white and short, but long,
as much as eight inches in length, splotched randomly. Farm goats
had short black horns; their counterparts of the Outskirts veldt
carried heavy weaponry, two inches thick at the base, growing
almost straight back, and only curving outward at the tips. Rowan
recognized the source of the wooden sword's hilt.

She became distracted from her study by a
glance at Bel's expression. The Outskirter seemed worried. "What's
wrong?"

"This is a good goat. It shouldn't have been
lost."

"We're fortunate that it was." Of itself,
Rowan's mind entered into a series of calculations that brought a
very pleasing revision in the number of miles the two women could
safely travel before food would again become a concern.

Bel shook her head as she severed one of the
legs at the knee. "We look after our herd very carefully. If the
flockmaster finds even one goat missing, scouts are sent out."

Rowan paused. "Should we be expecting
scouts?"

The Outskirter rose and gave the misty,
drizzling meadow careful consideration. "I don't know," she said at
last. "I think these people left very quickly."

Rowan imitated her, gaining no additional
information whatsoever. "How can you tell?"

Bel shrugged and returned to their work.
"Only by the goat."

There was no brush for a fire shelter, no
wood to burn; Bel declared that it was time to use Outskirter
methods. In future days Rowan came to designate, somewhat
arbitrarily, the frogs and snake as the journey's last meal in the
Inner Lands, the goat as the first meal in the Outskirts.