The Warrior's Path (4 page)

“Do you mean they let them die?” I said.

Sparrow nodded. She saw the confusion in my eyes. “Many tribes have much less than we do here. In times of hunger they can’t feed all their children. They do what they must.”

“But why the dark ones?” I asked her. “In my family we rejoice when one of them is born to us. They have special gifts. They speak with the gods.”

“Nowadays no one has much use for the old gods or the old ways.”

We heard the voice of Sparrow’s warrior, Eramet, calling her.

“Talk to the old woman who sleeps at the kitchen hearth,” said Sparrow. “She can tell you more than I can about how the world has changed.”

For a while after Sparrow left, I sat in the companions’ loft thinking over what she had told me. How little I knew of the world beyond my village. Even the people of this household, joined to my family by long tradition, seemed strange to me in their ways. What I had just heard shocked me. If people of the same tribe could believe so differently, how would I ever understand the world?

I returned to my warrior’s room and sat down beside her on the bed. She was just as I had left her. Her eyes were closed, but I didn’t think she was asleep.

“In ancient days, when only women were warriors,” I began, “lived a woman who had two daughters. One was tall, with hair like spun gold and skin the color of milk and eyes bluer than the sky.”

“I told you I didn’t want to hear it,” she said.

“It’s bad luck to leave a story partly told. It hangs in the air and echoes in your ears until you finish it.”

In ancient days, when only women were warriors, lived a woman who had two daughters. One was tall, with hair like spun gold and skin the color of milk and eyes bluer than the sky. She sang so sweetly that when they heard her voice, songbirds fell silent. She spun wool into the finest thread and dyed it all the colors of the rainbow. She wove it into the most lovely cloth ever made by woman’s hand.

Her sister was as unlike her as it was possible to be. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, brown-skinned. Though she was smaller than her sister, she was stronger. She had broad shoulders, and the muscles of her arms and legs were hard under the skin.

She was a master of the bow. Her arrows could find a bird in flight or a deer in the thicket. She spoke with the spirits of the animals and learned their secrets. She knew the language of the four winds and the songs sung by rain. She could count the number of the days since the world was made.

When the time came for the sisters to marry, the fair one chose a man of her own people. She and her husband were happy together, but to their sorrow, she bore no child. The dark sister chose not to marry. She was content to live alone in the forest, and her sister saw her less and less as the years went by.

One day the dark sister heard her sister singing. The song was such a sad one that she left her forest home and traveled to her sister’s house.

“Why is your song so sad?” she asked.

Her sister said to her, “I have no hope of children. Our people will die with us, unless you bear a child.”

The dark sister had no desire for a child, but her sister’s sadness weighed on her heart. When she left her sister’s house, she wandered through the burial places of their people. She sat among the cairns and felt the sun warm across her back and the cooling breeze that caressed her face.

For the first time she understood that she had come out into the light for only a short while and that the day would come when her bones would rest in the dark under the stones. Who then would sit among the cairns on a bright spring day and remember those who had gone beyond the sunset?

The dark sister returned to the heart of the forest, to a grove where there rose out of a rock a freshwater spring. She knelt down beside it. Around the spring a pool of black water reflected her face back to her. She called upon the spirit of the spring to teach her what to do.

“How can I conceive a child?” she asked. “There is no man I would take to husband me, nor any I would lie beside.”

A breath of air disturbed the surface of the pool. Before she could stop herself, she fell forward into it. Small hands took hers and pulled her down. In the dark water her eyes were blind, but she heard a woman’s voice that calmed her and felt the woman’s hands caress her face.

“Tell me why you ask for a child,” the woman said.

“There will be no one to enjoy the world when we are gone,” she replied. “When we are gone, there will be no one to remember us and no one to keep our stories alive in the daylight.”

“Other children will tell other stories,” the woman said.

“But not ours,” said the dark sister, “and our stories reach deep, even to the roots of the world.”

Then the spirit of the spring embraced her and kissed her mouth.

“Take this kiss to your sister,” she said.

The tiny hands released her, and she floated up through the water until she broke the surface and found herself back in her own world beneath the trees.

The dark sister went at once to her sister’s house, and when her sister came to greet her, she kissed her sister’s mouth and conceived in her a child.

When the child was born, it seemed that sometimes she was dark like her dark mother, and yet at other times she was as fair as the one who bore her. She sang so sweetly that when they heard her voice, songbirds fell silent. She knew the language of the four winds and the songs sung by rain. She could count the number of the days since the world was made. Her children were many, and they filled the land. They sat among the cairns in springtime and told the stories that reach deep, even to the roots of the world.

“How can a woman conceive by another woman?” Maara asked.

I shrugged. I’d never thought about it.

“I don’t think I understand your stories.”

“They’re not meant to be understood any more than the world can be understood.”

“What are they for, then?”

I thought for a moment before I answered her. I had been told stories all my life. I never stopped to wonder what they were for. I had heard them over and over, and every time I heard them, they kindled a warm feeling in the center of my chest, as if one of the puzzles of the world had just unraveled and made itself clear to me, although I could never have explained what the puzzle was or told its answer.

At last I reached out my hand and laid my palm over Maara’s heart.

“They’re meant to make you feel something here,” I said. “When I was a child, the stories told me that the world was as it should be, and that I was a part of it, and that every question has an answer.”

“Does she ever talk to you?” the Lady asked me.

“Sometimes,” I replied. “A little.”

“Does she talk of where she came from?”

“No,” I said. “Where did she come from?”

“She never told me,” the Lady said. “She came to me in wintertime. In weather no one should have traveled in, she came to my door. She asked me to admit her to my service. She claimed to have no family and no clan, and nowhere else to go. She was ill-clad and hungry. I couldn’t turn her out to die in the snow, so she made her oath to me, and I accepted it.”

“How can she have no clan?”

“They may all have died of disease or famine, or she may have been a slave. Perhaps her mistress freed her or she ran away.”

“Slaves can’t be warriors,” I said.

“No slave can be a warrior here. What others do, who can say? The customs of the northerners are not like ours. I believe your warrior used to make her home among them, although she has never told me so.”

The Lady’s eyes caught mine then, and she leaned toward me.

“I need your help,” she said. “I know so little of her. There is always a chance that she has been sent by some northern tribe that would use her to learn our weaknesses.”

I stared at the Lady in disbelief. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“You know her very little. How can you be sure?”

I had to admit the Lady might be right. How well did I know my warrior’s heart?

“What can I do?” I asked.

“Listen to her. Try to discover more about her. Ask her about her people, about her home.”

I began to have an unpleasant feeling in my stomach.

The Lady saw my expression change, and she understood.

“I’m not asking you to misrepresent yourself,” she said. “You’re a young girl with little knowledge of the world. Curiosity is natural in the young. You would question her about these things in any case. I’m asking only that you tell me if something seems amiss to you. If you’re not sure if something is amiss or not, then you must let me know of it and trust me to deal honorably with her.”

When Maara was able to leave her bed, I took her outdoors to enjoy the springtime. One day we sat together on the hillside just outside the earthworks. Flowers bloomed all around us in the grass. The river sparkled in the sun. Above us the sky was a brilliant blue.

For a long time we were silent. I was not uncomfortable with her silence. I spent so much time with her that I had become used to it. Sometimes I would chatter away about anything that came into my head. She didn’t seem to mind, but that afternoon I was silent too. I was listening to birdsong and the sighing of the wind. Her sudden question startled me.

“Where do your people live?” she asked me.

I pointed to the southeast. “We live in the hill country, five days’ journey from here.”

“Your people are shepherds?”

“Much of the wool in the weaving shed is from our sheep.”

I was about to ask Maara where her people lived when I remembered that whatever she told me I was bound in honor to tell the Lady. It seemed a violation of my warrior’s trust to do it, but it would be a violation of the Lady’s trust if I did not. Only if Maara told me nothing could I keep faith with both of them.

Maara’s broken bones healed straight and strong, but the muscles of her arm had wasted from disuse. One day she took me out to the practice ground, just outside the earthworks. There we found shields made of wickerwork and wooden sticks like the toy swords children use in games.

She handed me a stick and a wicker shield and showed me how to hold them. Then she began to spar with me. At first I felt awkward, and the blows of her stick would send mine flying across the yard, but each time she showed me what I had done wrong, and before long I was doing much better.

Every day we spent several hours on the practice ground, sparring with sticks until her arm grew strong again. Then one day she put on her armor and buckled on her sword. She borrowed a leather cap and a heavy coat of sheepskin for me, as well as a real sword for me to practice with.

The sword was so heavy I had to hold it with both hands. After only a quarter of an hour I could no longer lift it, so she had me sit down and watch while she sparred with Eramet. The next morning I was stiff and sore, and I had so much trouble getting up from my bed that Maara offered me her hand. When she had me on my feet, she lifted my arm and examined it.

“You have the bones of a bird,” she said.

My disappointment that I would not be apprenticed came back to me all at once, so that I had to brush a tear from my eye before it spilled over and embarrassed me. She saw me and misunderstood.

“There’s no shame in that,” she said.

“I’m
not
ashamed,” I said. My face was hot. “Someday I
will
be a warrior, bird bones and all!”

Maara laughed at my anger. “Someday you’ll be what it’s in you to be. It does no good to argue with the gods about it.”

Every day she sparred with me, first with sticks and wicker shields, then with real swords, and every day I grew stronger, but I found it hard to believe that I would ever be strong enough to wield both sword and shield.

No one seemed to notice that my warrior was training me in swordplay. Because I wasn’t her apprentice, she had no obligation to teach me. I wondered why no one commented on it. I didn’t understand then that a warrior would do with her companion what seemed best to her, and no one would think to interfere.

While Maara recovered from her injuries, the two of us were left alone to do as we pleased. Summer’s heat made Merin’s house too hot to sleep in, and after a few days of stifling weather, Maara told me to get ready to go out into the countryside. Sparrow showed me how to prepare a pack with the things we’d need — oil and flour for baking camp bread, dried meat and fruit, a round of cheese, water skins, a small tin pot, a scrap of blanket, a flint knife, firestones.

We traveled south along the river. It was my first chance to explore Merin’s land since I made the journey with my mother. The fields that had been only bare earth then were now thick with growing grain, still green, with the heads just forming.

The country people were generous with us. When they saw us on the road, women came out of their kitchens with loaves of bread, warm from the oven. They pressed upon us jars of milk and little baskets with a few duck eggs wrapped in straw.

My warrior said not a word to them. It was up to me to thank them, but they didn’t seem to mind her. They gave her sidelong glances, coy as maidens at the springtime festival.

When thunderstorms brought an end to the hot weather, we went back to Merin’s house for a while, but Maara much preferred to live outdoors, and she took me out on expeditions whenever we could get away. Sometimes we explored the settled land along the river. More often we camped high up in the hills east of the valley. She taught me to make snares and fish traps, and we lived very well on the game and fish we caught, and on flat, round loaves baked in the ashes of our campfire.

Maara was a gifted teacher. She asked me questions and let me find the answers for myself. When she taught me a new skill — camp craft or the care of weapons — she first showed me what to do, then left me alone to fumble with my task. Though I often grew frustrated and impatient, I soon learned.

We had walked all day in silence. Several times I had tried to start a conversation. Each time she would say only a word or two and then fall silent. Sometimes in the evenings I could get her to talk a little as we sat together by our fire. Sometimes she would ask me for a story. Sometimes she just let me talk. That night she said nothing, and I had run out of chatter. The campfire had burned down to a bed of glowing embers. It gave just enough light to see her by.