She sauntered along in the sunlight, Fletcher beside her, or perhaps she beside him; the lengths of their strides did not match. Sometimes she was ahead, sometimes he.
She decided to humor him. “Why are you following me around?”
He paused a moment to apply his knee to the ribs of a browsing goat, which was disinclined to give way. “Well, actually, I’m enjoying it. But the fact is, I’ve been told to.” He grinned down at her and shook a finger. “Call yourself a steerswoman; you’re supposed to notice things. Haven’t you noticed that you’ve had someone beside you every minute today?”
“No, I haven’t,” she replied, bemused.
“Now ask me where Bel is.”
Rowan stopped in her tracks. “Where’s Bel?” Her companion had risen before her. Rowan had not seen her yet that day.
Fletcher pointed north. “Last night one of the scouts found signs of another tribe. Bel’s gone to talk to them.”
Rowan looked in the direction indicated: forty goats scattered among the sweeping redgrass, some seen only by the disturbance they made in the rolling pattern. In the distance, a single warrior at position ten.
Rowan resumed walking, annoyed. “I’d like to have gone with her.”
Fletcher’s eyes and mouth apologized. “Letting strangers stay among us is one thing. Letting them wander off to talk to a tribe that might be hostile, whenever they want toâthat’s dangerous.”
“But Kammeryn let Bel go.”
He raised a finger, amused. “But you’re still here.”
She stopped again, and her jaw dropped. “I’m a hostage?” It seemed impossible, considering the friendship she had begun to share with these people. Then she viewed it again, from the brutal perspective of the Outskirts, and saw that it was entirely sensible.
“Let’s just say,” Fletcher told her, “that we’re going to take very good care of you, until your friend returns.” He began walking again. Rowan took half again as many steps as his, to catch up.
“I suppose it’s to reassure the people who are bothered by Kammeryn endlessly extending your stay,” he continued. “But if you really want to talk to the next tribe yourself, you could probably reverse things, next time. Bel could stay here.”
“I don’t know. I think Bel will do the best job of convincing other Outskirters. This is her work, really, and not mine.” She watched her feet for a moment. “But I’d like to help her.”
“From the sound of it, you have.” He was momentarily distracted, as the man at ten signaled inward to the relay, then continued. “She wouldn’t be doing anything at all, if it weren’t for you. She wouldn’t have found out about the Guidestars, or the wizards …” He acquired an uncomfortable expression.
“You still don’t quite believe it.”
“Rowan, there’s nothing for a wizard here,” he said, then thought. “Nothing I know about,” he amended.
A small incongruous shuddering in the redgrass caught Rowan’s attention: a handful of reeds, showing color out of pattern. She angled toward it.
Reaching the spot, she parted the grass and at first saw nothing, then saw a motionless irregular lump, brown, gray, and black. As she watched, the object shifted jerkily, then teetered.
Fletcher was stooping beside her. “What is it?” It was a mound, apparently consisting entirely of dead insects. Fletcher prodded it with one shaggy boot. “Stuck together?” The mass shifted, then suddenly trundled itself away, in a panicky amble. Fletcher laughed out loud, recognizing it.
Rowan stepped into its path, causing it to halt. “Is it a harvester? It seems too big.” It bulked to half the height of her knee.
“Greedy fellow!” Fletcher stooped down to address his admonishment to the living insect buried beneath the dead. “Think you can get all that home? Think you can eat it all?” The load tilted up; a tiny black-and-white head turned glittering red eyes first on Rowan, then on Fletcher, then vanished; the entire mass rotated in place; and the ambling escape resumed, somewhat accelerated.
Fletcher noted the direction it took. “Ho, watch out,” he advised the harvester. “That way’s the cessfield!”
“I should think he’d find plenty of bugs to harvest there,” Rowan said, as the grass closed behind the clumsily fleeing insect; then she abruptly realized that that was not the case. In retrospect, she could not recall ever having seen any insects in the tribe’s waste area. “Insects, as well?” she questioned herself, aloud. In the Outskirts, human presence seemed to result in an inordinate amount of destruction. She turned to Fletcher.
She made to speak, then saw his head go up, like a listening dog’s. He began to rise, stopped.
“What?” Rowan looked where he was looking, rising herself to see over the grass tops.
The guard at ten had just completed a signal and had turned away. Rowan prompted Fletcher again. “Motion on the veldt” was his distracted reply.
“Outside the circles?”
The guard signaled outward, turned, then signaled inward. Fletcher stood and looked back to camp for the reply. ” ‘Has it stopped?’ ” he read, then turned to see the guard again. A pause. ” ‘Yes.’ “
“That’s good,” Rowan said.
He knit his brows, watching. “No … no, it isn’t …” He startled; his hand made a movement toward the sword hilt at his shoulder, then paused.
“What?”
“The scout is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Maud. She may have dropped into hiding.” He stood quivering, head high, all attention outward. Rowan looked around. Nothing visible had changed.
The wind was from the north. A scout in hiding must move to remain concealed, else the grass waves would break around her, showing her position to possible enemies. Maud would be approaching the tribe.
In the windy quiet of the veldt, Rowan’s heart beat hard, twice. She watched the guard at ten. There were no signals; he stood in Fletcher’s pose, waiting. She watched Fletcher’s face and learned more. A dozen possibilities were passing through his mind; his face showed each. His body wanted to move.
He made a sudden, quiet sound of shock, then a choked cry. His long arm flailed up to his sword.
“What is it?”
“Outer nine is down!”
“Down?”
“It’s an attack!” And he took two loping strides away.
Rowan moved without thinking and found herself back at his side, her sword in hand. “Where do we go?”
“Weâ” He spared her a glance, then stopped so suddenly that he stumbled; he recovered, and stood staring at her, aghast.
Rowan grabbed his free arm and pulled. It was like trying to move a tree. “Come on! What do we do?”
He was a moment finding his voice. “Nothing.”
“We have to help!”
“I have to stay with you.” Then a motion back at camp caught his eye, and he spun, throwing out one fist in helpless rage. “Outer ten is down!”
Rowan looked back. The camp was unchanged, but for three warriors approaching at a run. She turned to Fletcher. “If I can’t go to the outer circle, then you go.” He looked down at her, speechless. “Go on, do what you need to,” she reassured him. “I can take care of myself.”
His mouth worked twice, and he made a small sound, almost a laugh. “I’m not here to protect you. I’m here to protect usâfrom you!”
Rowan said nothing. The approaching warriors passed, fanning out into separate directions.
Fletcher drew a shuddering breath and expelled it with difficulty. “You’ll have to sheathe your weapon,” he told Rowan. His eyes were wild, his voice was forced flat, and he trembled from the need to run to his comrades’ aid. “Either that, or give it to me.”
She looked at the sword in her hand, then looked up. “I don’t understand.” But he had stopped watching her; he was reading the relay, and she read its message mirrored on his face: that out on the veldt warriors were fighting and failing, and that enemies were working their
way inward, toward the heart of the tribe. “What are they saying?”
He kept his gaze on the signals. “Lady, please don’t ask me that.” He slipped into the form, and the deference, of an Inner Lander.
“Fletcherâ”
“I’m not supposed to tell you!”
She forced him around, violently. “Bel is out there somewhere!”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
A scout had found signs of strangers. Bel had gone out to talk to them. Now the tribe was under attack. “No,” Rowan said. “No, she didn’t bring them here.”
“I know. I believe you.” He could not meet her eyes, “But it doesn’t matter. Put your sword away.”
She did so. “If the enemy comes this far in,” she said stiffly, “I hope you’ll tell me in time to defend my own life.”
“If they come this far in, I’m supposed to kill you myself.”
They had been walking most of the morning, sharing observations, jokes, reminiscences. She stared up at him, appalled. “Would you actually do it?”
His pose shattered. “God, I don’t know!” he cried out. “Don’t ask me, Rowan, I don’t know!” And behind him the wavering ripples of redgrass tops suddenly evolved three straight lines of motion, approaching fast.
“Eight, six, and five by you!” Rowan shouted, and shoved past him, running toward the endpoint of the nearest line, drawing her weapon.
The line on the grass vanished.
She stopped. Shaking with urgency, she stood. She thought.
Wind from the north; if the enemy was moving, it was at the wind’s pace, in its direction. Angling now to the right.
She shifted, ran. There were sounds of pursuit behind: Fletcher, coming either to aid, or to carry out his duty.
Another line changed direction, doubling back toward her. A trap. They thought she would go for the visible target.
Fletcher called to her, cursing in the name of his strange god. There was a dip in the grass tops to her left: she spun, struck. The impact of her blade on bone sent a shock through her arm. The approaching second line arrived, and a figure burst from the redgrass, reeds chattering. She swept with her sword, high: a tanglewood club fell to the ground. The enemy dove for it. She struck down at his skull, sliced down his scalp, severed his neck.
She turned back to the first man. Her metal sword met metal and wood. She had wounded him before; he fought with his body angled away, his left side glittering red in the sunlight.
Nearby, Fletcher made a soundâa choked cry of battle. He was about to kill someone. She wondered if it was herself.
Her adversary fought with vicious speed, but clumsily. He gave her a dozen openings, recovering each time too quickly for her to use them.
Fletcher had not killed her yet. Someone else, then.
She disengaged, pivoted, took two steps, and struck again at her enemy’s wounded side. He took the blow without a sound as her sword cut deep into him. He writhed and made a desperate sweep at her own undefended left, then changed direction to meet a second blade: Fletcher’s. Sword stopped sword. He stood a moment so, with Fletcher’s blade against his blade, and Rowan’s inside his chest. Death overtook any further moves.
Fletcher turned away as the man fell, scanning the veldt for more action. Rowan pulled her sword from the corpse and did the same. Instinctively they halved the duty and found themselves back-to-back.
“At four by you, I’ve got three of ours against two of theirs, right by Sim’s tent. And one more approaching from eight.”
“I have five approaching at ten by me, some heavy engagement at twelve, too far to see clearly.”
“Anyone heading for that five?”
“No.”
“Let’s go.”
The enemy was making no effort at concealment; that time was past. Rowan did not know how to conceal herself like an Outskirter, did not know if Fletcher had that skill. They approached in the open. The two nearest adversaries first sped to flee, then wheeled about to engage.
Rowan’s man had a club he hefted high to swing down; she struck beneath it, two-handed, waist-level, left to right, with as much speed and force as she could muster.
He dodged back, she dodged aside; both blows missed. She swung up to the left, grazed his head. He brought the club up, a weak move that struck her right forearm. Her arms were thrown back, right hand free of her hilt. With her left she swung down on the side of his neck. Her enemy choked, spraying blood from mouth and wound, and collapsed.
Fletcher was fighting against a metal sword, with difficulty. His enemy was half his size, twice his speed. Fletcher dodged back, trying to use his longer reach and greater weight. His opponent escaped each blow nimbly, recovered ferociously. Rowan moved to assist, but found a new enemy; she downed him with a fast low stab to the abdomen, then took on the next man who rose behind him.
He was less quick than the others; Rowan entered into Bel’s drill. She slid her sword up his, twisted, pulled back, struck, slid, twisted. He lost his rhythm for the briefest moment when he saw what was happening to his weapon. She took the instant to gather force for one great blow that shattered his sword at the root. He stepped back in shock, staring at the hilt.
He was smaller than Rowan, wiry, his brown hair short as a woman’s. His clothing was a tattered fur motley, his legs bare. He looked up in helpless horror. She drove her sword into his blue eyes, and his face became a thing of blood and bone.
She turned toward the ringing sounds of Fletcher’s fight, found his enemy with his back toward her. She struck below one shoulder. Ribs broke; then she saw Fletcher’s point swing high, trailing an arc of blood as the man fell back, his stomach and chest opened to his throat.
In the lull, the redgrass roared like surf. Fletcher and Rowan exchanged one wild glance, went back-to-back beside the corpse.
She was facing the camp, he the veldt. “There’s something going on in camp, I can’t tell what. Nothing between here and there.” He did not reply. “Fletcher?” Silence. “Fletcher!” She turned to him.
He stood looking out. “Sweet Christ …”
A troop of figures, at least a dozen: a full war band approaching fast, with no other defenders between them and Rowan and Fletcher. And beyond, the rippling grass showed a complexity of contrary motion, lines too confused to be counted: a second wave moving below the grass tops, hard behind the first.
“We’ll have to fall back,” she said, then knew that there was no time. “We’ll have to stand.” They were two, alone. “Fletcher?” She looked up at him.
He had not moved. He stood with his body slack in shock, hilt held loose in his left hand, the point of his sword dropped to the ground, forgotten. His right hand gripped the Christer symbol on its thong, fingers white with strain. A dozen emotions crossed his face, each a separate variety of terror; then Rowan saw them all vanish, fall into a pit behind Fletcher’s eyes, and he stood expressionless, empty, blank.
“Fletcher!” His face was the same as when he thought of his walkabout, of Mai, of death. “Fletcher, not now!” She pulled at his arm. He resisted. She tried again, harder, and swung him around.
He looked at her with dead eyes, then looked at her again; Rowan saw him see her twice. He saw, and Rowan felt herself being seen: a woman alone under blue sky, standing on crushed redgrass, a corpse at her feet, blood on her clothing and her sword, the home of Fletcher’s people behind her, the enemies of Fletcher’s tribe approaching, now nearâ
And it was in that direction that he turned, suddenly, and if he had not released his cross it would have been flung into the redgrass by the wild swing of his arm as he threw his body forward. He ran ten long strides and was on the first enemy, spun with his sword double-handed at the end of his long reach, and the first of the attackers dropped like a tree, the second fell back spilling entrails, the third stood howling with a sword deep in his abdomenâ
Rowan hurried to join the fight.
Two men skirted Fletcher to rush to
ward camp. Rowan met them. The first raised a club to strike, and Rowan shattered his arm at the shoulder, continued across his throat, then abandoned him. The next man had a steel sword, and she used the force and moves that only her sword could take, slithering and pressing forward in seemingly impossible maneuvers, then with one singing flicker disarmed and slew him.
Across the veldt, from position seven, six warriors were approaching at a run; friend or foe, Rowan could not tell which.
She turned back in time to stop a club with her sword. She struck it again, sending black chips flying, dodged madly, took a step, turned, and severed her opponent’s backbone from behind.
She stopped one more who had come around behind Fletcher, stopped another trying the same, and found herself at Fletcher’s left side. He fought left-handed; she shifted to his right, met a wood sword, turned into her fightâ
And then she and Fletcher were once again back-to-back, this time in battle. But Fletcher seemed unaware of her; he fought with such flailing fury that once her sword met his as he dropped the point low behind his head before delivering an overhand blow.
Beyond the remnants of the first war band, the redgrass erupted with warriors: the second band had arrived. Rowan shouted something, some words to Fletcher, the contents of which she could never remember afterward.
The new fighters seemed all to have swords, seemed all to be shouting, seemed to enter the battle with something like gleeâ
â attacking the first war band.
Rowan returned to her opponent, and when she looked back again, half of the remaining opponents had been downed; when she looked back at her foe, he was dead, by the sword of a huge, red-haired man, a stranger.
Fletcher was still in action, against a small, muscular man who defended himself wildly, stepping back with each blow, disbelief in his eyes. “No!” he shouted. Fletcher ignored his cry, and one of the man’s comrades, a woman, made a sound of fury and started forward to assist.
“Fletcher, wait!” Rowan called.
One of the strangers cried, “Bel sent us!”
Fletcher fought on, oblivious. “Give us her names!” Rowan shouted. And it was the man on the other side of Fletcher’s sword who replied, desperately, “Bel, Margasdotter, Chanly!”
The Outskirter's Secret Page 24