When Women Were Warriors

Book I: The Warrior’s Path

Chapter 20: Secrets

While the good weather lasted, Maara and I went out into the countryside almost every day. She showed me how to make snares from twisted strands of the inner bark of a certain bramble and how to set them out on a rabbit run. We caught a number of rabbits that way, and from the skins she made me a pair of leggings that covered my legs from the ankle to above the knee. I heard a few unkind remarks about how odd they looked, but I didn’t mind. I could walk all day through the snow, and my legs stayed dry and warm.

Once, when we went to check one of our snares, we heard a rabbit scream in terror. A fox had discovered the rabbit helpless in the trap and was too preoccupied with it to notice our approach.

Without taking her eyes from the fox, Maara knelt down and felt the earth beside her, until her fingers found a stone. With a sidearm throw I’d never seen before, she sent the stone at the fox’s head. The fox fell, stunned, and she ran over to it and slit its throat.

She skinned the fox and dressed its body as if it were a rabbit. Then she made a fire and cooked it and gave me some to eat. The meat was tough and stringy, with a strong, bitter taste. I didn’t like it, but I believed she was testing me, and I forced myself to eat more than I wanted of it.

She scowled at me.

“If that had been the rabbit,” she said, “you would have eaten twice as much.”

“I like rabbit,” I said.

“Food is the distance you can travel in a day, and the cold you can withstand at night.”

Reluctantly I reached out my hand for more.

***

Winter was coming to an end. As the days grew longer, our walks took us farther and farther from home.

Maara saw it first, a dark, lumpy thing lying in a snowbank. At first I thought it might be one of our cattle, winter-killed, but when we drew near, I saw that it was the body of a man, clad in animal skins, lying face down in the snow.

Maara turned him over. The sight sickened me. Animals had gnawed his face and hands. I thought that was why his hand was missing, until I saw the remnants of the bandage I had helped the healer to apply.

“Oh,” I said. “He died.”

“No,” said Maara. “Someone killed him.”

The front of his leather shirt was stained a rusty brown. She pulled it up and showed me the wound under his heart, just a small cut where the blade went in, hardly enough, you would think, to kill a person.

“Why did they kill him?” I asked her.

My voice came out a whisper, although I hadn’t intended it to.

She didn’t answer right away. She was searching through his clothing. In the pocket of his tunic she found a pouch that contained a set of firestones, some flint arrowheads, and a little carved statue of the Mother. Another pocket held a heel of bread.

“Was it because he was hurt?” I asked. “Because he couldn’t keep up?”

“His own people didn’t kill him.”

Then I remembered the Lady asking Vintel if she would give up her right to take blood for the blood of Eramet. In my mind’s eye I saw Vintel’s face as she denied the bond between them.

Maara continued her examination. From beneath his body she drew out a long, thin object wrapped in leather. The wrappings fell away to reveal a piece of dark wood, intricately carved and highly polished. It was a bow, only a little over half my height, while the bows I’d seen before were as tall as I or taller. It might have been a child’s bow except that it was much too heavy for a child. It was broad above and below the grip, tapering at the ends, and made of layers of wood and horn, all glued together. It had no bowstring but seemed none the worse for having spent the winter in a snowbank.

Maara smiled. “Look,” she said. “Someone has left a gift for you.”

She handed me the bow. Then she put the man’s pouch back into his tunic and turned him over, so that he lay as we had found him.

All I could think of was that I held the bow that had killed Eramet. I handed it back to Maara.

“I don’t want it,” I said.

She frowned at me, but she didn’t ask me why. She took the bow and wrapped it carefully in its leather cover. Then we started for home.

We weren’t in the habit of talking on the trail. Maara walked ahead of me, because she was armed and I was not. When we were within a few miles of home, she stopped and made a fire. We had found a rabbit in one of our snares early that morning. She spitted the meat and set it over the fire. Then she sat back on her heels and looked at me.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said.

“Vintel killed that man.”

“Yes, I believe she did.”

“Should we tell someone?”

“Is there someone you want to tell?”

I thought about it. “We ought to tell the Lady.”

“Why?”

“Because she sent those men home under safe conduct.”

Maara nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “The Lady should know.” She turned the meat on the spit. “What about Sparrow?”

“Do you think I should tell Sparrow?”

“I want to know if you think you should tell her.”

“No,” I said.

Maara looked surprised.

“Sparrow owes her loyalty to Vintel,” I said. “If I told her what we found, it would put her in a difficult position. She’d have to tell Vintel about it, and then Vintel would know that we know what she did.”

“Why would Sparrow tell her?”

“If someone told me something like that about you and I kept it to myself, wouldn’t that be disloyal?”

She nodded. “It would, but it might be something you should know. What if the person who told you had only your well-being in mind?”

Maara understood my dilemma.

“I’ve already made that decision once,” I said. “I never told Sparrow what Vintel did to you. Sparrow had no other choice but to bind herself to Vintel. I couldn’t tell her something that would cause her to think ill of her warrior.”

Maara thought that over for a minute.

“That was well done,” she said.

Her praise surprised me. Before I could think of a reply, she said, “It’s possible that Vintel told Sparrow she killed that man.”

“Why would she tell anyone?”

“Eramet belonged to Sparrow too.”

“Sparrow didn’t want him dead. She told me so.”

“Would she have said that to Vintel?”

Probably not. I shook my head.

“Do you think that what Vintel did was wrong?” Maara asked me.

“Of course,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“Vintel took what she believed she had a right to.”

“She should have claimed her right before the Lady and the council.”

Maara gazed into the fire. “Among my people no one, not even a council of the elders, would ask someone to give up her right to take blood for blood.”

“Why not?”

“Because grief demands it.”

She took a piece of meat from the spit and handed it to me. The memory of the dead man’s body had stayed with me all afternoon and I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I accepted what she gave me.

“Would you have done what Vintel did?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

It was not the answer I expected. I waited for her to explain. Instead she began to eat. She motioned to me to do the same, and while we ate, she watched me, as if she could see my thoughts. When we had finished our meal, she said, “Has anyone ever taken someone from you?”

I shook my head. I was about to ask her the same thing when I remembered that she had lost her family, her entire clan when she was just a child. I wondered if she remembered them, if she remembered losing them.

“Will you tell me how you lost your family?”

She shrugged.

“Don’t you remember?”

Her eyes searched for something far away, as she looked back through time.

“Running feet,” she said.

“Running feet?”

“And the noise. The outcry and the crackle of fire. I was choking on the smoke. When I ran outdoors, I saw torches lying on the thatch. People were running all around me. Someone ran into me and knocked me down. All I could see was running feet.” Her eyes came back to my face. “People were shouting, calling to their families, to their children. I listened for my mother’s voice but never heard it. A man, a stranger, grabbed me by the hair and put me over his shoulder. I bit him, and he hit me.”

I waited, but she said no more.

“What else?” I asked.

“That’s all.”

“What happened to you? What did the man do with you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Who took care of you?”

“No one took care of me,” she said. “I learned to take care of myself.”

“But you couldn’t have survived without other people.”

“There were other people.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I lived in a village,” she said. “Maybe several different villages. I don’t know. I was too young to be useful to anyone. Maybe the man who took me gave me to his wife. Maybe she had no children. Maybe I was not the child she wanted.”

I heard the impatience in her voice, but I wanted to hear it all. I had never before dared to ask her about her past. It was painful for her to talk about, and no wonder. I didn’t know if I would ever have the courage to ask again.

“What happened to your family?” I asked her.

“A long time afterwards, someone told me they’d killed everyone but me. I don’t know if it was true.”

“When you speak about your people, who are you talking about?”

“My people?”

“You said a little while ago that among your people, no one would interfere in a blood debt.”

“When I was old enough to work, I was sold — or given — to a household much like this one. That’s where I became a warrior.”

I opened my mouth to ask her where they were and why she’d left them, but she tossed a few handfuls of snow onto the fire and stood up.

“It’s almost dark,” she said. “We should go.”

***

That evening after supper Maara took me with her to the Lady’s chamber to make her report. She told the Lady only that we had found the body of the prisoner who lost his hand and that he had died, not of his injury, but of a knife wound in his chest.

The Lady wasn’t happy with our news.

“Where did you find him?” she asked.

“Well within our northern boundary,” Maara replied.

“So he was killed before our warriors left them?”

“I would say so.”

“You know these northerners,” the Lady said. “Does it seem likely to you that his own people killed him?”

Maara shook her head.

“Then it was one of ours.” Maara said nothing, but the Lady didn’t expect an answer. “I imagine you have drawn your own conclusions.”

“We haven’t come to you to make an accusation,” Maara said. “Tamras thought you should know that someone had dishonored your promise.”

The Lady glanced at me and smiled. Then she turned back to Maara. “Who else knows of this?”

“No one else.”

“Good,” she said. “I think this news is best kept between the three of us.”

Maara nodded and turned to leave. I started to follow her, but the Lady called me back, and Maara left me there.

The Lady looked me up and down.

“You look well,” she said.

“I am very well.”

“If a little oddly dressed.”

I had forgotten the leggings. Now I wished I had taken them off before we went to see the Lady. For the first time they embarrassed me.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’m sure they’re very practical.”

I nodded.

“Well,” she said. “Is she what you expected?”

The question made no sense to me. Maara was exactly what I’d expected. She was the woman I had always known her to be.

“Her ways must seem a little strange to you,” the Lady said, and glanced down at my legs. “They’re certainly a little strange to me.”

There was something in her tone I didn’t like, as if she was waiting for me to find some fault with my warrior. I remembered Gnith’s words. Make sure of what you want, and when you get it, don’t complain. Even if I’d had something to complain of, I would never have given the Lady the satisfaction.

“I’m used to her ways,” I said.

The Lady put her hand on my shoulder. “Just don’t forget the ways of your own people.”

“I won’t.”

“Let me give you a word of advice then,” she said. “Don’t let your warrior keep you to herself. You need to find friends here. The friendships you make now will last you all your life, and each one will be a gift to your family.”

“I have friends here.”

“If you mean Sparrow, you have misunderstood me. You need friends whose families you can count on. Your mother is depending on you.”

I knew what she meant. My mother had made many friends in Merin’s house. They never failed to come to us when we needed help, and the Lady Merin herself was always the first among them.

“I understand,” I said.

“Good.” She slipped her arm around my shoulders and drew me close to her. “You did well today.”

I forgot that I had been annoyed with her for speaking as she did about Maara. My heart was pleased by both her praise and her affection.

“You gave up a powerful ally when you refused Vintel. You don’t need to make an enemy of her. Do you understand what I mean?”

I nodded. Of course the Lady didn’t know that Vintel was my enemy already. Even so, there was no point in making matters any worse.

“Go on back to Maara then,” she said, “and tell her what we’ve talked about.”

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