When Women Were Warriors
Book I: The Warrior’s Path
Chapter 8: Homecoming
It was Sparrow who told me my warrior had come home. She found me in the oak grove. Two months had passed since Maara left us, and most of our warriors had returned from the frontier. Soon only the winter weather would guard our borders. The gloomy day matched my mood. No one now expected Maara to return. The Lady had mentioned to me more than once that Vintel needed a companion. I hid, even from myself, how little hope I had of seeing my warrior again. When I heard Sparrow say, “She’s come back,” I felt as if the sun had come out from behind the clouds and brought the color back into the world.
Then I saw that Sparrow could hardly catch her breath, that she must have run all the way from Merin’s house. I thought she was just eager to bring me the good news. As soon as she could speak again, she said, “Come quickly, before they kill her.”
I left Sparrow, winded as she was, far behind. Even before I entered Merin’s house, I heard angry voices. Warriors filled the great hall. Some had drawn their swords, and for a moment I feared to see my warrior lying dead in their midst. Eramet stood facing them. Sword in hand, she blocked the narrow stairway that led upstairs. I pushed through the crowd.
“Where is she?” I shouted over the din.
“She’s with the Lady,” Eramet replied. She moved aside for me, but as I went past her, she caught my arm and said in a low voice close to my ear, “Tell the Lady I need her here.”
I ran on up the stairs and burst into the Lady’s chamber. Three faces turned toward me — Vintel’s, the Lady’s, and my warrior’s.
“Eramet needs you in the great hall,” I told the Lady.
The Lady turned to Vintel and said, “Stay with them,” before she left the room.
Maara’s sword was in Vintel’s hand. Her shield and armor lay beside her on the floor, along with the knife and hatchet she carried on her belt. As frightened as I was, I couldn’t help smiling at her. Her expression didn’t change. She looked defeated. She returned my gaze for a moment, then turned away, as if I meant nothing to her.
The Lady was gone no more than a minute or two. When she returned, she told Vintel to lock Maara in the armory.
“Why would we disarm her only to lock her in with the weaponry?” Vintel protested.
The Lady had little patience left, but she gave Vintel an explanation, although she owed no one an explanation for her actions.
“Where else should I keep her?” she said. “I want her here in this house. No other place is safe for her. The armory is as hard to break into as it is to break out of, and if anyone does break in, the woman will be able to defend herself.”
The armory was downstairs, between the kitchen and the great hall. The heavy door usually stood open, but it could be barred from either side, so that the armory could also serve either to confine someone or as a refuge of last resort. It was filled with wooden chests and wicker baskets containing weapons of all kinds — swords, hunting spears and battle spears, and bows, with arrows for small game and big game, and for war. With the door closed, it would be hot and airless and uncomfortably small. I would have wished for my warrior a better homecoming.
Vintel made a gesture to Maara to go ahead of her. When I started to follow them, the Lady touched my arm.
“Stay,” she said.
The Lady drew her chair up to the small fire burning on the hearth and sat down. She gazed into the flames and was quiet for so long that I thought she’d forgotten I was there.
I shuffled my feet a little, and she looked up.
“Sit down,” she said.
Hers was the only chair in the room, and I didn’t like to perch on the edge of her bed, so I sat down on the hearthstone.
“Maara has brought me some disturbing news,” the Lady said. “If it’s true, many may owe their lives to her. If it’s not, we may waste our warriors on a diversion while our enemies take what we must leave unguarded.”
I didn’t know if she expected a reply or if she was just thinking out loud, so I held my tongue, although I was bursting with questions.
“Maara won’t tell me why she failed to join Vintel,” the Lady said. “I believe I know the reason, but I would like to hear her confirm it. I would find it easier to trust the news she brings me if I knew the truth about that.” She turned in her chair and looked at me. “Eramet just told me that Maara was wounded last spring because none of our warriors would stand with her or leave their friends to help her.”
I could hardly believe my ears. When I understood her meaning, my anger loosened my tongue. “How could they be so cowardly!”
“Hush,” the Lady said. “We don’t yet know the truth of it. Eramet wasn’t with them, and I didn’t ask her how she knew, though I could guess.”
Vintel was one of the warriors who carried Maara home. Perhaps she told Eramet what had happened that day.
“If they wanted her dead, why didn’t they leave her to bleed to death?”
“It’s not that they wanted her to die,” the Lady said, “but it seems they saw no reason to risk themselves or their friends to help her. I won’t judge anyone until I know the whole truth, although I doubt that any of them will speak to me. Such matters are settled between warriors.”
I listened as calmly as I could. Later I would have to think over what she’d told me and try to find my own feelings about it. At that moment I had enough to do just to take everything in.
“If it’s true,” she said, “it’s no wonder that Maara didn’t join Vintel at the frontier. I don’t blame her for trying not to make the same mistake a second time.”
I realized then that, if Maara never intended to join Vintel’s band, she had lied to me, and I found the knowledge painful.
“Why didn’t she tell anyone what happened?” I said. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“If it’s true, she understood their reasons and accepted them. Otherwise she would have spoken to me or dealt with them herself.”
For the first time I understood how lonely Maara must have been in Merin’s house.
“Has she no friends here?” I spoke more to myself than to the Lady.
The Lady smiled at me. “Only you,” she said. “And possibly me.”
“Possibly?”
“I know you trust her, and I might trust her for my own life, but I dare not trust her for all the lives that depend on me. After I’ve had some time to think, I’ll speak with her again. I must be as sure as it’s possible to be that she is telling us the truth.”
“If I’m her only friend here,” I said, “then I should be the one to speak with her.”
“This is beyond your skill.”
“I know her better than anyone. I know how to talk to her. I know how to get her to talk to me. If she tells me the truth, I’ll know it, just as I would know a lie.”
“She has already lied to you at least once,” the Lady reminded me.
“I know.”
The Lady weighed my words, then shook her head. “You’re too young for this. I will talk to her. You can sit with us if you like, and if you notice something in her face or in her words — ”
“No!” I said. “I won’t be used against her anymore. If I’m her only friend, then I must be her friend and not use what I know of her against her.”
The Lady frowned, and I thought she would remind me to whom I owed my loyalty, but she said nothing. Her silence encouraged me to speak my mind.
“Everyone insists on telling me how young I am, as if that makes me no more aware of what’s going on than the dog lying under the table. I can’t help being young, but I have eyes and ears, and I can understand, if anyone would bother to tell me things, more than you give me credit for.”
I paused for a moment to catch my breath and to control my anger.
“There’s another reason why I must be the one to speak with her,” I said. “Maara won’t explain herself to you. If she were lying, she would have an explanation for everything, to convince you she’s telling you the truth. She would try to persuade you, and that would give her away.”
“If what she says is true, why would she not try to persuade me of it?”
“Because she will do no more than simply tell the truth.”
“So she will tell you the truth because you will believe her?”
“She will tell me the truth because she’s truthful.”
***
The Lady went downstairs with me. Outside the armory, Vintel stood guard. I made them both wait while I brought some cold meat and bread and a pitcher of ale.
When Vintel opened the armory door, I saw that Maara had no lamp. She had been lying on the floor in the dark, and when the light fell on her face, she sat up and shielded her eyes.
“I need a lamp,” I told Vintel.
“What if she sets the house on fire?”
“Then we’ll both burn with it,” I replied.
“Bring a lamp,” the Lady told Vintel.
Vintel brought a lamp and handed it to me. By the time I set it down in a niche inside the armory, Maara’s eyes had grown accustomed to the light. She started to get up, but the flat of Vintel’s sword on her shoulder stopped her.
“May I bring water to bathe her?” I asked the Lady.
She nodded.
“And some clean clothes for her?”
“Get whatever you need,” the Lady said.
She waited patiently until I returned with a pot of soap, some clean cloths, a bucket of warm water, and a change of clothing for Maara. I went inside the armory and set everything down.
“Tomorrow morning,” the Lady said, “I will call the council together, and we’ll hear what Maara has to say. In the meantime, I expect no more trouble.” She turned to Vintel. “I don’t think we need a guard posted, as long as there is someone to let Tamras out when she’s ready.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll stay with her.”
“As you like,” the Lady said.
She nodded to Vintel, who shut and barred the door.
***
Maara reached for the cold meat. I pushed her hand away.
“Not until I bathe you,” I said. “You smell like you fell into a bog.”
“I’m hungry,” she said, but she sat still.
I don’t know why I was so abrupt with her. As glad as I was to see her, I had been very frightened, and I was in a hurry to put the world back the way it used to be, so that it would make sense to me again. I untied the yoke of her shirt and pulled it off over her head. She winced, and I saw a dark bruise covering the ribs on her left side.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She shook her head, as if it didn’t matter, but after that I was more careful with her. I got her boots and trousers off and washed her as well as I could. She did little to help me. Her body hurt, and she was exhausted, but I felt something else in her that frightened me. I felt that she had abandoned herself, that she no longer cared what happened to her. I worried she might not recover her spirits before she had to face the council in the morning.
When she was as clean as I could make her, I dressed her, and then I let her eat. She offered some to me. I shook my head. She needed all of it.
There was just room enough on the floor of the armory for both of us to sit. While she ate I watched her, until I forgot my fear and my anger. My warrior had returned. I smiled at her.
“What?” she said.
“I’m glad you’re home.”
“Well,” she said, “you’re the only one.”
She finished the last of the bread and washed it down with ale.
“Are you too tired to talk?”
“About what?”
I started with the thing that bothered me the most. “You lied to me.”
Maara looked away.
“You never intended to join Vintel.”
“No,” she said.
“Will you tell me why?”
“No,” she said.
“Eramet told the Lady what happened last spring.”
“Eramet wasn’t there.”
Then she realized that she had confirmed Eramet’s story.
“You should have told me.”
At last she looked at me. “Why? What would you have done? Would you have told the Lady? Does a warrior need a little girl to run to the Lady with every wrong done to her?”
Her words stung me. “I would never have done anything you didn’t want.”
She looked away again. “It was between me and the others.”
“Not when you made everyone believe you came here to spy on us. When you didn’t join Vintel, they thought you’d gone back to your own people in the north, to tell them what you’d learned of us.”
She didn’t answer, and I thought she might have misunderstood me.
“Everyone but me,” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t abuse our hospitality.”
“Well,” she said, “you were right about that.”
“I wish you hadn’t lied to me.”
I wanted her to tell me she was sorry. Instead she said, “Did you believe I didn’t know you were the Lady’s watchdog?”
Although it was not an accusation, she took me so aback that I couldn’t think of what to say. I had done nothing that would shame me in her eyes. How could I explain to her that she was both right and wrong?
“I have been a very poor watchdog,” I told her.
She tried to smile. “You did make it much too easy for me to get away.”
“I believed you,” I said. “I trusted you. You told me you would join Vintel, and I never doubted that you would. That’s why I didn’t tell the Lady you were going to go alone to the frontier, although I should have.”
Maara still wouldn’t meet my eyes. I tried to make her understand.
“The Lady wanted to know more about you,” I said. “She asked me to repeat to her anything you might tell me about yourself. Didn’t you ever wonder why I never asked you where you came from or why you’d come to Merin’s house? I couldn’t break faith with the Lady by telling you what she asked of me, but I never broke faith with you.”
Maara leaned her head back against a crate and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry I got you into trouble.”
“I don’t care about being in trouble!” I spoke so sharply that she opened her eyes and looked at me in surprise. “I care that you took advantage of my trust in you. I care that you had so little trust in me. What the Lady asked of me, I couldn’t do. She asked it of me again tonight, and I refused her.”
“I trusted you,” she said.
“Then tell me why you lied to me.”
“If I had not, my escape would have been your fault.”
“The Lady blamed me anyway.”
“Of course she did, but she never questioned your loyalty, did she?”
“No.”
“If you had known that I was going to the frontier alone and that I had no intention of joining the Lady’s warriors there, and if you had kept that knowledge from her until it was too late, what would that have led her to believe?”
She was right. The Lady had thought me too trusting to see through my warrior’s words. She’d scolded me, but she had understood, and she had forgiven me at once. If Maara had told me what she intended, I would have had no choice but to break faith with one or the other of them.
There was something more. I felt it hang unspoken in the air. Before I had time to think about it, Maara spoke again.
“Why are you here? Did the Lady send you to question me?”
“No,” I said. “She intended to talk with you herself. I convinced her to let me talk to you instead.”
“Why?”
“It appears that I’m your only friend here.”
She gave a little shrug. She knew that without my saying so.
“Tomorrow the council will hear what you have to say. I know you as no one else here knows you. I trust you, and whatever you tell me, I will believe it, and I will speak on your behalf before the council.”
“It would be better for you if you were not my friend.”
“It’s too late for that,” I told her.
That made her smile a little. Then she took a deep breath, and her smile faded. “All I ask is that you convince your people that the news I bring them is true, and that if they disregard it, they will find they’ve made a costly mistake.”
“The Lady didn’t tell me. What news do you bring?”
“Do you remember the ravine?”
I nodded. I remembered the place well. A day’s walk south of Merin’s house, the valley narrowed where a range of hills reached almost to the river. A stream had carved a deep ravine through those hills, and on the hottest summer days, Maara and I had scrambled down the steep sides of the ravine, to find relief from the heat in the cool air that rose from the water.
“What lies south of the ravine?” she asked me.
“Farms,” I said. “The orchards. Granaries.”
She knew that as well as I did.
“If you wished to keep the warriors here from going into that country, where would you try to stop them?”
“Just there,” I said, “at the place where the stream flows out of the hills. It wouldn’t take many warriors to hold the strip of land between the hills and the river, and if anyone tried to cross the ravine itself, it would be so difficult a climb that a handful of people could turn them back.”
Maara nodded. “When the first snow falls, warriors will cross the river there. They will hold that narrow strip of land and take as much of the land to the south of it as they can. The granaries will supply them through the winter. In the spring, there will be a well-fed army to the south, and more warriors will come out of the northern mountains.”
Cold fear crept into my heart. “What will happen then?”
“I hope none of it will happen. The Lady must act soon to prevent it.”
That explained what the Lady had said to me. If this news was true, we could send our warriors south to the ravine, to keep anyone who crossed the river there from gaining a foothold, but if the river crossing was a diversion, raiding parties from the north would find us vulnerable.
Then I remembered what had happened to Maerel.
“Aren’t they afraid of the danger of a river crossing?” I asked.
“Desperate people lose their fear.”
“How do you know so much about their plans?”
“I spent some time among the northern tribes.”
Now I thought I understood where Maara had been all this time.
“You were taken prisoner,” I said.
“No.”
I struggled for a moment with the only other explanation. “Did you go among them as a spy?” I couldn’t hide my disappointment in her. It was both honorable and courageous to go as a scout into the country of one’s enemies, but to turn a false face to them and walk among them as one of their own was a shameful thing to do.
“No,” she said. “I did not.”
I waited. She said nothing. She pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her forehead against them, so that I couldn’t see her face.
“I don’t understand,” I said. The skin on the back of my neck prickled with the fear of what she was about to tell me.
After a little while, she raised her head. Still she didn’t look at me.
“Your people were wrong about me,” she said. “I didn’t return to my own people in the north. I have no people there. I have no people anywhere. In any case, I would never have betrayed the Lady’s kindness. Nor did I intend to spy on the northern tribes. I learned of what they planned to do by chance. Then I had no choice. I couldn’t let their plan succeed.”
As I listened to her, strange thoughts wandered through my head. While the surface of my mind heard and understood her, a deeper part played idly with the thought that on this one night she may have spoken to me more words than I had ever heard her speak at once in the whole time I’d known her. Then I noticed how careful with her words she was, and while it seemed that she was saying a great deal, there was much she was leaving out. Then I understood.
“You weren’t coming back here, were you?”
“No.”
That one word took the breath out of my body. I couldn’t speak. I could only sit and look at her. At that moment she was more a stranger to me than someone I had never met. I was the only one who had believed she was coming home, and I was wrong. I could not comprehend it.
I stood up. I had to get away from her, but there was nowhere to go in that tiny room. If I beat my fists against the door, there was no one to hear me and let me out. Although I didn’t cry, I wanted to. I wanted tears to dissolve the hot pain in my chest. I wanted time to flow backwards until those words were unsaid.
“There was no place for me here,” she said. “No one wanted me here.”
“I did.”
I laid my forehead against the door. I was trapped in that room with her, and all I wanted was to get out of it. I heard her stand up behind me.
“You don’t understand,” she said.
I believed I understood her very well. From the beginning she had kept me at a distance. If she never intended to stay in Merin’s house, it was no wonder she hadn’t wanted a companion. I could only have been in her way.
She touched my shoulder, and suddenly I was angry. I whirled around and struck her arm away with my open hand. She stared at me, surprised, and rubbed her wrist where I had struck her.
She was standing very close to me. There was hardly room for her to move away, but I didn’t think of that. I reached out both my hands to push her away. She caught my wrists, and I struggled to free myself. I broke one hand free and struck her face. She caught my arm again, and this time she drew me to her and wrapped her arms around my body, pinning my arms against my sides. I struggled in her arms. Though I tried with all my strength to free myself, she held me fast.
“Stop,” she said.
I stopped. She loosened her grip, but she held on to me for a few moments more, until she felt my anger leave me. Then she let me go.
“Who is this wolf cub?” she said. “Why is she so angry?”
She was trying to make things easier between us. I refused to hear her.
“You never wanted a companion. I don’t know why I believed you’d changed your mind.”
When I started to turn away, she took me by the shoulders and gave me a little shake.
“Listen to me,” she said. “If I had stayed, I would have kept you from having what you wanted.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Aren’t you already the companion of another warrior?”
“Of course not.”
“Has no one asked for you?”
“Vintel has asked for me.”
“Vintel is worthy of you,” she said. “Vintel will make a warrior of you.”
“She hasn’t asked me to be her apprentice.”
“She will.”
“Would you ask me?”
“No.”
The tears that wouldn’t come when I wanted them now spilled down my face. Maara let go of me and sat down wearily on one of the crates.
“Who made you my companion?” she said.
“The Lady did.”
“Yes, because she needed you to keep an eye on me, but she would never have made you my apprentice. Even if she were willing to bind you to a stranger, the ties of loyalty between warrior and apprentice are so strong that she couldn’t have relied on you.”
“I couldn’t have been more loyal to you if I had been your apprentice.”
“I know that,” she said. “The Lady didn’t understand your heart. By now I think she realizes her mistake.”
The lamp must have been flickering for some time, although neither of us had noticed it. It sputtered and went out. I fumbled for it in the dark and found it empty.
“There’s no oil left,” I said.
“I can talk in the dark.”
“What else is there to talk about?”
She didn’t answer.
“Sleep now,” I said. “There will be time enough to talk tomorrow.”
Though I wasn’t certain that was true, I could think of nothing more to say. I set the lamp down and felt my way back to her until I touched her arm. She put her hand over mine. I drew my hand away.
We lay down together on the floor between the crates. We were careful not to touch each other. She was so tired that she fell asleep as soon as she lay down, but I couldn’t make my thoughts be still.
The most important thing was what would happen in the morning when we went before the council. I believed what she had told me about the intentions of the northern tribes. She had been safely away from Merin’s house, yet she had risked her life by coming back to warn us. I didn’t want to believe what she had said about the Lady. Perhaps it was true that the Lady would have made me an apprentice if she hadn’t needed me to be her spy. She would certainly have made me Vintel’s companion, and if Vintel were to ask for me as an apprentice, I doubted the Lady would withhold her consent.
Too painful to think about was the knowledge that my warrior had abandoned me. I understood her loneliness. I had been lonely too in Merin’s house. I still believed that, given time, the others would have come to know her and to value her as I did. And it hurt to know that my friendship had not been enough.
Maara may have thought that what she’d done was best for both of us, but I could not agree. It was not the first time someone had done something for my own good that broke my heart.
Copyright © Catherine M. Wilson
