A Woman Warrior Born

Valiena broke into a traveling song to the beat of Oletanan’s hooves. As she sang, Breea took a closer look at Pecu’s bundle. It was wrapped in cunningly folded wax-cloth and tied with its own ends. The pattern was familiar, but when had she seen its like? Careful to memorize the folding, she unwrapped it. Within were eight bundles each in their own wrapping, and a folded note.

  Written in a tight, fluid hand it began, "This I give you as I gave him every season from the first day he set boot on the hunter’s trace."

  Breea’s heart contracted. Was Pecu writing of Ambard? What did the ancient cook have to do with her love?

  "Among black tree shadows and in high rock sun ever has he told me his favorite is this packet which I have made for you. When you walk the traces of the outer world, let it sustain your soul as it gives mundane sustenance to your body."

  Rewrapping the packet with care, Breea tied it closed. So who was Pecu? How many others in Limtir knew of her relationship with Ambard? As they rode into Fall Rock Gap, she twisted in the saddle and stowed the bundle away as she did with the host of questions the note invoked. Picking up Valiena’s song, the group filled the canyon with their voices. The sun was warm on the other side, and Letet surged ahead. Breea looked down at her horse in consternation, and then grinned. Letet’s ears twisted back. Taking handfuls of mane, Breea rose in the stirrups. Letet’s nostrils dilated, and her muscles tensed.

  Breea hesitated, thinking of her friends behind her. Then to Letet’s ears, she whispered, "Yeaf!"

  Letet’s hooves scraped sparks. Down the roadway they flew, the clatter of their passage echoing from the cliff wall as it flowed past on the right. They cut hard around the first bend, and charged down the next length. Breea thrilled to Letet’s daring, each turn taken at the edge of ability. As they neared the bottom of the path through the boulder field, the road leveled, and Letet stretched free.

  Rock and then trees blurred on either side. Tilting around a turn, Breea glimpsed people scrambling to escape, horses shying away. Past in a flash of fear, she dared not look away from the road before her. Letet pushed yet harder. Every stride was like flight, her hooves barely seeming to touch the ground.

  In a swerve they passed into the Gamanthea-Dur Su, where a herd of brindled deer had paused crossing the road, heads turned her way. They went bounding away in multiple directions. Breea knew the herd by their stag, a giant animal who stood framed between a pair of Gamanthea-Dur, watching her passage with disapproval. Breea leaned and they took the road leading off to her home. They hurtled down the narrow track, tilting back and forth with the curves faster than they’d ever tried. Her log house loomed large, and Letet settled into a trot around the meadow surrounding the house.

  Aching, but feeling cleansed, Breea let herself be carried a few more times around, then dropped off Letet’s back and limped to the porch of her house. Sitting on the steps to catch her breath, she felt a connection evaporating—power and thrill, each turn met at full stride¬—but the feelings were not hers. They were Letet’s. A shiver of delight ran through Breea, and she watched her horse for a moment, then lay back and gazed at the clouds and patches of blue their slow movements revealed.

  The steps were hard and uncomfortable to her battle-bruised body. Taking a side door because the main was locked, she walked through the silent house to the gather-hall, stopping on its threshold. The last time she had been here had been a time of the unknown, and deep fear. Everything looked the same, yet some subtle and profound change had occurred.

  Visions began to surface: friends’ deaths, crossing blades with the beast. She busied herself with preparations, retrieving another quiver of arrows, a skinning knife, spare bowstrings, water bags, more clothing, her lodestone with its cup, a hair brush and comb, and a beautiful long-sleeved chainmail shirt of Ranan make.

  Packing her gear on the great hall table, she felt herself pulled to the spread of books and papers there. She pushed the pile around. Study seemed distant. The realization made her bite her lip. How could all that she had loved and striven for seem so pale and unimportant? Would Ambard change to her as well? He would not learn of her leaving for months, not until late fall when he and other huntsmen returned with gathered meat to help stock Limtir for the isolation of winter. Then he would vanish until he brought furs in the spring. She knew that he went north. Last midsummer she tracked him an entire day, but he’d known somehow, and caught her at it. So serious was his reaction that she had feared losing his love over it, and decided thereafter to suffer with the mystery rather than risk him.

  In frustrated loneliness, she finished packing and shoved open the front hall doors. Outside was bright with dappled sun. Letet came over and raised her head over the porch rail to nuzzle Breea’s hands.

  Taumea and Valiena would be entering the Su about now. She moved quickly to shutter the house. She did not know when she would return. That made her stop. Had it been only a few days since her run? An age of moons had passed within.

  Riding away, she turned in the saddle to watch her house disappear among the trees. Patterns of sunlight danced as warm winds moved the forest. Olive-backed sparrows hopped along the track in front of her, searching for food. The rapid chatter of an outraged squirrel erupted from the trees to the right, and the sparrows fluttered off to investigate, then joined in with sharp chirps.

  Gazing up through small trees in a clearing made by a fallen Gamanthea-Dur, Breea searched for a view of the cause for so much small animal excitement. She slid off Letet and stepped into the ferns beside the road. The birds seemed focused on the tops of trees growing beneath a towering Gamanthea-Dur where its lower branches reached out over the clearing. Something gave a plaintive, mewling cry.

  Below the lowest Gamanthea-Dur branch, a tiny forestcat kitten clung upside down to the bowed-over top of a fir tree. Birds flitted, scolding the pale-brown cat as it looked about and mewed again. The kitten’s grip slipped, and Breea moved in response, surging through the undergrowth, heedless of where she put her feet. She gained the top of a fallen tree and leapt, hands stretched before her.

  The soft form thumped into her grasp, and she looked for the first time where she was going—too late. Yanking the small animal to her chest, she tried to twist her shoulder into the Gamanthea-Dur before she slammed into it. Tumbling down the steep slope of the trunk, she managed to keep from crushing the kitten.

  Pain pounded to her heartbeat. As sight and direction returned, she found that she was on her back staring up the trunk of the tree, draped over a hard, round object, probably a root. Something struggled on her chest, and sharp pricks reminded her that what she held had claws. She let go and raised her head.

  The kitten tried to stand, only to fall against one of her breasts. It shook its head and blinked. Large green eyes with jet-black pupils regarded Breea with bemusement and curiosity. It mewed.

  Breea kept as still as possible. The kitten sniffed her, especially where she bled from the small wounds inflicted moments before.

  A ripple of motion caught Breea’s attention, and she found that forestcats had surrounded her. Two clung face down on the trunk directly above her, not ten feet away, while others were perched warily on logs and moss among the ferns. They sat so still and blended so well that if not looking directly at one it tended to disappear, and she realized that she could in no way judge their number. Only tufted ears seemed to move, twisting, listening to the forest. They varied in size, but most were as long, nose to tail, as Breea was tall, and were colored in the richest browns and earth tones she could imagine. Their eyes were like gems—pale yellow, emerald green, blue, solid black, and violet.

  She felt four points of pressure moving up her chest. The kitten walked up to Breea’s chin and sniffed, tickling with long whiskers. Breea’s head began to tremble with the effort to remain stationary, but she forgot her pain as a tiny, raspy tongue licked her chin and lower lip.

  "B’feu," said one of the cats on the trunk.

  The kitten looked up and jumped off Br
eea, pricking her skin with hind-paw claws. It climbed up the trunk, and met the adult by touching noses and mutual licking. Breea rolled over slowly, unable to contain a gasp and groan, and sat up. The second cat leapt to the ground near her.

  Eyes of strength and wisdom regarded Breea. Resisting a powerful urge to look away from that penetrating gaze, she stared back.

  "Meaeaekewebrewome," it said, and turned away.

  Something about the sounds the cat had made was familiar.

  "Breowic?" said Breea.

  The cat froze.

  Breea said slowly, careful of her pronunciation, "Prweean prhhho Breowic?"

  The cat recoiled as though she had tried to strike it, ears gone flat.

  What had she said? Quickly, Breea gave a blessing she had always liked.

  "Prrr waewow, prrr meerwow, uf pfn, brrr reeyaow, oweoofff pawuroo."

  As far as she knew it translated as, "Warm sun, warm food, soft sleep, good song, long life."

  The animal above said, "Yefaépreo roeeprhhhho breeoowghc preow br meh?"

  Breea tried to pull out the Breowic words she thought she recognized. Something about her speaking Breowic, and more, but she could not translate the cat’s throaty sounds into the words she knew.

  "Kaaacfthufeeeaowhah," said the animal, staring at her with a whiskers-forward intensity.

  The last word reminded Breea of feiowha, the Breowic word she understood as companion.

  Its ears twitched at something only it could hear. Breea was composing something else to say when the forestcat went up the tree and was gone; so were the others, though she hadn’t seen them go. She flinched as something fell into her lap. Looking down, she picked up a white-cap mushroom torn up by the root, with little marks in its surface. Tooth marks. Awed, she leaned against the tree.

  The walk back to Letet surprised her with its difficulty. How had she run this without looking? Glancing upward, she hoped for another glimpse of the cats, but if they were there she could not see them.

  Leaning on Letet for support, Breea tried to absorb the significance of the encounter. Clouded by adrenaline and pain, her mind struggled with the implications. Breea knew Breowic from her mother. It had been their private language. It was a language with no history, no known origins. A language her mother spoke without study.

  In the first years after the rediscovery of Limtir, it was found translated into three other tongues, each of which gave it a different treatment. Who knew if the ancient Limtir translations reflected the language of the cats? Breea felt certain that they did, which meant that either the cats had once had a place in Limtir, or had been studied by Limtir scholars. Pre-Limtir scholars. Legend Time scholars.

  The mystery of her mother’s origin, storms of ideas, the order people held in the world, weaving, and Lupazg coursed through her mind. Out of all, one thing was clear. It was the forestcats who had fed her after her battle with Lupazg.

  Letet nuzzled Breea. Overwrought, she hugged Letet’s neck, burying her face in Letet’s rough mane. Mounting was an exercise in quick agony, and the pace up the track slow, for Breea ached with each step Letet took, and needed time to put some order to her feelings. The mushroom she wrapped in a scarf.

  Taumea and Valiena met her at the valley road. Her friends sensed her mood and were silent as they rode the broad, winding track through the forest, crossing many thick-planked bridges over cheerful streams. What few people were on the road kept a wide distance. Breea craned her neck looking for sign of forestcats, but was disappointed. At midday they moved out of the forest onto the valley grasslands, where large fields of green grain covered the gentle hills. The air was warm and the smell of young grass was heady. A farmer’s house and outbuildings, solid wood with green sod roofs, stood clustered along the edge of the forest. A trail of smoke poured from the house chimney to disappear between the trunks of the Gamanthea-Dur.

  Downroad, the scents of smoke and offal came on the breeze—the smells of the valley village. From the grain hills they rode down onto a broad flat where the town lay across the confluence of the Wisdom’s Water and the milky, wild Icefroth.

  Even at a distance, they could see the town was bustling with activity. The road out of the village to the southeast looked like a slowly moving ant trail as it curved up into the grassy hills behind the town. That way led to Rana. Southwest, the track was clear; the way to Yash.

  A small pack of mangy dogs ran out to greet them, but few people noticed their passage into the village. Book hawkers called out their wares, but it seemed that no one was buying. Many print shops were closed. Others were grimly packing away their presses and stock on sturdy carts.

  Feeling vaguely as though all this fear and toil were her fault, Breea glanced at Valiena, hoping for something; comfort, perhaps. The plainswoman’s pale-brown eyes were taking in everything with a studied intentness. Breea looked away when she realized that Valiena was composing for her writings.

  There is no sense in hating that book, Breea thought. But I do.

  She urged Letet into a trot, and crossed Wisdom’s Water Bridge on the road to Yash. Across the valley, a gray-green darkness covered the flanks of the Crixal Mountains and flowed down onto the valley floor. It was the Gamanthea-Dur forest known as Nesua Oduuhn, the Lords of Quiet, where it was said no battle had ever been fought. Given the long and bloody history of Limtir Valley since its rediscovery, this was a significant claim.

  They made good time all morning, and the forest approached until the wall of green resolved into massive individual trees. Ranks of sentinels they seemed, but what did they guard? On her last visit here as a little girl, the trees had seemed like the ones on the slopes of Limtir Mountain, perhaps larger. Not now. As they rode into the forest, something calmed her, and pushed the flame within below conscious feeling. It settled her so completely that Letet stopped walking.

  Valiena and Taumea disappeared around a curve of the road. There was a movement in the essence so vast and ponderous that she could feel it only when her senses drifted. All about her was power, humbling in its immensity. There was a ripple up the track, and Taumea appeared around the bend, coming back to seek her. She rode up to him, giving him an awed smile. He understood it to mean that all was well, and let her set the pace.

  Images of the previous days swirled and eddied in her mind. For the first time since the attack, she could think of Lupazg in a measured way. Her fingers traced the wounds on her chest as she thought of the prophecy in her father’s book. "When a girl child is born and the Yasharn Priest is asked in his High Temple for a Calling for the child, and he gives the cry ‘A warrior is born!’ men will know that the first Bane has entered the world. All known will end." A shudder passed through her despite her calm.

  Passing through the forest, Breea reached out to touch bushes and tree branches, sensing their patterns. When she touched the trunk of a Gamanthea-Dur, her body spasmed as she became a conduit. Letet sprang forward, breaking Breea’s contact with the tree. Taumea and Valiena looked at each other, and urged their horses to follow. Breea held her aching arm in her lap, and avoided touching anything else for the rest of the day.

  They ate in the saddle, and by late afternoon were climbing out of the forest on a steep, winding road. The sun had disappeared behind the western peaks. Down the mountainside to the west the descending ridges were cloaked in Nesua Oduuhn forest. Away upvalley, Limtir Mountain thrust its massive peak into the cloud that circled it, a radiant yellow blaze in the evening sun. Limtir itself was not visible, but she knew exactly where it lay.

  "A lancet follows," said Taumea.

  Peering down the mountain, Breea found them. Limtir cavalry in two groups of eight, with four or five packhorses between them. Taumea didn’t comment further, nor did he string his bow, so Breea let it be.

  The road wound into a high grassy valley framed by sheer granite cliffs. At the head of the valley, half a league away, lamps burned at Dachidfal’s Wayhouse. A chill breeze blew past, and Breea pulled her cloak arou
nd her. She had never been here before, and elation mingled with a lack of surety.

  At first glance, the wayhouse had the look of being thrown together by a lazy giant, but as she drew near she saw that every granite slab and block was finely fitted. Riding up the valley, comparing the house to the cliffs, she had not grasped the scale of the building. Six host-women leaned against the main portals to push them open. Breea rode into a tall, well-lit chamber. Arched ribs of stone held up a roof of overlapping granite slabs. Between the ribs, fifty to a side, were wide stalls. The area smelled of hay and the sweet pungency of horse manure.

  A young girl dressed in simple woolens cut for warmth guided Letet into one of the stalls. The floor was covered thickly with fresh bracken. A person-sized stone portal led from the back of the stall. Breea dismounted, and the girl began removing Letet’s harness, talking all the while to the horse in a soft voice that Breea could not quite hear, though Letet flicked her ears toward the girl. Breea wondered if she would be strong enough to lift the saddle or bags, but saw strong, callused hands. The girl noticed Breea watching her, and with a shy gesture indicated that Breea was to go through the portal.

  It led to a hallway, lit by lamps of polished brass, that ran down the backs of the stalls. Breea met her friends, and they walked through a double-curtained entry into a broad, warm dining room. Yasharn tapestries decorated the walls, and overlapping plainsfolk rugs hid the stone floor. A long wood table dominated the center of the room, where people were taking seats for the evening meal.

  Sitting at the table were seven Mericslander warriors bantering with a group of host-women who shone as brilliantly as any of the six fireplaces around the room. The Mericslanders added compliments to brazen statements that made the women’s faces glow. Breea smiled at what they said. They complimented the women on their care of the horses, and made puns indicating their desire to be treated so well. It reminded her of Ambard’s teasing. The women returned with comments about what one must do with ticks and piles of manure. Host-women noticed Breea and her friends and rushed over to take their cloaks.

  The Mericslanders noticed as well. At the head of the table sat a man whose chair was draped in a wolf-hide cloak, the symbol of the Meric King’s emissary. The man to his right rose from the table, and all but the emissary rose with him. The man walked over. He wore one of the long broadswords favored by Meric nobles. A sword at the evening meal?

  He was very tall, head and shoulders above her, and handsome with wide-set eyes and a finely trimmed beard. His shoulders were broad and well muscled under his shirt. A heavy-weapon wielder’s muscles, Breea knew.

  "Scholar," he said after a quick glance at her Scholar necklace. "Would you honor us at this wayfeast?"

  Breea managed a short bow and walked to the table, heart pounding. This had to be the Meric embassy that SaKlu had banished from the library. Three Meric warriors picked up plates and cups, making places at the table head beside the emissary, who watched her with neutral eyes. The Mericslanders took seats only after Breea sat. All were armed.

  Host-women whispered among themselves before hurrying to their duties.

  Breea knew Limtir scholars were treated with respect in the outer world, but she sensed something else happening here. She felt a powerful curiosity about these men. When one of them found her watching, he either bowed his head or met her gaze evenly. They held themselves differently than she was used to; easy with their bodies, and easy with their eyes as well, looking at what they liked when they wished, whether it was a woman’s breasts, including her own, or a man entering the room. Everything they looked at seemed to be appraised in an instant, and was treated ever more according to that judgment. What did they see when they looked at her? Enough, apparently, to grant her prime of place at their table.

  The conversation at the table was light, mainly of the weather and details of trail conditions in the pass. There was a storm approaching, and there was some debate about whether it would mean rain or snow. The man who had invited her to table introduced himself as Ston Meric, and asked her polite questions of life in Limtir. No mention was made of Lupazg or SaKlu.

  She forced herself to stop watching them and eat her food, but soon she was noticing small things about how they ate. All used fork and knife, cutting their meat into small pieces and eating slowly. Courtly manners. They used the forks upside down, and chewed with their mouths shut, while keeping a subtle eye on everyone who moved in the hall. What were they watching for? There was something else about them. They had a confidence in them so strong that it scared her. It was arrogant, yet fit the men like their skins, and was nothing like the quiet, centered confidence of Limtir elite. She wished she could talk with Bay-ope. Taumea did not always have the patience to explain every question she had about the ways of warrior men.

  After the meal, the Mericslanders produced flutes and had a host-woman bring them house harps. The table was cleared, and a crowd of hosts and guests formed to listen to the emissary sing. Breea felt relaxed with food and wine in her belly and the fire behind her warming her back as the noble raised his voice in a ballad on the tragic reign of King Meric III.

  When he was done, a senior host-woman curtsied to the emissary, and bent to his ear. The Mericslanders went quiet, waiting. The emissary looked to Ston. Both rose and left the room.

  As Breea walked with her friends to their quarters for the night, she asked Taumea, "Why were the Mericslanders watching the doors?"

  "They are kingsmen, with the emissary and a kingson to guard."

  "Kingson? Oh, Ston Meric. I should have seen. Is he really King Meric’s son?"

  "Sixth in line to the throne."

  Taumea stopped beside the room that was his and Valiena’s, and speared Breea with a sardonic look. "They are Windbonding you."

  "They are what?"

  "Windbond. You should have studied Meric ways, not priests. First they eat, then ride, and finally they fight beside you. If you are judged worthy, you may be accepted as Windbound, the greatest sacrifice of which is to give your horse or life for another that they may live."

  "Why me?"

  "You fought the wolf, and you ride Letet."

  "Letet?"

  "What do the Meric Loremen sing through the winter? Ballad and ballad of Strohnan Blackmane. The horse is no fable. Strohnan is the greatest Meric steed since Neag, who was the mount of King Meric I. Strohnan is the eighth king’s own, and sire to Letet. When Ajalay gave Letet to you, she wrote your name in song across Mericsland. The Loremen had Fennash not to sing of you without your blessing, though they are likely the poets who shaped your verses."

  "My verses?"

  Taumea shook his head, and set off for the rooms.

  Valiena said, "Moonlit dreams, Breea."

  Breea pushed open the door to her chamber. The room was small and simple, with a high stone bed draped with sheepskin. The floor was covered with wool rugs of plainsfolk design. A wooden table with lamp and stool were the only other furnishings. It was warm with a small blaze burning in a hearth across from the bed.

  Quilt and blankets invited. Instead, she opened the Abitalen translation on the table. When she began to fall asleep, she took wood from a wall niche and set it on the coals of the fire, then began to undress. A rap on the door startled her. She laced up her blouse.

  "Enter."

  Taumea tugged the stone door open and closed it behind him. He sat on the bed. Breea waited to hear what he would say. Was he worried about the Mericslanders? Was he going to try to turn her back? It was minutes before he took a breath and began.

  "She speaks of a return to the Time of Legends, Urdjra, Lr’icuna, dream truths, and you, all in the same breath. A teller of tales does not need to be believed except during the telling. This I have always done."

  Breea kept silent. Taumea hadn’t confided in her like this for years.

  "She asks me how can I not believe in the face of what has been? She asks that I pray to a pale orb in the sky."

  Half of
Breea wondered at this man brooding on her bed, the rest of her wanted to help him, but she knew that she was the ultimate cause of his frustration. What could be said? For some reason, she thought of his mysterious exchange the day before with Bay-ope.

  He stood abruptly. "I should not have disturbed you."

  After he left, Breea tried to sleep but could not. Taumea’s speech occupied her thoughts. It was clear that he and Valiena had argued, and perhaps he was asking for help, but what could she say? Not even friendship was simple any longer.

 

  Chapter 5

  The Outer World