Liar's Oath

  Chapter Four

  Raheli leaned against the barton wall, arms folded, watching the dancers through the open grange door. Out of courtesy for her, to spare her the long walk to the traditional sheepfold, they had brought the musicians here… they were dancing here… and she could do nothing but watch. She knew the music, the same as she’d heard all her life, and every step the dancers danced. She could remember, as if it had been yesterday, the night when Parin’s hand on her arm changed her from girl to woman. When the dance had changed from entertainment to courtship, and they had begun the dance of life that ended with his death.

  She tried not to think of it; she had pushed it aside, so many times, from the moment the mageborn lords had broken his head. She would not let herself brood on it; it did no good. But the old songs ran into her heart like knives; for an instant she almost thought she felt the flutter of that life she had never actually borne. Her child, and his. The face that had come to her in dreams, as her mother had said her children’s faces had come. She could smell the very scent of him, feel the warm skin of his chest against her cheek.

  The dancers shouted, ending one dance, and a short silence fell. In the torchlight, the dancers’ faces wavered, bright light and black shadow, as strange for a moment as ghosts. Raheli had the feeling for a moment that Parin and the child both were in there, somewhere, waiting for her. She had pushed herself off the wall before she realized what she was thinking. Her movement had caught someone’s eye; before she could return to her place, she saw people watching her. She would have to go in, and greet them. She tried to smile, and walked forward.

  “Rahi! The Marshal’s back!” yelled some of the younger yeomen. A way opened for her. They had been dancing a long time; the grange smelled of sweat and onions and the torches and candles, more like a cottage during a feast than a grange. “Now we can dance the Ring Rising.”

  They meant it as an honor. They could not know she had danced the Ring Rising with Parin, that first time. Rahi blinked away scalding tears, put off her old grief, and accepted the role they demanded of her. The musicians finished their mugs of ale, and picked up the instruments again.

  Ring Rising had been, Gird told her once, older than any other dance. Something about it had to do with the old Stone Circle

  brotherhood, that Gird had turned into the Fellowship, in his own way. But long before, so the oldest tales went, the dance had raised stones, rings of stones, on hill after hill, until the mageborn came and struck them down with their new magic.

  Hand in hand with her senior yeoman-marshal, Belthis, Rahi began the dance to the beat of the finger-drums. Couple after couple fell in behind them. It felt strange to dance this indoors; the walls seemed to lean inward, pressing on them. What if it did move stones? Rahi concentrated on the intricate steps, feeling her way back into the rhythms. Heel, toe, side, back, skip forward, stamp. A step, a double-stamp. Now a double line of couples, two concentric rings, then a swirl that twisted them to interlocking rings, dancing in and out of each other’s patterns. Soon all there had joined in, children and elderly as well as the young adults. Rahi found herself moving through four interlocked rings, touching hands with one partner after another for a quarter-turn, then swinging to find another.

  It was in the midst of the dance, with the grange full to bursting of music and dancers, that she came face to face with her dream, the child she would have borne. Dark hair, dark eyes, Parin’s smile, soft fingers, light-footed and lithe. Her breath caught in her throat, but they had danced the pattern and separated again before she could get a word out. Tears burned in her eyes; she felt them on her cheeks, on the scar… and someone she could not see for tears put an arm around her shoulders, making sure she did not falter in the dance, until her breath came easily again.

  It was not fair. It had never been fair. She rejected bitterness as instantly as she would have fear. Fairness had nothing to do with it, and everything, and was all Gird had wanted, and more than she would ever have. From bootheel to the top of her head, she felt the beat of that ancient dance, and from hand to hand the warmth and love of her people, and in the middle where the cadence and warmth met, she could feel her heart beating, expanding and contracting, as if it had grown larger than her chest.

  Around her the faces glowed, all the children her children, all the men and women her brothers and sisters, her aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers. Her own scars bound her to them, to all those maimed or sickened by life’s disasters. Her people, with their ancient link to land and deeper magic than the mageborn would ever know… and it had not been fair, but she would make it fair. Light and dark, true and false, as simple as the realities they had all endured: hungry and not hungry, cold and not cold, pregnant and not pregnant. She felt herself rising above them, lifted on their affection and trust like a leaf on a summer wind, like the stones of the great rings in which peace and plenty dwelt. Here was the child she had lost, and the love she had lost, and here she would serve.

  When the music stopped, she did not know it; she came to herself slowly, realizing silence and space around her. The torches had burned low, but gave a light unusually steady. Then, as she drew a long breath, the murmurs began. The senior yeoman-marshal of the grange bowed to her. “Marshal—it was our honor.”

  “My pleasure,” she replied, hardly thinking. She felt different, but could not yet define the difference; she would have to think about it later. She glanced around. They were all watching her, most smiling, as if she were the favorite grandchild at a family gathering. Once, I was, she thought, and felt the scar on her face stretching to her grin. Now they moved closer, touching her arm, her shoulder; her heart lifted, suddenly exultant. She could have hugged them all, but had no need—she could tell by their expressions that they felt what she meant, just as she felt what they meant. Once, and again, she had a place, the place she had thought lost forever.

  The next morning, she set out for Littlemarsh barton with a lighter heart than she’d had for years. She felt in place, comfortable; she thought of Gird suddenly with a warmth that surprised her. Could he have felt estranged, in these past years? She thought of him once more as a father, as the father he had been to her. Not perfect, not with his temper and his occasional bouts of drunken depression, but a man who loved his children even more than his beloved cows. For the first time in years, she let herself think of her mother: her face came to memory only dimly, but her words, her movements, the very smell of the bread she made and feel of her strong arms were as clear as if she’d died the day before. That was what she’d hoped to be—another woman like her mother—but time and chance had stolen that from her, as the lords’ cruelty had stolen her mother’s life, robbing her of peaceful old age.

  Yet this morning, bitterness could not swamp the better memories. Mali had laughed a lot; even her scoldings had held warmth and good humor in their core. They had been, within the limitations of hunger and cold and fear, a family drenched in love. From that love, Gird had found the strength to hold and lead an army; from that love she herself had found the strength to come back from an easy death, lead others in battle, and care for them after. For all that had gone wrong, all the wickedness loosed on innocents that she had seen, love and caring had not abandoned the world— or her.

  “Alyanya’s blessing,” she murmured, feeling the tears run over her face, knowing they were healing something. She was not cut off, alone, alienated from her people, a useless barren woman who could only hope for death. She had a family: all of them. She had given her blood, though not in childbirth, and this day she knew that gift had been accepted, by the gods and by her people.

  I will go to Gird, she thought, half in prayer and half in promise. I will tell him he has a daughter again, and not just another Marshal. In her mind’s eye, she saw him grin at her; she saw his arms open; she felt the welcoming hug she had told herself she would never seek again.

  Raheli dismounted stiffly. After six days in the saddle, she felt every one of her old wounds, an
d twice her age. She led her brown gelding into the stable, shaking her head at the junior yeoman who would have helped her. Taking care of her own mount came naturally to a farm girl. She stripped off the saddle and rubbed the sweat marks with a twist of straw. The junior yeoman had brought a bucket of water and scoop of grain; when her horse was dry, she put feed and water in the stall and heaved the saddle to her hip, closing the stall door behind her. Gird’s gray horse, in the next stall, put its head out and looked at her.

  “You,” she said, with emphasis. The gray flipped its head up and down. Cart horse, she thought. Da should know better than that. She would never forget how it had shone silver-white in the sun at Greenfields. Here, in the dim stable, it looked gray enough, but she knew its coat would shine in the sun. It took her sleeve in its lips, carefully, its eyes almost luminous. She rubbed its forehead, scratched behind its ears, and it opened its mouth in a foolish yawn. “You don’t fool me,” she told it, and it shook its head. “Right.” Gird had loved cows, from her earliest memory, as much or more than people; she wondered that the gods had sent him a horse and not a magical cow. A snort from the gray horse. “I know—I’m not supposed to know the gods sent you.” She herself had discovered an affinity with horses, and the gray had responded much as others did, with its differences in addition.

  Out of the stable, across the inner courtyard. In her Marshal’s blue, with the saddlebags that proclaimed her a visitor from some outlying grange, she found a way opened for her in the crowds (they seemed like crowds) that thronged the court and the passages of the old palace. The two guards at the outer door had nodded to her, not questioning her right to enter. Up the stairs, along the corridor, to the office where Luap—she had come to calling him that after Gird did—kept accounts and made the master copies of Gird’s legal decrees. She looked in—empty, but for the sick lad she’d heard about, asleep again. Gird’s office, near the end of the corridor, was empty too. She frowned. Usually this time of day one or both of them were at work here. She left her saddlebags on his desk, and went down to the kitchen.

  “Rahi!” One of the cooks on duty recognized her at once. “When did you get in? How long can you stay?”

  “Just now,” she said, pouring herself a mug of water. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be here yet—where’s Gird?”

  A sudden silence; eyes shifted away from her. She felt her heart quicken even before the first woman said anything. “Oh—he’s not feeling too well today. Nothing serious—”

  He’d gotten drunk again. She was sure of it. She had come here to make peace with him, to restore their family, and he had gone off and gotten drunk. Rage blurred her vision, and she fought it down. She would not ask these people; it would embarrass them. She made herself smile. “Well—if he’s not up to work, perhaps I could find something to eat?”

  “Of course.” In moments, a bowl of soup and a loaf were before her. “I don’t know if you remember me… ?” The woman looked to be her own age, or a little older, not so tall and plumper. Rahi tried to think, but nothing came back to her. “Arya, in the third cohort of Sim’s…” the woman prompted.

  Yes. Arya had been thinner—they all had—but strong and eager, one who never argued about camp chores, either. “I do now,” Rahi said, pulling off a hunk of the warm bread. “You taught us all a song about the frog in the spring, I remember.” She hummed a line, and Arya grinned.

  “You look like your da when you smile,” she said. “But dark hair… ”

  “My mother,” said Rahi, around the bread, relaxing. Arya had come from a vill much like her own; the talk about which parent a child resembled was as comforting as old tools. Next the talk would turn to their mothers’ parrions.

  “Since you’re here…” Arya said, then paused, floury hands planted firmly on the table. Rahi swallowed the bread in her mouth and waited. Arya looked away, but didn’t move, and finally came out with it. “There’s some of the Marshals saying that now the war’s over, there’s no need for women to be taken into the bartons. There’s some of them saying the Code’s too partial to wives. Have you heard of that?”

  Rahi nodded. “Mostly in the bigger towns, is where I’ve heard it. Mostly from men who weren’t in the fighting at all, crafters and traders and such.”

  Arya sat down across from her. “It’s the same here, but some of the Marshals—I’d have thought they’d have more sense—some of the Marshals have taken it up. Taken it to Gird, even. I heard it myself, one evening: pecking at him like crows at a sack of grain, all about how there’s no need for it now, and the women won’t make good wives or mothers if they’re always drilling in the bartons. That in the old days our women had parrions of cooking or healing or clothmaking, not parrions of weaponwork.”

  “He won’t listen,” said Rahi. “He lost that argument a long time ago.” She didn’t realize she was grinning until she felt her scar stretch; she was seeing in her mind’s eye the blank astonishment on Gird’s face that day in the forest camp.

  “For you, maybe,” Arya persisted. “He would never try to stop you—but what about the rest of us?”

  “But you’re a veteran,” Rahi said. “No one could put you out of the barton now—”

  “Not exactly. Not yet.” Arya spread her hands. “I shouldn’t be bothering you, maybe, but you were the first—and we all look to you. Some of us don’t intend to be wives, or go back to farms; we like what we’re doing now. And if anyone can keep Gird from taking it away—”

  “Don’t give it up.” She knew now what was coming, and hoped to head it off with a short answer.

  “That’s what I say,” said the other woman, coming now to sit beside Arya. She was younger, darker, with the intensity of youth. Rahi wondered if she had ever been really tired. “It’s not up to Gird; our lives aren’t something for him to give or take. Arya’s a veteran, same as anyone else who fought; why shouldn’t she live however she wants? It’s not like she was a mageborn lady who needed watching.”

  “But you know yourself, Lia, it’s not that easy—”

  “Gird always said nothing’s easy that’s any good—isn’t that right?” The other woman faced Rahi with a challenging stare.

  “But are you really afraid he’ll change the Code?” asked Rahi. “I’m not the only woman who’s a Marshal, you know.” But some gave it up, she reminded herself. Some went home, back to a family if they had one, or to start a second family if they’d lost husband and children. When she ran through the list in her mind, perhaps half the women who had won Marshal’s rank still held it. In her own grange, fewer women came to the drills as the memory of war faded, as fear of invasion lessened. She had not pushed them, she suddenly realized, as she pushed the men—she had accepted all the usual reasons: pregnancy, a new baby, a sick child, an ailing husband or parent.

  “It’s not just the training,” the other woman—Lia—went on. “Who wants to fight in a war, after all? I was too young for fighting then; I train now because Arya tells me I should. Without her, I’d wait until trouble came before I picked up a sword. But the rest— you know how it was. Under the lords’ rule, women could hold no land, even as tenants; in the city, women couldn’t rent buildings or speak before a court for themselves. Father’s daughter; husband’s wife; son’s mother—that’s how it was for all but the mageborn ladies. My mother was a widow; she had no son. She had to ask her brother for houseroom for us, and I had to take him for my da. If the war hadn’t come, he’d have married me to the tanner’s son, and taken his share of the bride-price. The mageborn didn’t have that problem—that woman everyone calls the Autumn Rose, or the Rosemage—”

  Rahi snorted; she couldn’t help herself. Arya grinned. “I remember what you called her, Rahi.”

  “Don’t say it!” Rahi held up a hand, chuckling. “I’ve been told often enough how rude I was. Am. And if my mother were alive, she’d say throwing a name at someone is like throwing mud at the sky. It always comes back on you.”

  “But what I meant was it was
different for them,” said the younger woman, earnestly. “Their ladies had the right to choose; they had the right to learn weaponscraft—”

  “Easy, Lia,” said Arya. “Rahi knows all that, none better.” She took the younger woman’s hand in hers, squeezed it. “Rahi’s not going to let her da, even the Marshal-General that he is, change the laws back and put free women under men’s thumbs again.” The look she gave Rahi said Are you? as clearly as words.

  Rahi shook her head, and bit into the bread as if she hadn’t eaten in days. It made her uncomfortable, the way so many women acted around her, as if she were a sort of Marshal-General for women, and Gird was the one for men. Whenever she traveled, women would come to her with their problems, things their own marshals should have handled, things she had no idea how to handle. She supposed she deserved it: she had been the first, and the arguments she’d used on Gird still seemed reasonable. But when she heard them coming back at her from someone else’s mouth— and when some women went far beyond anything she’d ever meant—she never knew what to say.

  They didn’t want to hear what she really thought. If she had had a family to go back to… if she had been able to bear children… she would not be a Marshal. She would have been happy to center a family as her mother had; she would have enjoyed (as, in her short time as a young wife she had enjoyed) the close friendship of other women in a farming village; she would have liked growing into the authority the old grannies had, when younger women came to her for help, one of the endless dance of women who passed on the knowledge and power that came with the gift of life. The peasant folk had always had a place for those who loved for pleasure, not bearing, but most of those married for children, and loved where they would. She had no way to understand those who were content outside the family structure, women who not only loved women but wanted no home as she knew it, wanted no children.