As the warriors spoke, their eyes gleamed with more than firelight. Then I saw the smudges on one warrior's face. He had marked himself with blood, as Maara had marked herself and me. When I looked around at the others, I saw several more.
I nudged Sparrow, who was sitting beside me. "Is it the custom here for warriors to mark themselves like that?"
She shook her head. "It never has been before. Perhaps they didn't want to be outdone by Maara."
"I think your warrior has set a fashion," said Taia, who sat next to Sparrow.
I laughed at that. It felt good to laugh, but at the same time, I felt as if the laughter had come from someone else.
Now more warriors stood up to tell their stories. Soon almost all of them were on their feet, congratulating themselves, encouraging one another, adding something to someone's story or correcting someone who had made a mistake. A good-natured squabble broke out over who had drawn first blood. In the shadows, Laris and Maara watched them from a distance.
Then Vintel took up her shield and beat her sword upon it until everyone was quiet. Once she had their attention, she didn't speak right away, but gazed at them with pride, until I could feel in the air their anticipation of her praise.
"Today victory is ours," she said at last. "The retelling of these tales will warm our hearts through the coming winter. Great feats of arms were done today. I expected no less from the warriors of Merin's house."
She looked around at them, and her warriors grinned back at her, well pleased with themselves.
"Before you take all the glory to yourselves," she said, "let us praise the one who turned the tide of battle."
While the warriors were glancing at one another, wondering who she meant, Vintel approached our fire. She went directly to Taia and extended her hand. Taia took it, and Vintel drew her to her feet and led her to the warriors' fire.
"Now it's your turn," Vintel said to her. "Tell us of your own brave deeds."
"I have no brave deeds to boast of," Taia said.
Vintel turned to Laris. "You have neglected to teach your apprentice the greatest of the arts of war. This young woman doesn't seem to know how to make much of herself."
The warriors laughed.
"If she can't do her own boasting, I'll have to do it for her, just this once." Vintel put her arm around Taia's shoulders. "Today this young woman showed as much courage as I've ever seen upon the battlefield. With no sword, no dagger, no weapon but a frail twig, she led a band armed with nothing more than brave hearts against the enemy. If she had not, I think we would be telling grimmer stories of the fighting this day."
"I didn't -- " Taia said.
"This is not a day for modesty," Vintel told her. "In a few months' time you would have received your shield in any case, but today you proved yourself a warrior."
Vintel gestured to Laris, who approached her, carrying a sword.
"This sword was captured from one of the enemy that you helped put to flight," said Vintel. "Let it be the token of your part in this victory."
Laris fastened the sword to Taia's belt.
Sparrow took my hand and squeezed it.
"Now she'll honor you," she whispered.
But Vintel sat down beside the warriors' fire and made a place for Taia beside her, and the warriors resumed their celebration.
I was relieved that Vintel wasn't going to call attention to me, but Sparrow was disappointed.
"It isn't fair," she said. "She should have honored you too. It isn't fair for Taia to get all the glory."
"She's welcome to it," I said.
But Sparrow was indignant. "How can she disregard what you did?"
"I did very little."
"You killed a warrior of the northern tribes. Vintel should have honored you for the kill, if for nothing else. And it was your kill that put the heart into Taia in the first place."
"Maybe Vintel doesn't know."
"She knows."
"She does?"
"Your skill hasn't gone unnoticed," Sparrow said. "I heard several of the warriors speak to her about it. Laris made a point of speaking to her about it. Vintel can't be overjoyed that your warrior was right about something, but that doesn't excuse her from giving praise where praise is due."
"I don't want Vintel's praise."
Sparrow gave me a puzzled look. "I don't understand. Why are you so at odds with her?"
"Because she and my warrior are at odds."
"That's all?" Her voice told me she thought there must be more.
"Vintel hasn't had much use for me since she asked for me as an apprentice and I chose someone else."
"Well," said Sparrow, smiling her sweetest smile at me. "I can't blame her for being angry about that."
While the warriors sat at their fire recounting to one another their feats of arms, the apprentices had a celebration of their own. At first they were all elated, swept up in the excitement. They chattered on about their wild charge and the thrill of seeing the enemy flee from them in confusion. What they had done that day made them feel powerful, more powerful than they had ever felt before, and as they had every right to do, they indulged their pride in themselves.
But as the night wore on, they grew quiet and thoughtful. They must have seen some dreadful things that day. I wondered if the killing bothered them. Since I was one of the killers myself, I didn't ask.
Maara waited until I was alone. All evening she had been sitting with Laris in the shadows. All evening I had known exactly where she was. Even while I was talking with Sparrow and listening to the others tell their stories, I was waiting for her. When the last of the apprentices had gone to bed, she came and sat beside me.
I don't know what I expected. I felt hollow, as if the ice around my heart had melted and left nothing in its place. I wanted her to make me feel like myself again.
"Only a few weeks ago," she said softly, "you told me you were reluctant to take the lives of birds, but you found your power, and you learned to take no harm from exercising it."
It felt to me like a very long time since I had been hunting birds.
"You will master this new power too," she said.
She started to stand up. Fearful that she was going to leave me, I clutched at her sleeve, like a child grasping at her mother's skirts. At once I was ashamed of myself, and I let go.
"I'll be right back," she said.
She disappeared into the shadows of the cave. When she returned, she was carrying a shield. I remembered that her shield had been damaged in the fighting, and I thought she had brought it to the fire to repair it, but when she sat down beside me, I saw that it was the shield I had taken from the northerner.
"Vintel should have honored you too," she said.
"I'm glad she didn't."
"So am I, but you deserve the honors of war no less than Taia."
Maara set the shield down in front of me. "This is yours." She lifted the edge, so that I could see the sword that lay beneath it. "So is this."
When I started to say I didn't want them, she put a finger to my lips.
"When you told me you didn't want the bow, I said nothing, because you weren't ready to accept it, but I believe it was a gift for you. However it came to be where we found it, it was meant to find you. Now it has brought you glory and the spoils of war. I think it would have been better if this had not happened so soon, but nothing can change what's done, and now you must be worthy of the man you killed."
The man I killed.
Maara leaned close to me and peered into my eyes. "Do you regret what you did?"
I saw in my mind's eye my warrior lying on the ground, sheltering under her shield, and the northern warrior standing over her. I shook my head.
"That's good," she said, "because your regret would do him a great wrong. It would be as if he died for nothing."
She said no more, but she made no move to leave me, and I took comfort from having her nearby. I tried to think of something to ask her, so that she would talk to me some mor
e.
"Some of the men marked themselves with blood," I said.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"You must ask them that."
"Why did you mark me?"
She sighed. "It's the custom among my people. Laris told me it hasn't been done here in many years. I should have thought before I did it, but it has a meaning I would have you understand."
"What does it mean?"
"When you butchered animals at home," she said, "did you not make an offering of blood to the Mother?"
"Of course we did."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because all life comes from her."
"That's right," she said. "We offer her the first blood of everything -- the first blood of the animals we kill, the first blood of the maiden, the first blood of childbirth. All life is hers, and when a warrior marks herself with blood, she offers back the life she took."
"I thought it was a kind of boasting."
"Not at all," she said. "Not at all."
In spite of myself, I yawned.
Maara stood up and spread her cloak on the ground there beside the fire. The others had made their beds in the shelter of the cave, but Maara made ours out in the open air. She waited for me to lie down. Then she lay down beside me and pulled my cloak over us.
Although I was exhausted, I was in no hurry to sleep. I lay open-eyed, gazing up at the stars.
"Yes," she said. "He will come to you in dreams."
That she understood my fears was a comfort to me. "What shall I do?"
"Sleep," she said, "and when you meet him face to face, don't be afraid to speak to him. Tell him that though you are young and small of body, your spirit is large and powerful. Tell him it was no disgrace to be defeated by someone so powerful. Then tell him to go on to the place of new beginnings and leave you in peace."
In spite of my fear, I had to laugh. Surely this was boasting so absurd, so grandiose, that his spirit would only laugh at me.
"But my spirit isn't large and powerful," I said.
"You think not?"
"I think not."
"Look back over this day and tell me what you did."
All evening I had been trying to forget what I did that day, but she made me look at it again.
"You shot an arrow," she said. "And you killed a man."
I nodded.
"Don't you see? That act was the pivot around which everything changed. The world changed, because of what you did. Because of you we celebrated a victory tonight, and because of you the man who would have killed me died, while I went on living. Now tell me how powerless you are."
She didn't wait for a reply. She turned away from me, onto her side. I lay beside her, gazing up at the stars, while my heart grew warm again and tears gathered in my eyes.
At last I turned to her and laid my face against her back. For a long time I listened to the life in her, until I slept, untroubled by dreams.
39. Power
I woke to angry voices.
" -- not my doing," said Vintel. "It's as well for you she brought the thing with her."
My warrior spat out a few words in a language I didn't understand. It sounded like a curse.
"Take her home, then," Vintel replied. "I'm sick to death of looking after the both of you."
Before I could gather my thoughts together, Vintel was gone.
It was still dark. Not even the first hint of dawn lightened the eastern sky.
"Let's go," said Maara.
"Now?"
"Now. Before she changes her mind."
As quickly as we could, we got our things together. Maara bound the northerner's sword alongside my pack and slung his shield over my shoulder. By the light of a quarter moon, we picked our way down the steep trail and headed south, toward home.
By midmorning I was tired and hungry and out of sorts. The heavy shield chafed my shoulder and bumped against my back at every step. I could have done without the spoils of war, I thought to myself. I was so preoccupied with the burden of the man's shield on my body that I scarcely felt upon my heart the burden of his death. I didn't think of him at all until we stopped at last, early in the afternoon.
Maara took the shield from me and leaned it against a tree. It was old and battered, its colors faded, but still visible around the rim was a border in blue, dark and light entwined, and in the center a magical animal of some kind. The golden eyes of a ghostly figure in grey and white, all legs and tail, stared back at me from a face half hidden by a leafy branch.
"It's beautiful," said Maara.
"Yes."
"He was a chieftain."
"How do you know?"
"The chieftain's shield bears the image of the guardian of his clan."
"What kind of animal is it?"
"Perhaps a wolf. Perhaps no animal anyone has ever seen. It may have come to one of his ancestors in a dream."
I stepped outside myself and listened to the two of us talk about this man, who the day before had awakened to his last day of life. Though the image of his face in agony remained vivid in my mind, I began to see another face, the face of an ordinary man.
I thought we had stopped only to rest and to have something to eat, but Maara intended for us to camp there. She had found us a sheltered place by a sheer rock wall, in a clearing hidden at the heart of a wood. A stream meandered through the clearing. The soft sounds of running water and the wind in the trees made me sleepy. While we ate our meal of salted meat and barley cakes, I could hardly keep my eyes open.
"Sleep a little," Maara said.
I didn't argue with her. I was asleep almost before I lay down.
He was sitting by his hearth.
His house was not made of stone like the one I lived in as a child, nor of wood like Merin's house. His house was round, with walls of wattle daubed with mud and a roof of hides stretched over a pole framework like a tent. The fire burning on the hearth at its center lit his face but left the edges of the room in darkness. He made a gesture to me to sit down, and I took the place across the fire from him. There was a bearskin on the floor, soft to sit upon.
I heard the sounds of grief outside the house.
"My wife," he said. "My child."
In his voice I heard his love for them, the love that brought him into Merin's land, where his death awaited him.
"You too, someday," he whispered.
"Whether it was his spirit or your own heart that spoke to you in your dream," said Maara, "take it as a warning."
"Of course it was his spirit," I said.
"It may have been."
"It was." A stubborn anger began to burn in my chest.
"Whether it was or not, it was still a warning."
"A warning? Of what?"
"When strangers come into Merin's land to steal food for their children, will you let the children of your own people starve to feed them?"
"The children of Merin's land have plenty," I said. "We've never starved."
"Has not even old Gnith known a time of hunger? If she has not, you are a fortunate people. Isn't it possible that you owe your good fortune to the power Merin has gathered around her?"
I had to admit that it was true.
"And when your enemy stands before you," she said, "will you think of the grief of those who love him? Will you stop to weigh their grief against the grief of those who love you before you take another life? If you do, it will not be his loved ones who will grieve."
I felt she was scolding me for something I had not yet done.
"That's unfair," I said. "When I killed the man who would have killed you, I doubt I was thinking of anything, but if I was, it was of my own grief."
She smiled at me. "I thank you for that, but I'm not thinking of him. I'm thinking of the next time."
"Why would I do differently the next time?"
"Yesterday you stepped into the unknown. In that new place, you had no expectations. You had no doubts. Now you know what awaits you there. You know, or think you
know, what to expect."
I struggled with myself a little before I could open my heart to what she was trying to tell me.
"Why do you so want to believe it was his spirit that came to you?" she asked me.
In my dream I had felt from him no anger, no malice, only his sadness. He seemed to bear me no ill will.
"If it was his spirit," I said, "then he has forgiven me."
"Listen to me," she said. "You have no need for his forgiveness. You have no use for it. Wanting it will weaken you, and needing it may be your downfall."
I didn't understand.
"When you take up a weapon," she said, "you take up the power of life and death. This power resides, not in your weapon, but in yourself. Part of that power is your willingness to take a life, and part of it is the willingness to sacrifice your own. Every warrior offers herself willingly, and nothing done on the battlefield need be forgiven."
My mind understood, but my heart protested.
"All the same," I said, "his forgiveness would make me feel better."
She looked at me closely. "What do you feel?"
"Sorrow," I replied. "I'm not sorry that I killed him, but sorry that he had to die, that anyone had to die."
We were sitting in a patch of sunlight on the soft leaves of the forest floor. Just then the sun slid down behind the rock. I shivered. Maara got to her feet, cleared the leaves from a place against the rock wall, and made a fire. While I gathered enough firewood for the night, she prepared our supper. Soon our fire was burning brightly and barley cakes were baking on a hot stone.
"Are we going home tomorrow?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Why?"
"Did you want to stay with Vintel's band?"
"No." I had been reluctant to leave Sparrow, but I had also been relieved to get away from that noisy crowd of people. "Wasn't Vintel angry at our leaving?"
"Vintel was delighted to be rid of us."
We ate our meal in silence. In the wood the dark came quickly. The pale twilight sky still shone down on us through the branches overhead, while night gathered under the trees. Firelight flickered on the rock. I watched the play of shadows over its rough face.
Maara broke the silence. "Do you understand now why Vintel's warriors follow her?"