The Gate to Women's Country (23 page)

Everyone agreed that it was dishonorable to return through the Gate to Women's Country. Only cowards did it. Cowards and physical weaklings, though even they could be put to work in the garrison kitchens or doing maintenance of some kind if they confessed their weakness to the Commander. Beyond being the butt of a bit of rough teasing or donkey play, they got on well enough.

It was dishonorable to make a Gypsy of a young girl as it unfitted her for breeding, or to make a whore of a boy as it unfitted him for a warrior's life. Everyone agreed it was dishonorable, but sometimes the men did it anyhow. It was dishonorable, but it wasn't hateful. Going back
through the gate, that was hateful. Getting some girl out to the camps—well, nobody would hiss you for that.

It was dishonorable to drink so much during carnival that you couldn't remember what women you'd been with, though most of the men had been guilty of that. More than one man had received a printed card from the assignation mistress after carnival, signed by some woman the warrior couldn't really remember. The cards always said the same thing. “If it
is
a boy, I will bring him to his warrior father when he is five.” The cards went into the men's files at headquarters. A man might not exactly remember, but no man with a card filed for the proper date would care to say the son wasn't his when it showed up almost six years later. It would be the same as admitting lack of manhood! Of course, some warriors had grown too old for sex and some simply preferred the Gypsies as less trouble, and said so, and there was nothing held against them for that.

The conventional wisdom in the garrison was that it didn't matter if a man remembered clearly or not. Even though everybody knew that women cheated about other things, it was generally agreed that they were honest and sensible about warriors' sons because it was in their own best interest to do so. Women knew the warriors protected them only because women bore them sons, so it was in the women's interest to see that sons were produced and brought to the appropriate father. Though Chernon had serious doubts about this, it was true that almost every warrior had at least one son. Very few warriors got slighted during carnival. Very few of the men who wanted sex did without, even though some of them didn't remember much about it afterward. Sons were the single most important thing in life to a warrior, and the women knew that. “In bearing a son for a warrior, a woman earns her life.” That's the way the indoctrination for boys went. “Your mother earned her life so.” Another saying was, “There's no use or excuse for a childless woman.” Though, of course, everyone realized there really were many excuses. Without all the old women doing the weaving and preserving fish and shearing sheep, food and fabric would both be scarce. Everyone really knew that. When the centurions nicked off part of
the grain allotment to make beer, someone always toasted “the grandmas” who grew the grain.

All of these things had something to do with honor, but nowhere in all that tangle of honor and dishonor, as Chernon understood it, was there anything about rotting away on a bed for fifty days before you finally died. Casimur should have taken the Well Water. Morgot herself had come to him and offered it three times. Each time, Chernon had hidden himself, not wanting to see her, not wanting to think about her or her family. Not wanting to think about Stavia.

It had all gone wrong with Stavia. He had done exactly what Michael told him to do, but it had gone wrong. Instead of becoming Chernon's willing informant, Stavia had gone away. One afternoon she was there, holding him in her lap while he cried, inexcusable, babyish tears. Five days later when he tried to find her to tell her the tears hadn't meant anything, she was gone. She had been sent to Abbyville to the Medical Institute, Beneda told him. Gone two years earlier than expected. Gone for nine years, and she would only be able to come home to visit once or twice, if at all. It made him angry, not so much that she had gone but that she had never said a word to him about the fact that she might go. It did not occur to him that she might not have mentioned it because she hadn't wanted to go.

No, he told himself, he had simply been wrong to think Stavia would behave differently from other women. All women cheated. His mother cheated, and Beneda, and so Stavia did, as well.

There had been the time that crazy Vinsas had been alive. Vinsas had told Chernon to go home at carnival time and say these things to Chernon's mother, not nice things exactly, but interesting things. “I cut her with my knife at the tip of her breast,” Vinsas had said. When he talked like this, his lips wobbled loosely and the spit ran out onto his chin. “It made a scar. I bit her in a certain place. I left my teeth marks on her. Make her show you….” Chernon found it interesting to imagine what she would say when he quoted Vinsas to her. That very first time she could have told him she wouldn't discuss it, but instead she'd tried to explain about Vinsas. If she hadn't intended to talk about it, she should have said so the first
time. But she did say some things. Things about women and how men looked at women and what some men wanted. He didn't really want her to cry, but it was interesting that she did. Having her talk to him that way made him feel older and stronger. He had wanted to talk about it again, but after the second time she hadn't let him talk about it at all. Instead, she had sent him away, to his Aunt Erica's house.

And Stavia. It was the same with Stavia. “You've got to get them to break the rules, boy,” Michael had said. “They think they're safe so long as they keep the rules. It's like their silly ordinances are a kind of protection for them. You get them to break the rules, all of a sudden they don't have that protection anymore. Then the only protection they've got is you, and they have to please you to get it, right?”

So he got Stavia to break the rules, but she had twisted on him. She had threatened to go to the Council.

“Give her the book back,” Stephon had said. “Keep her quiet. Wait a few months and we'll try her again.”

But there had been no opportunity to try again. She had gone. Would be gone. For years.

You couldn't trust them. That's what Michael said. You couldn't trust them. He was right. Even Beneda. Sometimes when he used to visit at home during carnival she'd ask him what he wanted to eat and fix it for him, then the next time she'd say she was too busy. Women had no right to do a thing and then not do it, to say yes and then no. The warriors said sometimes a woman would be with them at one carnival and the next carnival she'd say, no, she wanted to be with someone else! Even Barten had said that once about some girl. How she had said she'd stay at the Gypsy camp for him, but she didn't. Women had no right to do that. Once a woman consented to something, that was it, no saying no later or running away.

The worst part of Stavia's being gone was that Chernon's usefulness to Michael seemed to be over. Now there was only this waiting! Waiting until Stavia came back, if she came back. Waiting until Michael found something else exciting for him to do. Which would not be soon. Michael had decided that now was not the time to do anything.

“I've got this philosophy,” Michael had said in his smooth, lazy voice. “You can plan all you want to. Plan and plan, and maybe something will happen and maybe it won't. Life's like the city. There's a wall around it with a gate in it. A Warriors' Gate. Once in a while that gate is going to open, and if you're ready, you can get through it before it shuts again. The thing we have to do is be ready. Someday the gate is going to open for us, for you, too, Chernon. If you're ready when it does, then you go through and there's all kinds of glory on the other side. Pushing that gate before it's ready to open—that's just stupid. Pushing that gate before it's ready can
give
you a hernia.” He laughed then, throwing his head back, showing his strong white teeth. “I'll get in, but I won't strain myself!”

Stephon growled in his impatience to be doing something, but Michael just laughed at him.

“You're too itchy, Steph. Too itchy. Go on out to the Gypsy camp and get it out of your system. Just be ready, that's all. It doesn't matter whether it's now or later. Just be ready.”

So they waited.

Even if he wasn't doing anything useful at the moment, Chernon was determined that when the gate opened, when the opportunity was there, he would be a part of it. He would learn whatever secrets there were that made the women powerful.

For there were secrets! The more Chernon thought about it, the surer he was of it. Otherwise, why had they sent Stavia away? Because they were afraid she'd tell him, that's why. For a time he had thought he might find secrets in the books Stavia had given him, but there were no mysteries there. Just numbers and names for things and stories about how people had lived long ago—not even powerful people, just ordinary shepherds and weavers and people who grew crops. They might have had reindeer instead of sheep or cotton instead of wool, but there was nothing useful in that. No mysterious knowledge. Nothing about the wonderful weapons. Nothing of the stuff he knew had to be there, somewhere. Stavia hadn't given him the right books. Probably those books, the powerful books, were secret. Perhaps Stavia herself hadn't even seen the secret books yet. Maybe only the
older women saw them. But whether she had seen them or not, Stavia had been taught something about them. Michael thought so; Chernon believed it.

“She'll be back eventually,” Michael said to Chernon. “Maybe it won't matter. Everything may have busted loose by then and we may not need what she knows, but if not, you can find out then. When she comes back, Chernon, you'll have to figure out a way to get her off by herself. As long as Stavia's in tight with Morgot and that bunch, you won't be able to do anything with her.”

So he dreamed of getting Stavia off by herself. A journey of discovery, perhaps. That was something a warrior could do honorably. The Sagas were full of exciting journeys, dangerous quests. In the Odysseus Saga there was that long journey when old Odysseus fought to get back to his own garrison after the great war with Troy! In a favorite fantasy, Chernon imagined himself as Odysseus, leaving the battlefield after the victory. He was wounded, just enough that his bloodstained bandages showed everyone he had been in the battle. Then, as he started the journey home with the garrison, there was a great storm. Everyone got separated, and when the storm was over, he found himself alone, journeying, finding things out.

At first this idea of a quest, a journey, was only a recurrent fantasy, something to while away the long hours in garrison while others played games or carved new gables or doorposts for the barracks, activities that bored Chernon to gaping somnolence. Later it became an obsession. He would take Stavia along as a witness, as a scribe. Someone to record his adventures, someone to see that life need not be usual to be honorable. She would regret, then, that she had not given him books. She would see that he was not merely another warrior. And then he could find out what she knew, really.

Whenever garrison life became boring or sickening or frightening, he lost himself in daydreams of the other places he would go. He could ignore the garrison annoyances. The garrison was only the place he was, a place he would leave very soon, in the blink of an eye, whenever he chose. For now, he would not choose. For now, he would do what the garrison required, but the day would come when it was no longer necessary. Besides, just now
he could not leave the wounded ones; he could not leave Casimur.

And then Casimur died at last, releasing Chernon to go back to the dormitory with the other fifteen-year-olds, where he went on tossing as restlessly upon his pillow as he had before. Even though it was the time to think of honor, he was not thinking of Casimur's honor or his own. His dream took him to places beyond honor, places dark and mysterious at the end of the journey he had not yet begun. In dream he went in search of that place, down dank tunnels and into echoing caverns, sometimes almost finding it. “Secrets?” he whispered in dream, begging the faceless darkness to explain why he was still here, still in the garrison when there was that other place waiting for him.

From the roof of the armory, a trumpet blew. Get-em-up, get-em-up, get-em-up. Ta-ta-da, ta-ta-da, ta-ta-da.

Morning noises. It was quieter than usual in the dormitory because today was the day of choice, and some of the fifteen-year-olds were going to go through the Women's Gate. Everyone in the century knew it and had known it for some time. Not that anyone said anything. The ones who were thinking of going could change their minds. Right up until the last minute, they could choose to step forward and do the honorable thing, provided they hadn't been pushed into a corner. So, no one said anything at all.

Chernon sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of his cot, not looking at Habby in the left-hand cot. Habby was going through the Gate to Women's County. And Breten, and Garret and Dorf. And Corrig, of course. Which was a good thing!

“Chernon.” It was only a murmur, but it brought his eyes up. Habby was offering his hand. “Chernon, I won't have another chance to say good-bye.”

Chernon ignored the hand. He didn't want to be seen shaking hands with Habby. Still, Habby was Stavia's brother and he didn't want tales carried back to Women's Country, either. Michael said they might still need Stavia. That's why Chernon had given the book back, because he might still need her. Better leave Habby with something Stavia would appreciate.

“Wills and that lot may try to beat you to a bloody
mess,” he said with calculated candor. This wasn't really taking sides. He'd promised himself he wouldn't do that.

“I know. But there's five of us, and we're going to stick together. Do you have any message for Stavia?”

Chernon shook his head, keeping his voice neutral. Any message he might have for Stavia, he could not send by Stavia's brother. “I told her why I was staying.”