The Shore of Women (28 page)

BIRANA

Arvil had fallen, I could not tell if he still breathed, my terror nearly paralyzed me. Somehow I pulled a stone from my pocket and placed it in my sling as the moon reappeared.

The man was already pulling an object from his belt as I whirled the sling and released the stone. For the first time, I found my target. The stone hit him in the chest, and I heard him grunt as he staggered back.

My stone did not have enough force to injure him badly; I had done little more than startle him for a moment. I saw him teeter as I groped helplessly for another stone, and then he lost his footing. He disappeared over the edge.

My legs gave way. I clawed at my sling, imagining that he would suddenly rise before me, come at me again. I tried to stand, but my legs would not hold me. At last I managed to crawl through the opening and peer over the edge.

He had fallen onto a ledge far below. His body was twisted sharply at the waist. I looked away and caught sight of another body; a horse lay near it. I retched, sick at the sight, heaving until my stomach was empty, shaken by the thought of how close death had been.

I remembered Arvil; I crawled to his side. Please don’t be dead, I thought, please, not now. As I leaned over him, I saw his chest move, then felt his head. His skull was not fractured, but a bloody gash marked the spot where he had struck the rock.

I tore a strip of cloth from the edge of my shirt, then pulled out my waterskin. Arvil gave a moan and opened his eyes; he seemed stunned.

“You’re safe now,” I said. “It’s all right, the men are gone. I must clean your wound.”

He moaned again as I bathed him, but said nothing. I wiped away the blood, then rinsed out the cloth and bound it around his head.

The wind had died a little, but the night was still cold. I reached for his coat and put it over him. When he closed his eyes, I ran toward the horses, took off a pack, and carried it back to him, kneeling as I slipped it gently under his head.

His eyelids fluttered. “Dizzy,” he murmured.

“You mustn’t move. You have to rest.” I checked his wound again; the bleeding had stopped. “I think you’ll be all right.”

“That man… he…”

“He’s dead.” Arvil tried to raise his head. “Lie still,” I said.

“What happened?”

“I used my sling. Somehow, I hit him. He lost his balance and fell.” My hands began to shake. “I was lucky. I might have missed. My stone didn’t hit him hard. If he hadn’t been standing where he was, I…”

“You did well.”

A new feeling was rising in me—a wild joy that I was alive and that our enemies were dead. This, I thought, is what a man would feel.

I lay down next to him, pillowing my head on my arm. I did not think then of what lay behind us, or what might lie ahead. Arvil was alive, and he would heal; he would be able to lead me to a refuge. I touched his arm gently as he slept, telling myself that it was only relief at having a protector still with me that gave me joy.

Arvil was able to move in the morning, although he seemed unsteady on his feet as we paced the top of the Ridge. “Will you be able to walk down the other side?” I asked.

“I must. Our horses will need food, and there is none here for them.” Arvil raised a hand to his head.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“My head throbs, and the ground seems to sway under me, but it will pass.”

“I can take the horses down alone, let them forage, tether them, and then come back for you.”

“No.”

“You were going to let me take them down alone before,” I said.

“We’ll go together.” He turned and walked back to the western side of the Ridge, then leaned against me as he gazed at the bodies below. “There may be food in those packs,” he said, “and one horse could feed us for a long time.”

I shuddered. “No.”

“It’s foolish to leave so much, but it may also be foolish to climb down. We might bring more loose rock down on ourselves, and my wound has weakened me.”

Much as I wanted to get away from the Ridge, I was concerned. “You should rest.”

“I’ll rest for a few moments, and then we will descend.”

He sat down while I fetched the horses, then followed me to the eastern side. There was firmer footing here, and a wider way over and down the rock, but we had to stop often so that Arvil could rest. It took us until midday to travel down the Ridge; only then did I see the strain on Arvil’s face, and the effort his descent had cost.

He stretched out on the ground, while I gave the horses some of our water and then stood with them as they nibbled at stalks of wild grain. I tethered them at a shrub before checking Arvil’s wound. He caught my hand, as I was about to stand up, and pressed it against his cheek; I tensed.

“You have saved my life a second time,” he said.

I drew my hand from his. “I had luck, that’s all. I could have easily been killed. I may not be so fortunate again.” I had only led him into dangers he would otherwise not have faced.

“You have learned one way of fighting. You will learn more.”

I never wanted to fight again. I stood up. “Can you ride?”

He got to his feet. “I can ride. We have no one to outrun now and can go slowly.”

We mounted and began to ride east. When the Ridge was far behind us, I glanced back for a moment and nearly dropped my reins. A ship was flying high over the Ridge, moving from south to north. I told myself it could not be searching for me. Any passengers it carried might look at the bodies we had left there and see only another example of the cruelty and barbarism of men. I watched the ship pass and felt dread and regret as I thought of my city.

We came to a stream by dusk. Arvil, who had seen no sign of men in the region around us, felt safe in building a fire. I collected the dead wood, but Arvil refused to light the fire for me; he wanted to see what I had learned. I struck sparks from my flints onto tinder and tried to fan the flames into a blaze. By the time I was able to start the fire, it was nearly night.

Arvil felt well enough to gather cress and berries, which we ate with a little dried meat. After our meal, we stretched out on the ground, the banked fire between us. “It is said,” he murmured, “that the Earth is round, like the moon.”

“That’s true.”

“If we rode for many, many days, then we would come in time to the place where we began our journey.”

“If we could ride so far,” I said, “but we couldn’t. If we kept going east, eventually we’d reach the ocean, a body of water so wide that you cannot see what lies beyond it.”

“What is on the other side, Birana?”

“More land. Some is wooded; some is desert. On one body of land live animals you’ve never seen here—giants with tusks and long trunks, and creatures with necks so long they can nibble at the tops of trees. And in the centers of those lands, there are other cities, and men who are called to them.”

“And are those men like us?”

“They live much as you do.”

“I wonder what stories they would tell.”

I propped myself up on one elbow and gazed across the fire at him. “You wouldn’t understand their stories. Their languages are different from yours.”

“We could talk in the holy speech.”

“Even what you call the holy speech is different there,” I said. “But those women’s ways are the same as ours. Their speech may be different, and the Lady has other names, but we follow the same customs. The Lady rules there, as She does here. Long after the Destruction, we found ways to communicate with those in other regions of Earth, and eventually all women came to see what we had to do to bring about the Rebirth. It was women who swore then that there would be peace. There were men even then, when much of the world was in ruins, who would have continued their battles with other men. It was best that they have only spears and arrows for their wars.”

He got to his feet. “My head is clearer now,” he said. “I shall keep watch while you sleep.”

I closed my eyes as he stood guard, but even in my dreams, I seemed to sense his eyes on me as I slept.

The next days of our journey passed with no sight of men. Arvil captured two rabbits; from their skins, he fashioned foot-coverings for me to wear inside my boots. My socks were worn and full of holes by then; I was about to dispose of them, but washed them and put them inside my pack instead. I might have need of the cloth.

He asked me few questions about the city as we rode, and that eased me; perhaps his curiosity had already been satisfied. The peacefulness of this part of our journey, the knowledge that our enemies could no longer harm us, and Arvil’s calm should have reassured me, and yet I worried. I had believed myself safe once before, with Arvil’s band; their camp had not been a haven for long.

The cool but sunny weather did not last. One morning, the sky was red in the east as the sun rose; the light was soon hidden by heavy clouds. By afternoon, it began to rain. I huddled against Flame, miserable in my wet clothes.

There were more trees on the land, and forest ahead, and we were able to escape much of the rain as we rode on under tall pines. Arvil, however, seemed more fearful as he looked restlessly around at the trees. Without the sun’s light, the forest seemed nearly as dark as night; we could not know what the trees hid. Arvil stared at the ground as our horses walked on slowly.

Finally he reined in Star. “We are lost,” he said. “I see no trail and do not know this land. I cannot even tell if we are still going east.” He pointed. “Look there. It seems we have met our own trail once more.”

I had forgotten my compass. I reached toward my neck and pulled out the chain, angry at my carelessness. I was growing too dependent on Arvil, had too easily allowed him to lead. I peered at the needle. “We’ve been going south,” I said, then pointed east. “We must go this way.”

He leaned toward me. “What is that?”

“A compass. It can show you which way you’re going.”

“It is not used only to cast spells?”

“No. You see, this needle always points north. These markings are the different directions.”

He gazed at the compass’s face. “So you have brought some magic with you. Will that magic stay with you out here?”

I tried to explain how the compass worked but was not sure how much he understood. Magnetism, to Arvil, was magic or a spirit that directed the needle. I continued to guide us with the compass until it became too dark to see its face.

We spent that night under a tree, with our horses tied nearby. I could not sleep easily; the mournful whistling of the wind in the pines kept entering my dreams.

The rain stopped by morning. The dark forest was filled with green light, and the weather had grown so warm that I longed to take off my coat. Arvil was alert, refusing to speak, starting at the slightest sound. Once, we heard a shriek in the distance, and Flame’s nostrils flared at the sound.

“A cat,” Arvil said; I tensed. “It will avoid us, unless it has young and feels its cubs threatened.” His words only increased my fear.

It was easy to lose track of time in the forest. Only the increased darkness told me that it was night. We had eaten the last of the food in our packs and had no food before we slept. In the morning, Arvil gathered a few green sprouts and mushrooms before we moved on.

I was still hungry, and tired as well; my clothes were dirty and the heavy coat made me sweat. I itched and needed to wash, but complained of none of these things. I imagined that here, in this strange land, Arvil was thinking of his old band and the lands he knew, of the life he had given up for me. What did he have in return? Only the loss of the beliefs that had made his life easier to bear.

We came to the bank of a stream. I was about to dismount and get water when a golden gleam caught my attention. A shrine, almost hidden by the trees, stood on the other side of the stream. I lifted a hand to my mouth.

“It’s all right,” Arvil said. “Those who did evil in shrines are dead. We’ll be safe.”

We let the horses drink before crossing to the shrine. Arvil surveyed the ground carefully. “It seems no men have come here for some time,” he said, “but some may travel here in this season.”

This shrine was smaller than those I had seen earlier, its surface more worn, its dome more tarnished. I wondered if anyone still came here. We were far from any city, nearer land we had abandoned long ago.

We tied the horses to trees and sat down in the small clearing around the shrine, letting the sun warm us. “We need food,” Arvil said. “I must hunt.”

“But if men come while you are gone…”

“They will not harm you here. You have heard me speak and know what you should say. Birana, we don’t know how far we will have to ride, or what meat will be there for us. We can rest here for a time and take meat with us. We must use the chance. If I cannot hunt, we should kill one of these horses.” He looked at Wild Spirit.

“Not the horses,” I said quickly.

His lips formed a half smile. “Would you starve before you would eat of a horse?” He shrugged. “It is true that we might have need of that horse later. I’ll let it live—for you.”

He explained to me that much of what meat he found would have to be smoked and dried, then set me to work gathering long pieces of wood that could form poles. While I set the poles in the ground, Arvil picked up his weapons and walked away along the stream; he was soon hidden by the trees. With a wide, flat stone, I dug out a pit for our fire, then set stones and rocks around it. It was arduous work, but I welcomed the effort. It was something to do, work that made me of some use to him.

I strolled away from the shrine, looking for firewood. I had my compass but kept the stream in sight. I broke pieces of dead wood with my foot, made bundles, and carried the wood back to the shrine, moving a bit farther into the forest each time. The song of a bird delighted me; the scampering of a squirrel across my path made me smile. There was some beauty in Arvil’s world, a beauty lost to the city, a beauty its tended parks could not match.

Suddenly I heard a snarl and saw a patch of yellowish fur. I dropped the wood I was holding as my eyes met those of a large cat. I hadn’t seen it before, had not heard it approach. The cat was no more than ten or twelve paces from me; it crouched and snarled at me. I froze, afraid to move, fearing that, if I reached for my sling, the cat would leap. It glared at me, seeming to sense my fear.