Through the slits of my eyes I looked at her, this cunning one, who knew so much. I could tell from the slight unconscious stress in her voice when she spoke the word “healer” that she was one. And now, as she got up and moved about, I began to see where I was, and it was her place, not a tent, but a wagon. The flaps were wide open, and outside, under the vaulted ceiling of a black eave, the cook-fires were burning, the meat roasting, and the kicked dogs running. In here a lamp swung above me, and beads and dried skins, and the skulls and bones of small animals hung and rustled on the canvas walls and from the wooden struts. I lay among rugs. The girl was crouched at the brazier where something-not food-bubbled in an iron pot. The old woman had taken her seat in a wooden chair, a black, long-eyed cat across her knees.
“I see you’re awake,” she said then. The cat stirred, twitching the velvet points of its slightly tufted ears. “Are you hungry?”
“As you said,” I answered, “broth or porridge. None of the tribes eat meat.”
“True enough,” the old woman said. She ignored the fact
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that I had been listening so much longer than she had thought-or perhaps she had known anyway. She made a sign to the girl, who glared in my direction and jumped out of the wagon, making it rock.
“How did I get here?” I asked, not so much wanting to find out as to divert the old woman’s attention, which seemed very piercing, the bright eyes delving like knives, quite impartial and, at the same time, quite merciless.
“Gar went threading with some girl in the upper caves. They found you and brought you here. Where you came from before that is your own trouble; I don’t know it.”
“I am a fighter from the tribes,” I said. “My man was killed in a street fight in Ankurum. I think I rode into the hills, but I was stunned and remember little. I suppose my horse threw me.”
Her old face told me nothing. She stroked the cat.
“Ankurum? You’re many miles from Ankurum now. Nearer Sogotha. And higher than the hills. These are the mountains-the Ring.”
“Whose camp is this?” I asked.
“Oh, not anyone’s in particular. Though ask another and he might say we were Geret’s people. A merchant camp. This is a caravan bound for the old cities beyond the Ring and the Water. We travel in a pack because of thieves. Not many in the mountains, but a few, and, with the winter coming on them, they like to be well provided for.”
“Do you carry weapons for the city wars?”
“Some. Mostly foodstuffs. It’s poor husbandry across the Water. A bad barren land.”
Irony, bitter as herbs, tasted in my mouth. Another caravan; this time, a true image. And I in the wagon of the healer, I, who had been healer of sorts. And they went in fear of thieves.
The girl brought a sticky porridge then, but I could not eat it. The old woman made me a drink, bitter as the irony in my mouth, and I slept.
I did not remember my dreams now. In the mornings I was heavy from the bitter drink, and at first everything was blurred and uncertain. We were on the mountain pass, it seemed, going over the Ring, but it was colder now, and there was a four-day-old rainstorm beating outside the string of caves in which they had taken shelter. You could hear the storm, but it did not sound like a natural thing, more like some huge animal howling and scrabbling to get in at us.
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Fresh icy water ran in the big cave, and the fires were always going, acrid and spitting.
The second day, a man with a fur-edged robe, and a couple of henchmen behind him, came to the wagon mouth.
“Uasti,” he called out in a deep important voice.
It was the healer-woman’s name clearly, for she left her iron pot and opened the flap wider.
“What?”
” ‘What?’ Is this the way to speak to me?”
“How else, Geret wagon master, if I want to know what you come seeking?”
I could see Geret was discomfited. He was used to having his way with people, a bully and organizer, perhaps quite intelligent in his limited fashion. He had the slightly bulbous eyes that seemed so common to his type, thin Curled hair, and very red full lips. Now he gave a little laugh.
“I defer to your age, Uasti. An old woman’s privilege to be rude.”
“Quite right,” Uasti said. “And now?”
“And now, this girl I hear you’ve taken in-some Plains savage-”
I had been sitting among the rugs, half asleep, aimless and detached, but the bee’s sting reached me. I got up, and there was strength in my legs for the first time since I had run from my butchery.
“Very savage,” I said, leaning out over him, one hand on the nearest wagon strut, the other taking him lightly by the fur collar. “Have you heard of the warrior-women of the tribes? I am one, Geret of the wagons.”
Geret looked alarmed. He made a few brief noises, and I wondered why the two behind him did not come forward and detach my grasp. I glanced at them, and one was openly smirking. It appeared Geret was not a popular man. Yet it took Uasti to laugh.
“Let go of him, girl, before he wets his fine leggings.”
I let go. Geret flushed and pulled his robe straight.
“I had come,” he snapped, a little throatily, “to say she might stay with us, provided she worked for her food and comfort. Now, I think otherwise.”
“Oh, yes?” Uasti said. “And where will she go? We’re high in the Ring, Geret, and the snow is only a wish or so away. Does not the oldest law of the traveling people say, ‘Take in the stranger lest he die’?”
“Die? This one?” Geret looked skeptical. “She got up here
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by her own wits, let her use them and get down again. Ill have none of the tribes in my place.”
“Your place? I must remember to tell Oroll and the other merchants what you say. And don’t look angry at me, Geret. Remember there’ll be illness and trouble enough coming for you to thank me when I cure it. Now, no more about Shein-my-wagon. I’ll take care of her and no bother to you. She eats hardly at all, so that needn’t lose you any sleep.”
Geret, furious, began to say something else.
“No,” Uasti cut in, sharp as a knife, “just you remember who I am, before who you are. You’ll be glad you did what I said if a fever comes on you, and I have to tend it.”
The menace in her words was unmistakable, and I saw for the first time, clearly, what power the healer had in her own community if she was good at her trade, and made them recollect it.
“Be damned!” Geret snapped, turned and made off.
The two henchmen offered brief respectful salutes to Uasti, and trudged after, grinning behind the wagon leader’s back.
2
So now I was Uasti’s. Her property, for I had my life at her demand. Yet it seemed she wanted nothing. It seemed so.
She let me wander where I wished, through the big cave into smaller caves, to be alone in the dank darkness. I was used to the hostility of these wagon riders. It was a familiar thing. Soon, if nothing happened, they would accept me, perhaps, in their own way. For now, they were a little afraid, and that was enough. When I went back to the wagon, she made no comment on arrival or absence. She would stroke the black cat, and offer me food, which I might accept or refuse as I liked. The girl chivied her, it is true, hating me for many varied reasons. Uasti would glance at me to see if it bothered me, and then tell her to go, or to be quiet, or to think of other things. The girl, in awe of the healer-woman, obeyed sullenly, but one evening, when Uasti was gone to see to some sick child, the girl came in and found me on my own. I had been mixing together some herbs which the old woman had asked me to do. This was a new thing, to set me tasks, but I could hardly refuse. I was going at it aimlessly, a pinch of this, a pinch of that, green and brown and gray stuff, when the girl came through the flap and ran straight at me.
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“You! Who told you to meddle with that?” she screeched. This was her office, clearly, and she did not like to be usurped. Something occurred to me then, but I had no time to think of it at that moment. All the herbs went scattering, and she was tearing at my hair and beating at my chest, and trying to claw with her nails, but they were short and did not do much damage. She was bigger than I, but I was very strong and she had not reckoned on that. I got her hands and then her body and opened the flap and flung her out. It was not far, and I aimed her toward some rugs heaped up to dry by a fire, but I expect her bones rattled at the impact. She began to shriek and wail, and many women and a few men came up.