When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior's Path

Grief...

When I woke in the morning, Sparrow was still asleep. She was hot with fever. I got up and dressed myself, and still she didn’t wake. Before I went downstairs, I stopped by my warrior’s room. There was no sign she had been there. I found her in the kitchen, sitting at a table with Namet. She looked like she’d been up all night.

I had forgotten about Namet.

“I’m sorry for your grief, Mother,” I told her.

“Thank you, child,” she said.

She too looked as if she had not yet been to bed.

“Can I get you something?” I asked her.

She shook her head.

I turned to Maara. “Sparrow has a fever.”

“I can fend for myself today,” she said. “Do what you can for her.”

I made Sparrow a bowl of soft porridge and milk, something she could swallow easily, and brewed her a tea of willow bark and rose hips. When I returned to her room, she was awake. She lay in the bed staring up at the ceiling.

“She died,” she said.

“I know.”

“She died.”

This time it was a whisper. It was as if, by saying so, she might convince herself that it was true.

I sat down beside her and handed her the bowl of tea. It seemed such a small thing to offer her.

§ § §

I looked in on Sparrow as often as I could that day. When I found her sleeping, I didn’t wake her. To let her sleep was the kindest thing I could do for her. Whenever I found her awake, I brought her soft food and tea and sat with her a while. Although she didn’t want to talk, she seemed to take some comfort from my presence. I stroked her hair and rubbed her back until she slept again.

Maara slept for several hours that morning. She had been up all night with Namet, listening to her stories of her only child. She would say no more to me than that about it.

While Maara was sleeping, I went to the companions’ loft. I hoped I hadn’t missed hearing about the battle, but I shouldn’t have worried. The companions who had been there were delighted to tell the story over and over again to anyone who cared to listen.

“The snow began three days ago.”

“I thought it was two,” I said.

“No. Three.”

“It began day before yesterday here.”

“Well, it began three days ago at the ravine,” said Taia.

Taia was an apprentice. In another year, she would be a warrior. Her green eyes and copper hair set her apart from the others even more than her height, although she was the tallest woman in Merin’s house.

“Vintel had our warriors strung out up and down the riverbank for over a mile,” she said, “but we waited all day for nothing. They never came.”

“You should have heard the fights that night around the campfires,” said Bec with glee. Bec loved a fight.

“Some said there was no need to freeze there by the river for another night,” said Taia, “that the northerners weren’t coming. Others said we should wait and see.”

“If the strange one had been there,” said Bec, “they would have had the truth out of her one way or the other.”

It was the first time I had heard my warrior called ‘the strange one.’ I was indignant. “They had the truth out of her already.”