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

Maara took the sword from my hand.

“What is this?” she said.

“It’s a sword,” I replied, as if she couldn’t see that for herself.

“What are you doing with it?”

“Practicing.” I wiped away the sweat running down my face. “I’m not used to its weight anymore.”

We were standing on the practice ground, where I had been giving a wooden post the benefit of my clumsy blows. I was discouraged. Although I had grown a little taller in the last year, I still had to use both hands to wield the heavy sword, and it had been so long since I’d practiced with it that I felt like a beginner again.

“Did I say anything to you about practicing with a sword?”

Maara leaned the sword against the post and beckoned to me to follow her. She found us a place to sit in the shadow of the earthworks where it was cooler.

I waited for her to speak. I had thought she would be pleased with me. Instead she sat frowning down at the ground.

At last she said, “I don’t want you to practice with a sword. Not even with the wooden ones.”

“Why not?”

“When will you be strong enough to wield a sword one-handed?”

It was a question I didn’t know how to answer.

“Someday,” I said.

“I don’t think so.”

What dreadful thing would she tell me next? Was she saying I would never be a warrior after all?

“You don’t believe I’ll ever be strong enough?”

“No.”

I couldn’t comprehend what I was hearing. Why would she have apprenticed me if she didn’t believe she could make a warrior of me? I almost suspected her of accepting me because she knew that I would fail and so release her early from her obligation.

“I thought you believed. . .”

“What?”

“That I could become a warrior someday.”

“Of course you can,” she said. “You will.”

“A warrior without a sword?”

“A warrior with a weapon she can use.”

She reached for something that lay hidden in the tall grass. I recognized at once the bow she took from the man who killed Eramet.

“The bow and the sword are very different weapons,” she said. “A sword takes both strength and endurance. A bow takes a different kind of strength. It also takes great skill and more patience than most people ever have.”

I was only half listening to her. I was grieving the loss of my dream of myself with sword and shield, standing with my comrades, as I had imagined my mother and her sisters standing, shoulder to shoulder, against the enemy.

“A bow is a coward’s weapon,” I said. I was mouthing words I’d heard somewhere without understanding what they meant.

My warrior frowned at me. “Any weapon is a coward’s weapon in the hands of a coward.”

I blushed with shame and looked away, but my pride was wounded, and I refused to understand her.

“Why did you accept me if you thought so little of me?”

“So little?” She waited for me to meet her eyes. “I think the world of you.”

A lump in my throat prevented me from speaking.

“If I did not,” she said, “I would hang a sword from your belt and a shield from your shoulder and pray that you never had to use them.”

If she was making a joke, I didn’t find it funny.

She turned the bow over in her hands, admiring it. Her fingers followed the carvings, swirling spirals that meandered up and down its length. When I had first seen it, it had no bowstring. Now a new string wound around the shaft of the unstrung bow.

“Do you know what kind of bow this is?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

“It’s a forest bow. Powerful, but meant to be used at close range. Easy to carry among the trees. Small enough not to get in its own way.”

“Small enough even for me?”

I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. She answered me in kind.

“Yes,” she said. “Small enough even for you.” Then in a kinder voice she said, “And like you, it is powerful and clever. Like you, it has strengths that are easily overlooked, but they are many nonetheless.”

The sweetness of her words was meant to help me swallow a bitter truth, but I was not yet ready to give in.

“If a bow is such a wonderful weapon,” I said, “why is it that you carry a sword?”

“For the same reason you want so much to carry one. A sword is a symbol of power. A hunter may carry a bow. Even a child can make a bow to shoot at birds that would scratch the farmers’ seed out of the ground. Only a warrior has the right to bear a sword.” She gave me a long look. “I understand your disappointment, but you must face the truth about yourself.”