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

Secrets

While the good weather lasted, Maara and I went out into the countryside almost every day. She showed me how to make snares from twisted strands of the inner bark of a certain bramble and how to set them out on a rabbit run. We caught a number of rabbits that way, and from the skins she made me a pair of leggings that covered my legs from the ankle to above the knee.

I heard a few unkind remarks about how odd they looked, but I didn’t mind. I could walk all day through the snow, and my legs stayed dry and warm.

Once, when we went to check one of our snares, we heard a rabbit scream in terror. A fox had discovered the rabbit helpless in the trap and was too preoccupied with it to notice our approach.

Without taking her eyes from the fox, Maara knelt down and felt the earth beside her, until her fingers found a stone. With a sidearm throw I’d never seen before, she sent the stone at the fox’s head. The fox fell, stunned, and she ran over to it and slit its throat.

She skinned the fox and dressed its body as if it were a rabbit. Then she made a fire and cooked it and gave me some to eat. The meat was tough and stringy, with a strong, bitter taste. I didn’t like it, but I believed she was testing me, and I forced myself to eat more than I wanted of it.

She scowled at me.

“If that had been the rabbit,” she said, “you would have eaten twice as much.”

“I like rabbit,” I said.

“Food is the distance you can travel in a day, and the cold you can withstand at night.”

Reluctantly I reached out my hand for more.

§ § §

Winter was coming to an end. As the days grew longer, our walks took us farther and farther from home.

Maara saw it first, a dark, lumpy thing lying in a snowbank. At first I thought it might be one of our cattle, winter-killed, but when we drew near, I saw that it was the body of a man, clad in animal skins, lying face down in the snow.

Maara turned him over. The sight sickened me. Animals had gnawed his face and hands. I thought that was why his hand was missing, until I saw the remnants of the bandage I had helped the healer to apply.

“Oh,” I said. “He died.”

“No,” said Maara. “Someone killed him.”

The front of his leather shirt was stained a rusty brown. She pulled it up and showed me the wound under his heart, just a small cut where the blade went in, hardly enough, you would think, to kill a person.

“Why did they kill him?” I asked her.

My voice came out a whisper, although I hadn’t intended it to.

She didn’t answer right away. She was searching through his clothing. In the pocket of his tunic she found a pouch that contained a set of firestones, some flint arrowheads, and a little carved statue of the Mother. Another pocket held a heel of bread.

“Was it because he was hurt?” I asked. “Because he couldn’t keep up?”

“His own people didn’t kill him.”

Then I remembered the Lady asking Vintel if she would give up her right to take blood for the blood of Eramet. In my mind’s eye I saw Vintel’s face as she denied the bond between them.

Maara continued her examination. From beneath his body she drew out a long, thin object wrapped in leather. The wrappings fell away to reveal a piece of dark wood, intricately carved and highly polished. It was a bow, only a little over half my height, while the bows I’d seen before were as tall as I or taller. It might have been a child’s bow except that it was much too heavy for a child. It was broad above and below the grip, tapering at the ends, and made of layers of wood and horn, all glued together. It had no bowstring but seemed none the worse for having spent the winter in a snowbank.