Page 24 of The Summer Pass

Experienced Warriors

On their second evening on the road, Barda set off into the scrubland of the foothills with his bow to hunt, though none of them knew what he might find around here that was good to eat. He was gone so long that Gurti gave up waiting for meat for the pot, and she and Susami began cooking beans again.

“Do you think he could have got lost?” Susami asked, scanning the darkening horizon.

With Barda, that was possible. “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Gurti signed back, though she knew that wasn’t really an answer to the question. Sometimes one got tired of making excuses for one’s own sons.

But Barda made it back to the camp, just after it had grown fully dark. He was on the road, coming in the direction they had just travelled, and he didn’t seem to have shot anything, but he had brought three people with him. They were all mounted and leading a couple of heavily laden pack animals. There were two lowland women, an older and a younger, and the third person was Halza.

“Look who I found!” Barda announced. He looked like he was finding this all great fun.

“I’m not eating any of them,” Padunu muttered, and Otoni gave a shriek of laughter.

“Hello, everyone,” said Halza weakly.

The newcomers dismounted, and the older woman grabbed Barda’s elbow and said something to him in the lowland tongue, gesturing toward the fire and Gurti’s cooking pot. What was she saying? Asking what they were cooking? Blood to the Blue Heaven that she hadn’t understood Padunu’s joke.

She was a small, thin woman, with white hair piled on top of her head under a kerchief, but she looked as tough as tanned leather. Her daughter was sturdier, with colour in her cheeks, not like some of these wan, wispy lowland women. But she was old to be unmarried, well into her twenties by her looks. The two of them went back to the pack animals to dig in their luggage.

“Ma,” said Barda, “I’m to tell you they don’t need dinner, as they have their own food.”

Ah, so that’s what it was. Very decent behaviour.

“Of course they may share our meal,” said Gurti. “But what are they doing here? This isn’t the road to Radush.”

“That’s what I said. They said they weren’t going back to Radush. They thought they were still following Vanu, but they took a wrong turn somewhere. I say it’s pretty convenient that they ‘accidentally’ followed Susami’s party, hey?” Barda wriggled his eyebrows meaningfully.

“Barda!” Halza hissed.

He still did not speak their language well, mixing up many of the words and mispronouncing everything, but he understood most of what was said around him now, after four months in Umtúshta. He should have spent that time learning hand language instead, if he’d wanted to get anywhere with Susami. It was just as well he hadn’t.

Gurti could see that it probably had been an accident. Why would he want the girl he had jilted to meet the girl he had been courting in her place? He might be an idiot, but he wasn’t mad.

“Why were you following Lord Vanu?” she asked. “I thought you were going home to your village.”

To her surprise, it was the young woman who answered. She’d just come forward with her mother, both carrying baskets of food. She spoke Hawada very clearly and correctly.

“When Halza told us that he had followed the Lion of the Summer Pass to aid in his quest to defend his homeland, we did not want to stand in his way. So we came along. But then we followed the wrong group!”

She shot Halza a disappointed look, and Gurti could guess that he had taken over navigating once he joined them. They had been doing fine following Vanu’s train before that.

“I thought that you were following behind your lord,” the young woman went on, “but Barda tells us that you are going a different way. Will you tell me why?”

“We are on the road to Manáshta in the Summer Pass,” said Gurti. “You will not want to come so far from home.”

The young woman turned to her mother, and they conferred in their language. Halza listened with a face that grew more and more pained.

“We would like to see the Summer Pass,” Halza’s betrothed said at last. “And if we can help in the fight … I know we are not experienced warriors like the women of Hawakhurta, but when we heard that Halza had joined Lord Vanu’s cause, we were so proud of him.”

“Indeed,” said Gurti. She tried not to sound scornful. She knew she must not meet the gaze of any of the men, or someone would begin laughing—she or they.

“They’re not warriors,” Halza cut in. “You’re thinking of the women of … of the … ” He plainly didn’t know the Hawada word.

“The young women of the Steppes ride into battle alongside their men,” said Gurti. “In the mountains, women use bows mostly to hunt and swords only to defend our strongholds. But we do know how to wield them.”

In truth, it had been years since Gurti had picked up a bow or a sword, and she had never been very good with either in her youth. She was not a warrior. Nor were any of the other women of their party. But there was something about the way that Halza so confidently declared it that made her itch to put him in his place.

Chapter 10