“Damn,” said Stephon, disgustedly.
“Wait, I’m not done yet. So I went away about half a mile and hid out in this kind of gully there was down there, and waited until morning. Long about first light, here went the wagon out of there and that, still three people in it, no sign of anybody else, but it wasn’t no wagoneer. Least they wasn’t dressed like wagoneer people. It was a servitor and a woman and a girl from Women’s Country. I couldn’t see who, but it was Women’s Country people. And somethin’ else. I swear there was nothin’ in that wagon but them. No bodies, nothin’. But when I went over where they’d been camped, all there was there was ashes from one campfire and that’s all. Challer’s head was gone. So were the rest of’ em, gone.”
There was a lengthy silence, during which Chernon made himself small and inconspicuous, hoping they would not notice him again. He did not know what to think about what he had heard. It occurred to him that Michael might prefer that he hadn’t heard it. The Commanders didn’t even look at him, however, and he thought they had forgotten he was there. So, probably Besset wasn’t even telling the truth, and that’s why Michael didn’t seem surprised. Besset was lying, or had been drunk, or had been eating mushrooms the way some of the Gypsies did to make them see visions. Maybe. Though, if he was telling the truth or something like the truth, it could mean the women had some kind of weapon nobody knew about. Or some kind of power nobody knew about.
Chernon wanted to believe it was some kind of power they had, something he could learn about and use. Later, when he listened outside the officers’ quarters window, however, he learned that Stephon and Michael thought it must be a weapon.
“That’s probably it,” Michael rumbled. “The thing they’re hiding. The thing the women know that they’re not talking about. Something left over from old preconvulsion times, most likely. Isn’t that like them! Tell us we have to do without any preconvulsion stuff and then use it themselves! Hypocrites! We need to find out about that. We’ll get this war with Susantown out of the way, then we’ll concentrate on finding out what this is. Maybe send out some of the younger men. Maybe fix some of them up like itinerants….”
“How?”
“Oh, teach ’em to do some kind of act. Acrobats or something. Juggling, maybe. We’ve got a few young ones who are good at that.”
Chernon had not stayed under the window to hear any more. If they sent anyone, he wanted to be that one.
FALL CAME with chilly winds and the leaves turning gold when the word swept through Women’s Country like another kind of wind. The evil intentions of the Susantown garrison had been confirmed. War was declared.
Every woman and child in the town was on the wall when the garrison marched out, staring down at the parade ground where the warriors assembled, banners flying, armor glittering like ten thousand sun-shattered mirrors, throwing shards of glory into their eyes. Barten was not wearing the device Myra had sewn for him, but he pointed to his pack when he saw her, indicating to her that he had it. Stavia thought he was very pale.
“He thought he had another year to make up his mind,” she surprised herself by saying to Morgot. “Then, all of a sudden, he didn’t have any time at all.”
“Barten?” her mother asked. “That’s true, Stavia. I spoke to Michael during carnival this summer, and he told me Barten did seem quite surprised when he was told he was a year older than he thought.”
The warrior drum and buglemen began their blammety blam, ta-ra ta-ra; the ranks wheeled into an endless line and began the march, di-da-rum di-da-rum di-da-rum. Before it seemed possible they could be gone, there was only the flutter of guidons down the road and a haze of dust to the east, showing which way they went. Then the wagons pulled out, full of food and blankets and extra boots, driven by old one-eyed, lack-armed, lost-footed warriors who hadn’t died while the glory was still around them as they probably wished they had done.
The women’s band struck up, “Gone Away, Oh, Gone Away,” and Stavia found herself singing.
“Where’s my lovely warrior gone,
the one who made me sigh,
He’s gone to fight for pretty girls,
for Mom and apple pie.
Gone away, oh gone away,
I’ll never see him more,
he’s found another lover
on some far distant shore.”
Though Susantown wasn’t some far-distant shore but merely sixty miles east, and the warriors wouldn’t go more than half that distance, probably, before meeting the Susantown garrison coming west. Perhaps there would be a treaty and no one would be killed.
One of the Council members came up to Morgot and asked a question.
“Bandits?” Morgot said. “Yes. I did speak to the garrison Commanders about that, Councilor.”
The Councilor, an elderly woman whom Stavia had met half a dozen times but never really come to know at all well, mumbled something which Stavia could not hear.
Morgot answered, softly but clearly. “Oh, we all agree that’s likely, ma’am, but there’s no proof as yet.” Then she turned, letting Stavia surprise a look on both their faces, a shut-in, secret look which she had seen before on her mother’s face, though rarely. Not for the first time, she felt the wheels of Women’s Country turning beneath the city, turning silently, without her help.
As on that night on the road from Susantown.
“Which never happened,” Stavia reminded herself. “Which never happened.” For a long time after that night, she had caught herself imagining what might be going on. Men with tattoos from different garrisons, all together, almost as if they’d been selected to make up some kind of intergarrison team. For what?
