If you are a new subscriber, you may wish to start at the beginning.
I’d survived my first weeks of training, a real raid, and even cannibals. I’d endured meals like fermented horse milk, salted meat, and curds. Too-infrequent washing. The latrine—dubbed “the shit pit.” The ubiquitous belches, body odor, and smells even fouler. And spitting—constant spitting. I would never understand why men spit so much, but there was certainly not a more disgusting habit. The Marches—and men—had proved trying, but not intolerable.
In the day, there was no escape from the sun’s glare. There was either constant wind or unbearable stillness, which meant flies—relentless flies—and midges biting wherever they could find bare skin. The fields were full of nettles, thistles, and something I called “bristle grass.” The patrols were unforgiving. Hours and hours on horseback, riding over rough, monotonous terrain, or just sitting under the sun and watching the horizon, then riding back to do the same the next day. Finding trails. Abandoned reaver camps. Cold campfires and the bones of poached stock. If we were lucky, tracking them to their source. There was the ghostly unease of riding night watches under the blue moonlight, able to see almost nothing but shadows, but hearing everything in the darkness, twitching at the creak of every animal and insect, all my hairs standing at attention. Listening to the eerie howling of the wolves after a hunt.
Breaks came on trading days or visits to clan encampments, few but welcome, when I could meet with local clans or the minor karevans passing through the steppe. Though I woke each morning painful and stiff, I wore my cuts and bruises like a crown, having earned them honestly. It was the way I felt when I was training horses. I relished the ache in my muscles at the end of a long day. It felt like accomplishment. It had purpose. And I knew it meant I was growing stronger.
Most of the men were kind, generous, and forgiving as I came to know them, especially considering my greenness and the strangeness of having a woman among them. Many were green as well. They were young men—boys, really—also here to collect their scalps before they could gain their rights at home. They would become familiar faces, mostly without names.
Once the torches were extinguished, no words were spoken in the darkened felt-houses. Aric was always gone before I awoke. When not on patrols by his side, we trained after Dawn, and he went off on other business with a small guard, leaving me in the care of the Warband to work with the horses until nightfall. After eating, he’d nod off beyond the light of the fire. But I knew he was always watching. I was never far from his sight.
Foul as they might be, I was delighted when the other men felt easy enough to relate their most repugnant stories in my company. And when during my instruction, they didn’t rush to help me up. When we could all laugh at the day’s mishaps—including my own—over cups of kumis or mead by the hearth.
About the hearth at night, they were quick to laugh, full of wild—certainly exaggerated—accounts of martial feats and sexual conquests. In the flicker of the firelight, swathed in darkness, in the middle of nowhere on this forsaken plain, I fought back the sleep that came for me after long days of riding to sit under the stars and listen to them tell their stories and sing their songs. Clapping their hands in unison, beating upon drums of skins or pots, bowing and strumming their lyres, and chanting their poetry.
The persistent rhythm was like a potent elixir working its way down my spine and into my chest like a second heart. Unlike wine, it cleared my thoughts. And the winding melodies were a balm that smoothed the ends of my frayed nerves. Voices joyous, strident, and plaintive sang words of beauty, heroism, and longing, deep into the night. Their stories were eloquent and bold. Heroic and funny. Romantic and sorrowful. They were noble and rude, and some of them quite filthy. They were wonderful. I hated the moment when Aric would say goodnight, and I must retreat with him to his tent. The music and laughter would continue without us into the forsaken hours while my ears strained to hear until I finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen : Trial