The Steerswoman's Road (8 page)

One of the dragons sent a random gout of flame splashing
against the center of the fireplace.

Rowan searched her knowledge, seeking information about dragons.
She found little, next to nothing. She had only her eyes and her reason.

She watched for a few moments, then spoke to the woman beside
her. “The larger they are, the slower they move. They’ll cover ground quickly,
because of the length of their stride, but these don’t react as fast as the
tiny ones. Those flat heads have no room for much brain; they’re not very
smart. Their eyes are set on the sides of their heads, but the flame comes from
their snouts. So, if they’re looking at us, they can’t burn us; when they’re
trying to burn, they can’t see us well.”

The woman nodded; one of the dragons froze, studying her
with its right eye.

Rowan said, “I think they’re attracted by motion,” and then
the dragon swung to face them. Rowan shoved the woman to the left and moved to
the right. The flame spouted to where the woman had stood.

Rowan was up against the fireplace. The woman had fallen
against one of the pillars supporting the balcony overhead; the closed door of
the room behind her began to burn.

Rowan found herself pinned in the gaze of another dragon.
She prepared herself to dodge, but a falling piece of timber in its opposite
field of vision distracted it. It sent white flame in that direction, then
pulled itself off the chandelier to investigate. Rowan hoped it would find
enough to occupy itself.

Two remained: the dog-sized dragon on the left, and one
slightly smaller on the right. Rowan realized that the woman by the pillar
would shortly be trapped between the dragons on the chandelier and dragons that
would emerge from the room behind her.

The two beasts were weaving again, searching. The larger
shrieked in frustration, tilted back its head, and spat a fountain of fire
straight up. Rowan watched the second, and at the instant its weaving brought
its face toward her, she ran straight at it.

She brought her sword down on its flat head. The blow drove
its head against the stone floor, and it was like striking an iron bar.

The larger creature noticed the movement, took an instant to
study Rowan with its left eye, then the edge of a wooden board was driven
against its throat. Aim ruined, the flame it spat caught the left side of Rowan’s
cloak.

The dragon beneath Rowan’s sword twisted free, uninjured,
and began spitting at random. Rowan dropped to the ground, writhed out of her
burning cloak, rolled to the right, and froze. The flames on her cloak snuffed
against the stone floor.

The woman’s plank had splintered down its length. She flung
one half overhead past the dragons, one half to the left. She stood motionless,
as the dog-sized dragon cocked its gaze left toward the clattering board.

She was standing some three feet in front of its blind
snout. Her face was an agony of terror, but she did not move.

The smaller dragon had sent its flames at waist level,
passing over Rowan’s head. It subsided and began searching again.

Rowan knew that the tableau could not last. When the dragon
on the right was facing her again, she moved forward, in full view of the
larger one, and with a sweeping blow, she struck the smaller creature across
the neck. Her sword skidded harmlessly up its length, then caught the edge of
one garnet eye. The eye shattered with a weird merry sound, like breaking
china. The dragon did not cry out but twisted, trying to find her with its
remaining eye.

In the moment the larger beast turned its snout toward
Rowan, the woman in front of it took three steps back, then broke and ran. The
dragon turned back and swept her with fire. Her nightshift flared like a lamp wick.

Rowan scuttled back, grabbed her cloak, dashed to the left
and threw the cloak around the burning woman. Then she moved right again,
distracting the dragons as the woman rolled on the ground.

Her feint was not sufficient. The dog-sized dragon heaved itself
off the chandelier toward the cloaked figure.

“Damn you!” Rowan rushed it, struck at one eye, and
shattered it.

The east wall collapsed inward from ceiling to floor,
settling like a dropped curtain. Heated air struck Rowan like a blow, and she
was thrown back against the wall and to the ground.

Someone was tugging on her arm. She could not breathe. She
felt herself pulled to her feet, opened her eyes, then closed them against
searing smoke. “This way!” a voice shouted. It was Bel. The Outskirter pulled
her along.

Rowan fought. “No, wait!” She stumbled and fell. Bel pulled
her up again. “That woman,” Rowan cried. “Is she all right?”

Bel pushed her forward. “There’s no one.”

In blurred vision, Rowan saw the closet door and found the
presence of mind to make her way into it. Out of the back wall, two huge hands
grabbed her under the arms and pulled. Wood splinters scored her scalp and her
back; then she was through and into a pitch-dark room. The man released her and
turned back to help Bel.

Rowan groped and found shelves of crockery. Plates crashed
to the floor. Bel was behind her again. “Out. Straight ahead.”

They were in the kitchen. Rowan regained her bearings and
hurried through into the dining room. There, orange light from the courtyard
led them to the open double doors.

Two lines of people were passing buckets to and from the
well. The water was being poured not on the inn but on the walls and roofs of
adjacent houses. Rowan and Bel were pushed aside by the man who had helped
them. He broke through the bucket line and ran to the edge of the crowd
surrounding the courtyard, and into the arms of his surviving woman.

As Rowan and Bel reached the crowd, there was a shout, and a
milling motion off to the left. A word was being passed from person to person. “J
ann ik I”

“Look, there’s Jannik!”

“About time,” Rowan muttered, wiping soot from her face. She
and Bel moved deeper into the crowd.

On the left, the mass of people parted, and a small man
emerged and walked across the courtyard. He was no taller than Bel and somewhat
round, dressed in silver and green. His hair was white and short, his beard a
trim white point. He had the face of a habitually cheerful man.

Halfway across, he paused and looked up at the disaster with
an expression of vast annoyance. He raised his hands, and the crowd hushed.

Rowan slipped farther back among the people, urging Bel with
a hand on her arm.

Bel resisted. “Don’t you want to see this?”

“I want to get out of here.”

They left the crowd behind and found their way out and down a
twisting street that ended by the lamp-lit docks. Rowan heard a voice
exhorting, “Move, man, or Morgan’ll skin us.” She followed the sound.

They came to a heavily loaded barge where a narrow blond man
was cursing at a pair of dockhands, who were viewing the glow above the
buildings with interest.

“You’re going to
Morgan’s Chance?”
Rowan asked.

He eyed her. “Passengers? Come later, there’s a barge at
dawn.” Rowan indicated Bel with a tilt of her head. “She’s crew.”

“What, her?” The crewman examined Bel. “Don’t know her.”

Bel spoke up. “I’m the cook’s new assistant. And she’s a
steerswoman.”

He conceded a bit grudgingly. “All right then, get in. But
don’t rock, mind. We’re riding low.”

It took the better part of an hour to cross the shallows
from the loading docks to the Morgan’s
Chance.
Their boatmates were all members of the ship’s crew, returning
before the onslaught of passengers due at sunrise. Most were silent, watching
the subsiding glow above the buildings that lined the shore. One tipsy fellow,
oblivious to the chaos they were leaving behind, was singing a crude song, most
of the words of which seemed to have escaped him. He improvised.

The barge was crowded with crates. Additionally, there were
three goats and two wooden cages of ducks. The ducks showed great interest in
the proceedings, extending their necks out through the slats as far as
possible. The cages, abristle with yellow beaks, emitted a constant natter of
avian complaint.

The barge rode low on the water. Where Rowan and Bel sat in
the gunwales, Rowan brooding, Bel looking at the surroundings, the calm surface
of the water was a handsbreadth away from swamping aboard. Bel leaned over and
trailed one hand into the cold, starlit darkness. Then she pulled it out and
tasted. “I heard it was salt,” she said to Rowan. Then she affected Reeder’s
condescending tone. “Tell me, lady, why is the sea salt?”

The Outskirter seemed remarkably resilient; for her own
part, Rowan found it impossible to take her mind off the disaster they were
leaving behind. “No one knows,” she answered, half-indifferently.

“Ha?” Bel returned to her own voice. “I can tell you. A
wizard had a magical box that delivered him salt whenever he called for it. But
while he was out, his apprentice tried to impress some friends by demonstrating
its magic. The apprentice forgot the words that halted the spell, and the box
kept spewing out salt, until the whole house was filled. In desperation, the
friends dragged the box to a cliff and tossed it into the sea. And there it
lies, to this day.”

Rowan looked at her friend and smiled despite herself. “A
possible explanation.”

Eventually the barge sidled up to the ship. Cables were
tossed down for the cargo. Meanwhile, the returning sailors dragged themselves
wearily up rope ladders.

Rowan noticed Bel watching the technique with a grim studiousness
and realized that the barbarian had no intention of letting unfamiliarity slow
her down again. When her turn came, Bel pulled herself up carefully, clearly
considering every step. Rowan followed close behind, with complete ease,
keeping an eye on her friend. At one point, a small swell caused the ship to
tilt; for a moment, the ladder swung away to one side, hanging unsupported save
at the top. Bel looked up in startlement, then down at Rowan and the dark
water, then at the ladder itself. Recognizing her safety, she laughed in
delight, then ascended faster.

Morgan was at the railing, shouting questions to the
arriving crew. “What’s the problem ashore?”

Reaching the top, Rowan answered him herself. “Dragonfire.”

“What!”

“Saranna’s Inn was attacked by nestlings. It’s destroyed.”

He leaned farther past the rail’s edge, gazing out at the
shore. A reddish orange glow marked the former location of the inn. “Gods
below,” he muttered. He turned away, then came storming back. “It’s ridiculous,
the dragons haven’t got out of hand for years. And the breeding grounds aren’t
even near there. Where was Jannik, fast asleep? Are those fools ashore afraid
to wake a wizard?” He cursed again, viciously.

“He came,” a crew member answered. “A bit too late, but he
came.”

A voice spoke from behind Rowan. “You look as though you
were in it yourselves.” She turned and found the officer they had seen at the
Tea Shop with Morgan. “Tyson, ship’s navigator,” he introduced himself. “We’ll
talk later.” It was customary for any sea-traveling steers-woman to consult
with the navigator, to update the ship’s charts. “But, you’re not injured?”

“No.” She brushed her hair away from her forehead. The hand
came back sooty. “Singed, perhaps.”

Bel spoke up. “But we lost our possessions in the fire. Our
traveling packs. We have our clothes and my sword, that’s all.”

“I’ll have the provisions I brought for the voyage,” Rowan
pointed out. “I arranged yesterday for a crate that I left at the cargo docks.”
Tyson looked distressed. “But your notes and your charts?”

“All gone.”

His brow furrowed. “I have some chart paper you can have. I’ll
buy some new at Wulfshaven. And some old pens I don’t use. Some ink powder ...”

“You’re very kind.”

“And look at you, you haven’t even got a cloak. Can’t have
you catching a chill; I’ve a spare you can use.”

Rowan was taken aback. “You’re too generous.”

“Nonsense, you’re one of us, and we take care of our own.”
Tyson was referring to the solidarity of spirit that sailors shared with the
steerswomen. He stopped a passing crewman and directed him to bring the items
from the navigator’s cabin, then excused himself to oversee some of the
preparations at hand.

“A pleasant fellow,” Bel commented. “Perhaps I’ll become a steers-woman,
so that everyone will be nice to me.”

“Then you’d have to deal with the Reeders of the world.” Bel
made a face. “True. It’s hardly worth it.”

When the crewman returned with Tyson’s donations, Bel asked
for directions to the galley. Unable to explain clearly enough for the Outskirter,
he finally led her personally. Rowan remained on deck and presently noticed her
crate of provisions being hauled aboard. A few questions to the purser
determined the best place to stow it; Rowan made sure she knew how to find it
again. Then she wandered forward, keeping out of the way of the work being
done.

A handful of crewwomen jogged past her to clamber up the rigging.
They tugged at the mainsail halyards, readying them for the command to set the
sails. The women waited at their ease, chatting softly to themselves, calling
up to a pair of men working the main sky-sail, all of them visible to Rowan
only as distant forms blocking starlight, shifting against the sky as the ship
rocked slowly.

Rowan went back amidships, where the passenger barge was
expected.

The ship’s activities slowly came to a standstill, and crew
members became idle. Morgan regained his composure and sauntered about the
deck, exuding a carefully assumed nonchalance. Tyson watched him with something
like amusement. Eventually the east brightened.

The light revealed a vertical line of smoke onshore where
the glow had been. Rowan was standing at the starboard railing, facing shore.
Looking around her, she saw that most of the people on deck were on or near the
starboard side: deckhands, a few officers, and three early-boarded passengers.