“I looked into his face,” Neesha said, almost in wonder. “I looked into his face and into his eyes, in the midst of all that confusion. He meant to kill me. He wanted it.”
“Some men do.”
“He would have killed anyone he could stick a sword into.”
Justification. Rationalization. Easy to recognize. I’d faced both myself, when I was young. When I’d killed my first man. “Yes. But you prevented him from killing anyone. You did exactly what we are intended to do, as outriders. This isn’t dancing. This is fighting to stay alive and to make certain those in our care stay alive.”
After a moment, Neesha nodded. He looked away from me, watching the last vestige of the sun slip behind the horizon. “There is a lesson in this.”
“What is that?”
He rose, brushed soil and sand from his burnous, and faced me fully. “Boring is better.”
I grinned, stood up straight, prepared to walk back to the stud and my side of the caravan. “Get some sleep, Neesha. Del will relieve you in a couple of hours.”
But he probably wouldn’t sleep. I hadn’t, that first night so long ago.
We had a minor argument in the morning, all of us, as we gathered at the front of Mahmood’s wagon with horses standing by, saddled and ready to go. Mahmood wanted to go on to the stopping place. I did not. Del unnecessarily explained to me that the stopping place offered fresh water, and Neesha reminded us the stopping place wasn’t far—both of which I already knew. But my concern was the raiders.
“They might be there still,” I pointed out.
“Or not,” Neesha said. “Maybe they’re out raiding somewhere else.”
“That depends on how badly any of them might be injured.” I looked at Del. “Did you do any damage that might keep them stationary for a day or two?”
“If they’re there,” Del emphasized. “We don’t know if they’re there. Maybe they’re not there. Maybe they never were there.”
Here, there, everywhere. Patiently, I asked again, “Did you do any damage?”
Del said, “A few slices, no more. Maybe needing stitching, but not enough to keep them from riding again. They’re probably not there, if they were ever there, which we don’t know.”
“They’re probably not there,” Neesha interjected.
“They could be on their way here,” I pointed out irritably. “I just don’t like it. We’ve got enough water in Mahmood’s barrels to bypass the stopping place.”
“Shade,” Mahmood insisted.
“Look around,” I told him, gesturing widely. “Do you want to risk going in there without knowing if it’s safe or not? If it isn’t, you would never be able to escape in time.”
“Then one of us could scout,” Neesha said. “I can go in, find out how things stand.”
I scowled at him. “And be killed for whatever you have. Like a horse. A sword. A burnous.”
“It’s a good thought,” Del said, then clarified. “Scouting that is, not killing Neesha.”
“I kind of had an idea that’s what you meant.”
“I’ll go,” she offered.
“No no no,” I countered immediately. “They might be there.”
Her brow creased. “That’s the point, Tiger. To find out if they’re there.”
“I don’t want you going there alone. Not a woman.”
Del stared back at me. I knew that non-expression.
“It has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a woman,” I said hastily, then realized how stupid that sounded, since I’d just said it was. “Well, yes, I guess it does…but not because I don’t have faith in your ability to defend yourself. I mean, people can lose. Even us.”
“Certainly not,” Neesha observed with delicate irony.
“You shut up,” I told him. “Del, with a man, all they’d do is kill him. With a woman, you know very well what would happen.” Hoolies, she knew. She’d been repeatedly raped by a raider at the age of fifteen.
“We killed three of them, Tiger,” Del reminded me. “Three men offer less trouble than six.”
“I don’t care how many we killed,” I said irritably. “Three men are still three men. And we probably made them really angry.”
“I said I’ll go,” Neesha insisted.
Apparently tired of the whole thing, Mahmood raised his voice. “You go,” he shouted at me. “No one agrees with you! All but you wish to go to the stopping place. So it should be you who goes to scout.”
I wasn’t quite certain there was logic in that. I mean, I didn’t think we should go, so I was the one who had to?
“And I pay your wages,” Mahmood declared obstinately. “You go, or we all go.”
Vastly annoyed, I said, “Fine. All right. I’ll go. But if I come back with news the raiders are there, we’ll go in a different direction for a day and then head north again. No questions or comments allowed. Just do whatever I say.”
“That’s not exactly fair,” Neesha muttered in an aside to Del.
I lost my temper. “Doesn’t anyone understand?” I yelled. “I’m trying to keep us safe!”
In the ensuing silence, the only thing audible was a prodigious snort from the stud.
“See?” Del said. “He wants to go, too.”
I turned my back on them, put hands on hips, walked about four paces away, stared south across the grasslands. Beyond lay the desert. The desert where water was worth more than gold. The Southroner in me argued that we should go to the stopping place. But the land was different here. The climate was milder. Grass replaced sand and hardpan. There was likely water to be had from many places in the borderlands. It truly wasn’t necessary to put our lives in peril. But Mahmood and his men were from the desert. All they knew was that you don’t pass up known water sources. And I guess I couldn’t blame them.
I turned and trudged back to the others, still clustered there at the front of Mahmood’s team. I wasn’t yelling anymore, but I didn’t curtail my annoyance. “All right. I’ll go. Do what you need to do here. Build a fire if you like, hunt coneys, play in the dirt, build irrigation canals, whatever you want to do. I don’t care. But—”
“Irrigation canals?” Neesha asked incredulously.
“Just be ready in case borjuni appear!” I took the stud’s reins from Del, tossed them over his neck, climbed up into the saddle and glared down at all of them. “I’ll be back when I’m back.”
It felt rather strange to be alone again with just the stud for company. Going into Julah from the canyon didn’t count because that was land I knew. It was home. I hadn’t been out in the wide open spaces on my own for years.
As yet, we were in the South, but to me, desert bred and raised, it didn’t feel like it. Grasslands, scattered trees here and there, shrubs bursting up from the soil. You could say the same about the portions of the South that were not the Punja, with its deadly crystal sands, but the trees were different, the shrubbery, even the types of rock. Unfamiliarity. And no one at my side, riding a white gelding.
She had told me on several occasions that if I wished to go off on my own, I could. That I should, if I wanted. She explained, too, that this did not mean she wanted me to go. Finally, I figured out what she meant and explained that I was already fully aware of my freedom. I stayed because I wished to.
And I still did.
I began to whistle, riding comfortably along on a good horse, happy about where life had led me. Ten years ago I’d have laughed in anyone’s face if they’d predicted I would put down roots, especially with a woman and a small girlchild. But at some point you realize it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, that you’ll do what it is you’ll do. And that included putting down roots with a woman and a girlchild.