Conqueror's Child

The Runaway Like many things that are done without planning and alone, it went badly from the start. Veree got tired of riding clinging to my back, was heavy to carry in a leather sling, and cried a lot. The childpack had left him bruised and sore with their rough handling, and I had not brought enough warm clothes for the higher elevations of the mountains. And he was at this time inclined to be weepy and whiny anyway. But we got through the poisoned barrens and across the lower pass over the mountains, although this took us farther north than I would have liked and more slowly. Still, one warm and cloudy morning I found myself looking down on a sight I had been told about often enough: the foothills on the eastern side of the mountains. The timbered land fell away toward a broad plateau of scrub woodland out of which the Holdfast had been cleared generations ago by the people from the Refuge. I sat by my fire on a rocky outcrop in the upland forest, drinking a very thin brew of tea and thinking about what I meant to do down there. I had it in mind to deliver Veree to a place where there were others like him, so that he would not live as a freak all his life in the Grasslands. But when I looked around for him, Veree was gone. I saw nothing but looming trees, and the upcountry sky which mounted very high and shone intensely blue but which didn't feel big as Grassland skies did. Over the panic in my heart I began to call, "Veree!" The Free Fems had always laughed at the men of the Holdfast for believing that the forested mountains were full of evil spirits. Such beliefs seemed less strange now. I had done two turns as a border scout watching for men from the Holdfast, and I had heard tales from other scouts of the deaths of such strays. The Riding Women had ghosts of their own to deal with in the land between the nations. I scrabbled a hole in the ground for the ashes of my fire and covered them over with dirt. Then I stood turning in a circle, craning my neck and stretching my eyes wide to see into the shadows of the trees. Such shadows! So different from in the Grasslands, which lay everywhere open to the sky. "Veree!" I screamed. "Where are you? Answer me!" My voice was swallowed by the trees. Patch, the mare I had saddled for the day's ride, barely turned an ear. All my horses went on quietly grazing among the roots and rocks. They were used to the note of alarm in my voice, having heard it often enough lately. A child is not an easy traveling companion, and I had no shares to help. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to use my breathing to calm my panic, a technique of relaxation I had learned before going to my first stud colt. Having had the training, I might as well get some use out of it. I couldn't bear to think about what Sheel would say when I told her that the child she had sent us was lost or dead. In truth, I cared very much myself that he was lost: Holdfast-bred but Grassland-born, he was more like me than any other living person. I had become his only mother. Should I mount up and go looking for him, or would it be better to search more slowly and thoroughly on foot? What if meantime he came back and found me gone? While I stood dithering, the lead pack mare nickered and was answered with a snort from beyond the clearing. I crouched with my knife clutched in my hand. Two riders burst from among the trees, ready-armed with drawn bows. They were not Grasslanders, I saw that at once; fems, of course, what else would they be on this side of the mountains? I was so relieved to see them that I simply discounted their arrows that were trained on me and dashed toward them. "Free people!" I cried, agitated enough by Veree's disappearance that it never occurred to me to present myself properly with my self-song. &aCharnas, Suzy McKee is the author of 'Conqueror's Child' with ISBN 9780312869465 and ISBN 0312869460.