Motherlines by Suzy McKee Charnas

shivered.
    ‘Cold?’ Nenisi said, turning toward her.
    ‘This isn’t cold,’ Alldera said. ‘I’m scared of sharu. Let me tell you a story now about real cold, Holdfast cold. One winter evening I went to a certain company in Lammintown on my master’s business. Out in the icy pen by the men’s hall the company fems piled together to sleep under the stars, and I was put in with them. It was near the shore, and all night a raw wind blew. In the morning two fems were found frozen, hugged in each other’s arms by the gate. They must have hoped to get at the soup pot first in the morning. Mother Moon, how my master lit into the young men in charge of the fems for putting his trained runner in danger of freezing to death!’
    Nenisi said, ‘Why didn’t all you fems break into the hall and throw the men out to freeze?’
    There just wasn’t any point in trying to explain. Alldera turned over and tried to sleep.
    When they got back to Stone Dancing she found that something important had happened in their absence. Every year the women held a Gather of all the camps. When pressed, Barvaran said it was a sort of social meeting, with games and political arrangements about horses, grass and water, and so on. Alldera had gone through her first Gather all unknowing in healing sleep, and last year only a few families from Stone Dancing had attended, for some reason too complicated and obscure for Alldera to unravel.
    ‘Not everyone in a camp can go every year,’ Barvaran said. ‘There are always other things that need doing around the same time.’
    And that was all that she, or anyone, would say about it.
     
    She came fighting out of sleep to find the tent shaking with the aftermath of swift action. The poles were quivering, but no one was left inside in the dim predawn light but herself and old Jesselee. The others were nothing but faint cries and a dwindling drumbeat of hooves.
    ‘What is it?’ Alldera stood in her bedding, her knife in her hand, her pulse ringing in her head, thinking of Holdfast men swooping down on the camp to take slaves –
    ‘Raiders,’ said Jesselee. ‘It’s got to be a party from White Wind Camp. I heard that Poleen Sanforath of Steep Cloud Camp is visiting family up there – did I ever tell you how she hid a prize mare in her tent one night, when she and what’s her name, from down at Towering, were raiding rivals? She’s been after that red stud of Sheel’s for years. I wonder what else they got?
    ‘Well, there are chores to be done. Leave the child with me, you go on ahead and pull the bedding outside to air.’
    Alldera guessed the old woman had noticed how little interest she showed in the child. Well, it was their child; Nenisi had made that very clear.
    Returning from work at midday Alldera found meat, milk and flour noodles stewing in a pot over the fire. She filled her bowl half full. It was early in the Dusty Season, and already women were eating small while waiting for the first rains and their supply of fresh milk. Alldera no longer accepted oversized guest portions.
    ‘You eat like a Riding Woman,’ Jesselee said approvingly. ‘Now you won’t weigh down your horse.’
    ‘What difference does it make?’ Alldera said moodily. ‘When it’s something important like a Gather or a raid, I get left behind.’
    Jesselee shifted the child in her arms. It was long-limbed now, a heavy burden. It belched and muttered sleepily to itself. Jesselee said, ‘I wish I could have gone too, but it isn’t fair to load down a pursuit party with a rider who might die on them.’
    And what about me, stuck here with all the work and an old woman’s ramblings to listen to?
    ‘I’m getting weak. Your baby has more teeth than I do and better ones too. It’s a sad thing to have to ask other women to chew your meat for you because you can’t manage for yourself any more.’
    Alldera swished water in her bowl and drank. ‘Then you must be farther gone than I thought,’ she said brutally,