When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior's Path

A Healing

My warrior’s name was Maara, a name I had never heard before. No one in Merin’s house knew anything of her family or where she’d come from. No one I asked had spoken with her beyond what was necessary for daily life. The few who had tried to befriend her she’d rebuffed, and now they had little good to say of her.

Every day I did my best at whatever work I could find to do, while my warrior did her best to stay away from me. She hardly spoke to me, and when she did, it was either to send me away or to find fault with me for something. None of the other companions would put up with her. They assured me that when I had mastered the duties of a companion I could choose someone else.

While I was grateful to them for telling me I was not at fault, I was young enough to believe that I might succeed with my warrior where they had not. It was hard to bear her treatment of me when I was still so lonely in that house, but I was determined not to fail at the only thing the Lady had asked of me.

§ § §

As they did every year in springtime, cattle raiders came out of the north, and our warriors left Merin’s house to guard our borders against them. The other warriors took their companions, but Maara made me stay behind. With her away there was even less for me to do.

I wasn’t idle long. A few days later they were back again. They had caught a band of cattle raiders in the act of butchering a calf and engaged them in a skirmish. One of them had hurt my warrior badly. His blade glanced off her shield and bit deep into her thigh. When she fell, he tried to finish her, and the force of his blow on her shield broke the bones of her forearm.

It was evening when her comrades brought her home. In the fading light the litter on which they bore her was black with blood. I helped the tired warriors carry her upstairs. When we set the litter down beside her bed, my hands were sticky, red in the lamplight.

My warrior lay unmoving, her eyes closed. She looked as if she might already be embarking on her journey to another world. We were about to put her on the bed when the healer came in to tend her.

“Let her bleed there on the floor,” she said. So we left her there.

My mother was a healer. She had taught me the use of herbs, and I often accompanied her when she was called to tend someone. I had helped her set broken bones and stitch up cuts made by the slip of an ax or knife, but I had never seen a wound like this one. It gaped open and bled until I wondered how my warrior could have any blood left in her.

I helped the healer remove her armor and her clothing. Together we set her broken arm. Then I watched as the healer cleaned and closed her dreadful wound. When the healer had done all she could, we washed the blood from my warrior’s body and put her into bed.

“I fear our work has been for nothing,” the healer told me. “I’ll brew something for her pain. Give it to her if she wakes tonight.”

In a little while a kitchen servant brought a bowl of tea. I took a sip of it. Bitter hops masked the strong taste of valerian root. It was a potent sleeping drug that would let my warrior sleep away her pain. It would let her sleep away her life. I poured it out into the slop jar.

I had no reason to care about the woman who thought she had no need of me. Her refusal of me had stung my pride. Perhaps I saw my chance to prove my value to her or to put her in my debt. I wish I could say I nursed her out of kindness, but it wasn’t true.

I waited until I thought everyone had gone to bed. Then I went down to the kitchen. The fragrance of lemon grass, just brought in to dry, led me to a little room behind the ovens. There I found what I was seeking. Herbs hung in bunches from drying racks. Shelves of pots, each containing a dried herb properly prepared, lined the walls. I soon found the ones I wanted—shepherd’s purse to stop her bleeding, sage and bloodwort to restore her blood. I put them into the bowl in which the healer had brewed her tea. In the embers of the cooking fire was a cauldron of water hot enough to steep the herbs. I found a ladle and filled the bowl.