Tarashana by Rachel Neumeier (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📗

“We aren’t going to fight Ugaro hand-to-hand!” one of the young men protested.

“How do you know?” Laraut asked him. “I did once, and I’m still here to talk about it. Sneaky bastards come right out of the dark at you sometimes, on either side of the river. No offense meant, Ryo.”

“I take no offense. When did you truly fight an Ugaro warrior? How did you beat him?”

“Before your time. I was hardly older than this lot. I’ll tell you about it.”

Laraut bought everyone thin ale at the tavern in the middle of Tavas Sen and told stories about raids and battles and different kinds of trouble he had seen in his years with Lord Aras. I listened for some time and then, as the slow dusk approached, I stood up and walked back to the barracks.

The barracks was a large building, shaped like three sides of a square, with many windows on the outside and few on the inside. To one side, a big earthen yard stretched out. This was for training; that was where we had been fighting earlier. The stables stood past that, with wide pastures beyond for the horses. There were pastures on three sides of the barracks because the talon kept many horses. Sometimes they needed to travel fast and besides that the soldiers were trained to fight from horseback, with long spears and bows and sometimes a longer, heavier sword than the kind Lau use when fighting in their formations. I had learned a great deal about how Lau fight in the past year from watching this talon and other talons train, though there had been little fighting anywhere in the borderlands except sometimes against bandits. Soon this talon would probably go somewhere else, farther south. Among the Lau, small wars are common between one county and another, and even though Lord Aras could not leave the borderlands now, he might send his talons here or there to help deal with some problem.

The courtyard inside the arms of the barracks was for the women. That was cobbled. There were fountains there so that no one had to carry water from the river. There was a different fountain for the men, who did not go into the women’s courtyard. It was not until I had seen the structure of these kinds of buildings that I had realized how separately most women live from men among the Lau. I knew more of these customs now, but the separation still seemed very strange to me.

Many women were in the courtyard now, preparing food to take to the men. Some of these women were true wives, those the soldiers call jewel wives. Others were daughters of the soldiers. But most were talon wives. Ordinary troopers did not marry, but almost every file had a talon wife who took care of the soldiers, doing many of the tasks a wife would do. There is nothing like a talon wife among Ugaro, and I had never become accustomed to the idea, but those among them whom I knew best did not seem to mind it. I was not entirely confident I knew their true opinion, however. Lau women, especially those who have not come to their age, seldom speak freely to a man.

No other men came into the courtyard because the Lau consider this impolite. But the custom of men living apart from women was nothing I could take seriously, so I came through the courtyard when I wished. When I came there now, many of the women called out or waved to me. They were much more reserved in public, but this was their place and they did not take the same quiet manner here, or with me. A young woman named Sarai waved to me and called, “Ryo! Come lift this pot off the fire, please!” She was a jewel wife, the wife of one of the commanders for the talon, and so an important woman despite her youth. Among the Lau, a man does not speak to a married woman unless he is her close kinsman, but this again was a custom I could not much regard and that the women of the talon did not much regard with me.

Sarai wanted to shift one of the very big pots in which the women cooked the cracked wheat and lentils that the Lau eat in great quantity. When a pot like that is full of cooked grain, two women together can barely lift it. I picked the pot up and carried it to the place Sarai wanted it, and then I lifted a barrel of ale to a low bench where it would be easier to tap. Sarai handed me a mallet, so I tapped the barrel for her. Then I did a few other things as one woman or another requested. The courtyard was hot because it gathered heat during the day and because of all the cooking the women did here. I did not comment about that, but a girl named Saheri, of about ten summers, a soldier’s daughter, brought me a dipper of water from one of the fountains and a cup of thin ale. I thanked her for her kindness, poured the water over my head, and drank the ale. She was nearly as tall as I was, but delicate as an aspen leaf. Lau children have no weight to them. I carried a pot across the courtyard for her and poured the cream it contained into another pot.

“Ryo!” called another voice, and I turned, unsurprised.

This was the reason I had come through the women’s courtyard. This was Lalani, who was the talon wife of Esau’s file. I knew I should have come to see her earlier than this, but I had forgotten to do it before I went across the river the previous evening and I had been