Free The Warrior's Path by Catherine M. Wilson Page B

intended, I would have had no choice but to break faith with one or the other of them.
    There was something more. I felt it hang unspoken in the air. Before I had time to think about it, Maara spoke again.
    “Why are you here? Did the Lady send you to question me?”
    “No,” I said. “She intended to talk with you herself. I convinced her to let me talk to you instead.”
    “Why?”
    “It appears that I’m your only friend here.”
    She gave a little shrug. She knew that without my saying so.
    “Tomorrow the council will hear what you have to say. I know you as no one else here knows you. I trust you, and whatever you tell me, I will believe it, and I will speak on your behalf before the council.”
    “It would be better for you if you were not my friend.”
    “It’s too late for that,” I told her.
    That made her smile a little. Then she took a deep breath, and her smile faded. “All I ask is that you convince your people that the news I bring them is true, and that if they disregard it, they will find they’ve made a costly mistake.”
    “The Lady didn’t tell me. What news do you bring?”
    “Do you remember the ravine?”
    I nodded. I remembered the place well. A day’s walk south of Merin’s house, the valley narrowed where a range of hills reached almost to the river. A stream had carved a deep ravine through those hills, and on the hottest summer days, Maara and I had scrambled down the steep sides of the ravine, to find relief from the heat in the cool air that rose from the water.
    “What lies south of the ravine?” she asked me.
    “Farms,” I said. “The orchards. Granaries.”
    She knew that as well as I did.
    “If you wished to keep the warriors here from going into that country, where would you try to stop them?”
    “Just there,” I said, “at the place where the stream flows out of the hills. It wouldn’t take many warriors to hold the strip of land between the hills and the river, and if anyone tried to cross the ravine itself, it would be so difficult a climb that a handful of people could turn them back.”
    Maara nodded. “When the first snow falls, warriors will cross the river there. They will hold that narrow strip of land and take as much of the land to the south of it as they can. The granaries will supply them through the winter. In the spring, there will be a well-fed army to the south, and more warriors will come out of the northern mountains.”
    Cold fear crept into my heart. “What will happen then?”
    “I hope none of it will happen. The Lady must act soon to prevent it.”
    That explained what the Lady had said to me. If this news was true, we could send our warriors south to the ravine, to keep anyone who crossed the river there from gaining a foothold, but if the river crossing was a diversion, raiding parties from the north would find us vulnerable.
    Then I remembered what had happened to Maerel.
    “Aren’t they afraid of the danger of a river crossing?” I asked.
    “Desperate people lose their fear.”
    “How do you know so much about their plans?”
    “I spent some time among the northern tribes.”
    Now I thought I understood where Maara had been all this time.
    “You were taken prisoner,” I said.
    “No.”
    I struggled for a moment with the only other explanation. “Did you go among them as a spy?” I couldn’t hide my disappointment in her. It was both honorable and courageous to go as a scout into the country of one’s enemies, but to turn a false face to them and walk among them as one of their own was a shameful thing to do.
    “No,” she said. “I did not.”
    I waited. She said nothing. She pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her forehead against them, so that I couldn’t see her face.
    “I don’t understand,” I said. The skin on the back of my neck prickled with the fear of what she was about to tell me.
    After a little while, she raised her head. Still she didn’t look at me.
    “Your people were wrong about me,” she