The Warrior Who Carried Life Read Online Free PDF

looking back, she walked into the darkness, which swallowed her.
    The Wensenara blinked at each other.
    “Well!” exclaimed Mother Danlupu.
    They gathered up their skirts and left in silence. To talk at all would be to admit that nothing remotely similar had ever happened to one of them.
    What sort of power was it that could turn flesh and blood into shield and sword?

THE LITTLE THING
THAT FEELS LARGE
    The Men who Live like Foxes sprang out from the rocks, from within the very face of the cliff it seemed, along the narrow track. Cara had no time to draw her sword or to retreat.
    She had wondered what she would do in her first fight. I wished myself to be a warrior, she had told herself, as she walked through the night and day towards the village of Deeper and Wider. If I am a warrior, I must know what to do.
    Her masculine arm did not hold her shield up in front of her like a wall. Unbidden, it swung the shield horizontally through the air. What am I doing? Cara thought in horror. Then she understood. The shield’s edge struck the first of the Foxes across the eyes and forehead. He staggered back; she had gained time to draw her sword. She spun around, for she had heard one of them land behind her, the shield righting itself in time to block a brutal blow from an axe, though her arm went numb and aching from the force of it. There were four of the Foxes, dressed in a mixture of armour and finery and furs; they surrounded her; her back seemed to tingle with its own vulnerability. She swung at the axeman, not knowing if her sword was even long enough to reach him, and missed.
    “He’s green! He’s green!” the axeman exalted.
    “Mine!”
    “Mine!”
    Cara felt a burning pain across the back of her legs. She swung at the head of the man beside her, but he rolled quickly out of her reach. Wounded, unbalanced, she fell. She saw the ground coming up for her; she saw her sword and tried to turn it away from herself so that she would not land on it; she felt skin scrape free from her wrist. She was sprawled, open, on the ground. Desperately, she tried to push herself back onto her feet, or drag herself to her knees, but her legs would not move. Then a heavy boot planted itself on the hand that held the sword, and the weight of a man landed on her back and put a blade along the side of her neck.
    Oh no. Not so soon. Not so quickly, she thought, sadly.
    “You’re much too fine and lovely a lad to be wearing such armour and not know how to fight,” the Fox on her back whispered in her ear. The Men who Live like Foxes dwelt in burrows and did not wash with water; they burned fungus and sat in the smoke to kill the lice. It was said that they did not live with women, preferring the company of men. She smelt damp earth and burrow smoke on him. “We just want your armour. Strange stuff it is too.” Whenever his weight shifted, Cara felt a grating pain across her calves.
    “My legs,” she whispered.
    “Well, if you tie them up you might stop the bleeding. You might even be able to walk to the bondhouse.”
    “Shouldn’t stay there, though,” another one of them said. “Better to live in a burrow, with us.”
    Quickly, neatly, they rolled her over, two swords at her throat. Her shield was plucked from her, and the sword; her breastplate was peeled away and her fine, thick-soled sandals. They left her barefoot in a shirt and loincloth, bleeding on the road.
    “It’s a shame,” said the tallest, slimmest of them, cradling up the armour. He wore fine traceries of gold as earrings and a scarf of lace around his throat. “He is lovely. But we couldn’t trust him with us, could we.”
    “Your scarf,” begged Cara, “For a tourniquet?”
    “Tourniquet, eh? Well, we rich sons do know some big words.” But the Fox stopped. “Well,” he said in a quiet voice. “As you are so beautiful.” He passed Cara the windings of lace. “A fair exchange.”
    They leapt over the edge of the cliff, and were gone.
    Cara sat up, and