But Campas was apparently satisfied with her answers; he asked no more questions. Fiona glanced ahead. They had ridden upslope once more, and were on a grassy bluff overlooking the river valley. The river itself was invisible, hidden by the trees and brush covering its banks, but from the bluff she could see the dark trees winding on ahead, following the jagged course of the river. Behind she could still hear the sounds of axes.
“Shall we eat our luncheon?” she asked. Campas nodded. They dismounted, hobbled their horses, and opened Fiona’s satcheclass="underline" cheese, bread, fresh goat-meat, dried pears, two bottles of black beer. Fiona sat cross-legged on the ground, facing the river — it felt good to be out of skirts again — and opened her beer. Campas pointed to a smudge of dust hovering above the opposing bluff.
“Reinforcements for Tastis,” he said. “Or cavalry on maneuvers. We’ll be getting another galloper at the pavilion tonight to tell us which.” He looked down at the beer in his hand and twisted the cork. “They’ve got thirty thousands of men over there. That’s more than we expected — we thought he’d have to leave a larger garrison back at Neda-Calacas.”
“I hadn’t realized,” Fiona said, “that a campaign was so slow-moving. I thought there’d be a lot of marching, a battle, and then it would be over. But nothing’s happened yet, and nothing seems likely to happen for a long time; and no one seems to be concerned.”
“So far as I understand it,” Campas said, “we’re moving slowly because we don’t want to make any mistakes. We have advantage in numbers, and so long as we don’t leave Tastis any openings we’ll win. Plus, as time goes on, the other cities will be able to mobilize and put their own forces into the field.”
Fiona slit open a narrow loaf of bread, inserted the goat-meat and cheese, and bit down. The blandness of the food here still bothered her. the locals had little in the way of spices, and few of the spices were taken on campaign.
“You say that Brodaini women are first mentioned in the chronicles as defending their homes,” she said.
“And as advisors. Prophets, seers, and so on. Divinely mad. Expressions of their clan’s will, or their god’s.”
Fiona nodded. “When are they first mentioned as military leaders?” she asked.
“As opposed to clan leaders?” She nodded. “Let me think.” He chewed meditatively, then turned to her. “During the time of the tyrant Grestu, about a hundred years ago. His wife was a famous general, and there were several other prominent women military leaders at the same time.”
Grestu. Fiona, searching her memory, recalled the name. Vilified by the Brodaini histories for his attempt to put all of Gostandu under his rule, but that hadn’t stopped others from trying in the hundred years since. Two had succeeded, though the first of these empires had once again come to nothing on the death of the founder; the second was the man who now ruled Gostandu, the Clattern i Clatterni — “King of Kinglets,” as Tyson, a year or more ago, had once facetiously translated.
The shipboard computers had concluded that the northern continent had reached a level of communication, sophistication, and economic interdependence so that a centralized government had begun to be possible. But the shipboard computers had only a limited vision; their conclusions were based only on what their programming permitted them to understand — vast amounts of data were set aside, either not understood or judged irrelevant. The computers could point out large, visible trends, but lacked the capacity to interpret its own statistics. The framework in which to set the data was lacking. It was a framework Fiona was expected to help construct.
There were anomalies in any human system, serving to throw light on how they operated: the position of women in Brodaini society was one — a culture that prized combat and physical strength offering theoretical equality to those less strong was unique. If, as Fiona suspected, it were true that the women had been given military training in order to defend their homes against invasions or peasant revolts that occurred when the menfolk were away, this helped to explain a lot. The women would have to have been given civil rights in order to manage clan affairs while the men were absent; and they would have to have been given high status in order to command any defense.
The Brodaini system had been under increasing pressure for the last hundred years or more: the continent of Gostandu had been in continual war. Possibly, Fiona thought, women Brodaini had grown increasingly valuable as the wars drained the supply of men — valuable both as soldiers and as breeders of future generations of fighters: a contradictory demand, probably settled in contradictory ways, both by increasing their status and making them available as front-line soldiers, if the situation called for it.
There was a pragmatism in their deployment, however. It was obvious, simply by observing the columns of marching troops, that the Brodaini on this campaign of conquest were still overwhelmingly male, while those left in garrison were chiefly female — and though many of these were officers, they commanded Classani militia, not soldiers of their own class. Those women used as front-line troops tended to be used as light cavalry and scouts, duties better suited to the smaller physique, and also requiring a higher premium on riding ability than on physical strength. Many women were employed carrying the Brodaini sword-tipped spear, a duty requiring less physical strength than that of a bowman or swordsman. And the front ranks of the spear formations, where increased exposure required heavier armor and the demands of battle required more physical strength, were almost universally male. There were, Fiona had been told, many female cambrani and lersri — spies and assassins, professions demanding wit, stamina, and intelligence rather than strength.
There was, Fiona concluded, a strong pragmatism underlying most Brodaini decisions, a pragmatism that did not seem entirely consistent with their rigorous code of conduct. When pragmatism demanded a decision that conflicted with nartil, how was the contradiction resolved? It was a question that demanded an answer.
“Nartil,” she said. “Nartil and Tolhostu. I don’t understand them.”
“No one does. Not outside the Brodaini world, anyway.” Campas seemed amused.
“A code of behavior,” she said, “expressly designed to avoid giving offense, and explicitly stating the obligations of one Brodainu to another. Supposedly all of this is clear, and there should be little room for misunderstanding. So long as everything is understood, peace is part of the natural order, and war contrary to it. But,” she said, jabbing the air with her beer bottle, “the Brodaini are always fighting one another.”
“So you want to know why they fight?” Campas asked. His tone was light, a little condescending. Fiona looked at him sharply.
“No,” she snapped, more nettled than she would have liked to admit. “I’m not so naive as to wander about this planet like a little simpleton asking rhetorical questions about why you people fight wars. I’m not interested in giving you rein to wave your arms to the heavens and philosophize about the perversity of mankind.”
“My apologies, Ambassador,” Campas murmured, surprised.
“What I was wondering,” Fiona want on, “was how the Brodaini justify it to themselves. In terms of their own code of behavior.”
Campas looked dubious, frowning and rubbing his jaw. “That’s a deep question, Ambassador,” he said. “I would rather have answered the one I thought you had asked, in truth.”
Fiona said nothing; she sipped her beer and waited for a response.
“I don’t understand nartil,” Campas said slowly. “And I’m not supposed to understand demmin — that’s for Brodaini only. The codes are complex, and I wasn’t born into that way of life, I only observe. But it seems to me that the codes are — are capable of variation.” He looked at her, his own confusion plain. “They’re not written down, you see. They’re taught by example, by tradition. There are stories that every Brodaini child is taught, to learn the nature of one particular virtue, or one particular evil. Hamila and the Redtooth Keep, for example, to learn about obedience to a superior.”