The Chosing Knife

The girl was sitting on the creek bank away from the of the packhorses being unloaded to make camp for the night. They were some days from the next known water, low on meat, and tired one and all. Kers suspected that this camp would last for two or three days for hunting, fishing and resting. He did not like that the girl was off alone. With travel in abeyance, some of the men might remember that she was there and consider her fair game for their sporting. She might be a hostage in theory, but in truth it was unlikely she would see home again, if she so much as lived to see the end of the journey.
“You should get back to the fire”
“What? Oh. You. It is more quiet here. Do you mind?” Her voice was muffled and raspy.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Just leave me alone.”
“You are crying. Do you miss your mother and sisters? Is it your abduction that distresses you, or has someone hurt you? You should not be harmed.”
“No. Not that. Nothing. Go away.”
“Not until you stop crying enough to talk to me. It is my assignment to see to your welfare. Please allow me to do this. You are fatigued. We have been long hours in the saddle. Perhaps.” He was unsure of how to phrase it in her awkward language. And to speak of a lady’s private parts, even to consider that she might require medication was rude at the least. Still. “I have unguents.”
She turned away from the water and looked at him. A blank stare, truly, but there was in it recognition of another human for the first time in their long ride together.
“Unguents?”
“For,” he dusted across his pants, ”aches.”
“Unguents for aches,” she said. “No. For my pain, sir, there is no balm.” She wiped her reddened eyes with a dusty hand, leaving a muddy smear across her cheek. “I am in your care, you said. Does that mean that no one else does care for me?”
“Mistress?” Kers wondered if this were one of those women of Valorin reputed to be dedicated to the temple at birth. Or perhaps she had a lover who had been killed in the fighting, the idea saddened him. He chose to return to the idea of family.
“Mistress, I am sure your family will choose to give us our free passage while you abide with us and whatever token ransom the Sa’Al Theron requires for your return. My understanding is that your father is not an unreasonable man. That was why the Sa’Al Theron chose him for his first foray into Valorin. My lord is not a barbarian fool like many others, but a man of thought before action.”
“You admire him, your Sa’Al Theron?”
“Of course, mistress. He is a most admirable lord, a wise leader, and a strong man.”
“I thought so,” she said. Then she looked Kers full in the face with all attention. “ What would appeal to him? How should I make an approach?”
Kers was stunned. Was it possible that they had mistakenly snatched one of the family concubines instead of one of the daughters? Impossible. The household had been scouted for weeks in advance. Spies had been paid large sums. The plan had been perfect, and this girl was its object. Perhaps he was misunderstanding her language.
“Mistress. If you have a message for the Sa’Al Theron, I could deliver it to him.”
She sighed. “The message is myself, boy, and if you cannot understand that how can I expect you to deliver it to your beautiful, wise, and admirable Sa’Al Theron.

“The banquet,” she said, “the banquet from which he stole me was to be my Choosing. I see you do not understand. It is of no consequence that you do not, but that he does.
“When girls of my class reach the time of Choosing, we have a gathering. If the girl has chosen a path other than home and children, she announces it at that time and leaves with representatives of that path.
“If she has chosen to be wife and mother, in most cases arrangements have been made already. She has been asked. Her father and mother have given permission. Nothing unusual will happen. On rare occasions, she has not been asked or has turned down all suitors. If no one asks her whom she finds suitable and she has turned down choosings along the other Paths, the man who claims her has made the choice.”
“The Sa’Al Theron has Chosen me. And I will say that there was no man in my own city who could make me wish otherwise. He is a man to answer any woman’s dreaming. When he rode into my father’s hall, he came directly to me on that fine chestnut stallion. He made it dance for me, I could see that. No rider would smile so broadly else, while his horse capers like a goat in the midst of battle.
“Then he dismounted, took my hand in his, and drew me toward him. What he said, I must admit I could not understand, but his voice made me tremble. And with one small gesture to his fretful horse, it quieted as if turned to stone. He lifted me to the saddle, mounted and wheeled, and all you men broke off your fighting to follow.
“It was so obviously a Choosing from the old stories that, without doubt, my father will follow the traditions as well.”
“And what would that lead him to do, Mistress?”
“Why, he will send two messengers to follow us. One will carry a gift of value and the other an unadorned knife, made for this purpose when first my mother announced she was with child. It has been used only once, to cut my birth cord.
“By the time the messengers find us, the Sa’Al Theron should know which message to accept. If he keeps the gift of value and sends back the blooded knife, my father will know that I was unworthy of my choosing. If he sends back the gift and keeps the knife, there will be rejoicing in my family and the knowledge that my husband wants me to be armed and safe against danger.”
The noises from over the rise were beginning to settle into the rhythm of camp life. Some of the men were setting tents, some starting the cookfires, others picketing the mounts. Guards were being posted. Kers’ single duty was this one girl—woman, if what she said was true—small and rounded, red-haired and odd-eyed. He had yet to understand those eyes.
His Lord had given the welfare of the hostage into his hands on the morning of the raid, had told him to save her “no matter what” from anyone who might harm her. Then he had turned and rode for home, and left his son in charge, the Sa’Al Theron. The wise, the admirable, the so very beautiful Sa’Al Theron, who would gladly take this girl to his bed until her lack of skill or enthusiasm or her very calf eyed adoration bored him, and if she were lucky, he would only throw her away to one of his subordinates. If he had noticed her perfection and her beauty, he would find the story of the Choosing Knife amusing.

The Sa’Al Theron was very good with knives.