A Lady of Morandau

In the wide staging ground outside the gate, some sixty men and women are mounting horses and hitching wagons. No voice is raised, but every movement is brisk. They will all be gone in a few moments. The men wear dark coats and brimmed hats. It is late autumn and the air is cool. The women wear cloaks, and hats of a more elegant style, though equally somber. The people’s skin and hair are of all shades, but darker skins predominate, and whiter hair, even on those who look young.

They do not ride out for pleasure. Carbines hang at every saddle. The large predators native to this world have survived, on this unfavored continent, through the centuries since humans came from their distant star. The descendants of those settlers often fight, too, though usually with more primitive weapons than these riders carry.

Beside the gate, another complex preparation is proceeding just as efficiently, on the reduced scale of a single rider. A one-legged woman is mounting her horse. She has paler skin, and snow-white hair tied in a braid, though she is not old. She levers herself up in stages, using her heavy steel crutch, into her special saddle. Another horse stands beside hers, its rider already mounted. He is a black man with a narrow grey beard, clear spectacles, and a narrow-brimmed hat. He sits rigidly tall in his saddle, ignoring the woman’s efforts with her crutch, staring at someone else.

He is watching a much younger woman with light brown skin, who is standing in the gateway glowering as the procession forms. She wears no cloak over her long black gown, and no hat, despite the chill. Her silver-grey hair is tied with a small black bow, and she clutches a heavy ring of keys in her bare left hand. Staying behind alone, apart from the children, she will not be able to maintain the usual watches and patrols, but she has little sense of danger. Past times have been harder, but these are quiet years. No-one will dare attack this place, though its gate is always open and its guards unseen.

When the one-legged woman has mounted, she and the man beside her nod at the girl in the gateway, then ride down to the back of the line. From the other end of the line, a black man wearing dark spectacles rides back up to the gate. He is calm, but his cheeks are wet with the tears that always run from his damaged eyes behind the black lenses. His face turns down toward the girl’s face, and he speaks to her deliberately. “We return in eight days. In case of any serious trouble, remember that you are a lady of Morandau.” She looks up at him. The master of her house, her father’s only brother, he has never spoken a word to her before in her life. He turns his horse and the column rides away down the road. She turns and walks back into the compound with those last words settling in her mind.