The settlement was still burning as Ailain picked her way around its smoldering timbers. Almost hidden in the smoke haze she could see three figures slowly searching through the ruins. Ailain was too numb to wonder who they were or for whom they were looking; she had already found her dead. Cradled in her arms she carried her beloved’s sword wrapped in the banner it had been his pride to carry into battle. For the clan’s honor generations had fought a blood feud, the cause forgotten. Both sides had finally perished at this battle. All were dead now, except Ailain and the others moving wraithlike through the smoke, searching, searching. A wail of grief told her that one of them had found what she was looking for; the sobbing broke through the wall she had built around her own pain and drove her to the banks of the river. As she knelt to wash the soot and blood from her hands, she was careful not to drop her burden; she alone was left to uphold the clan honor and she feared to put them down for a moment.
At the sound of quiet footsteps she turned to see that the other survivors had been drawn to the river as well. Ailain knew who they were; the clan symbols braided into their long hair identified them as plainly as if they had spoken. The woman with the bandaged hand wore the symbols of her ancient enemies; she was as dirty and tied as Ailain herself. The other two were members of traveling merchant families caught in the fighting; they had had no part in the feud but had lost their people as well.
As Ailain stood up, the others eyed her warily. “I have done with fighting today.” Her voice was heavy and flat in her ears.
The older merchant spoke quietly, as if to herself, “We never had any interest in fighting, but it did not seem to matter. How will I live with no family, no clan? Winter is coming and all the shelters and food stocks have been destroyed.”
The girl began to cry. To Ailain’s surprise the old woman put her arms around the child and murmured comforting words. Their clan symbols were of rival families who would never offer each other a kindness. For the first time Ailain found herself questioning the code that had determined every action of her life. There was a rightness to what the woman had done that she could not deny, even if it was against all she had been taught.
Ailain found herself speaking. “The feud is ended. If we can agree to work together, we can survive.”
The rival clanswoman looked skeptically at the banner and sword that Ailain held so carefully in her arms. “How can you say that when we all wear our own people’s tokens? Our clans have been enemies since before our parent’s birth. How could we ever come to trust one another? Family honor continues as long as one member lives.”
Ailain stared at her betrothed’s sword and banner a long moment, and then flung them into the river. Drawing her own sword for her belt she saw the others step back apprehensively, the child stifling a scream and burying her face in the older woman’s arms. Ailain held up her long braid in her other hand, clan ribbons and emblems woven through its strands. Only that morning her beloved had given her a string of beads in the clan colors and had watched as she plaited them into her hair. Deliberately she cut off the braid and threw it into the water as well. “I renounce my clan and my old loyalties. We are a sisterhood and you are my people now, by my oath.”
She watched with growing hope as one by one her new sisters cut off their long hair with the dangling symbols and cast them into the fast flowing water.