Dag headed not back to the Fetch, but downstream to the next creek and up its rock-strewn banks to the narrow meadow where the bandits had hobbled their horses. Some of the meadow grass was still green, especially along the creek, though most had turned from autumn gold to winter dun, a sort of standing hay. The dozen or so horses grazing there swiveled their ears at the newcomers, then put their heads down once more, except one big brown fellow who whuffled curiously as they passed near. Dag stopped to rub its poll, which made the beast droop its lip and flop its ears foolishly.
“I like horses,” murmured Dag. “They’re so big and bright and simple in their grounds. And best of all right now”—he sighed—“they’re not people. Over there, Spark.” He nodded to a lone cottonwood tree at the meadow’s edge, soaring up to scratch at the sky with its bare branches, and ambled over to sit and lean his head back against the ridged gray bark, closing his eyes. Fawn sat herself beside him. Unusually, he let his left arm lie in her lap, and she stroked it gently, which made his lips move not unlike the horse’s. The whuffling horse followed them in short hops of its hobbled front legs, then lowered its face to nudge him for more rubs, which he reached up and supplied without opening his eyes.
Fawn suspected that the animals—calm, warm, and nearby in his groundsense—maybe helped blot out what was going on beyond the tree-clad ridge that lay between them and the cave. If Dag had any groundsense range left after all that performance, he could furl it in, Fawn supposed, but that would leave him alone in silence. Silence was all right just now; the alone part, maybe not so good.
Whit wandered out amongst the horses, looking them over in expert evaluation. Berry, who had also stopped to stroke a quiet one, if more dubiously, turned her head at a faint cry. Out of sight of the cave they might be; apparently they weren’t quite as far out of earshot as could have been hoped. She stepped away from the horse and stood rigid, staring back up the slope at the woods, face set. Tall. Alone. And at the next cut-off cry, trembling. She looked, Fawn thought, like an aspen tree being gnawed down, slender and doomed.
Whit watched her anxiously, then held out his open hands toward Fawn in desperate question. Fawn cast him an encouraging nod. He gulped, walked over to Berry, and, still without a word, folded her into his embrace. It wasn’t a gesture of courtship, simply one of comfort offered in a bleak hour. Something warm to wrap herself around when the pain folds her over. Berry rested her head on Whit’s shoulder, eyes closing tight. The blond head was a little higher than the dark one—Whit was a sawed-off Bluefield, after all—but with her chin bent down, their hair mingled on a level that was close enough.
Whit held her for a long time, till she stopped shaking, then led her to a more comfortable seat on a fallen log near the stony creek side. He put his arm around her and snugged her in tight as they watched the horses graze.
“Do patrollers ever hobble their horses?” Fawn asked Dag. Because she didn’t think she could bear to talk about anything harder just yet.
“You do wonder how well those things work to keep ’em from running off.”
He fell in willingly with her lead, perhaps for similar reasons. “We use them sometimes. Because if a patroller’s horse gets out of his ground-sense range, he’s put to the same wheezing work of chasing it down as any farmer.” Dag’s lips turned up in some wry memory. He opened his eyes to stare out on the benign scene. “Hobbles don’t slow a horse down much if it’s seriously panicked. I imagine the habit of feeding them here does more to keep them close.”
“They don’t look as ill-cared-for as you’d think. I wonder how many were stolen from boats, and how many came with the bandits? Well, I suppose Wain and the boatmen will work it out.”
“Yeah, it’s all salvage at this point,” Dag said. He tucked the knife sheath out of sight in his shirt and leaned his head against the bark once more.
After a time, Remo and Barr came over the ridge and picked their way across the creek to Dag’s tree. They both looked gloomy.
Dag opened his eyes again. “Hangings finished?”
“Not quite,” said Remo. “We did get Crane laid out. I’m glad we didn’t have to butcher him.”
Barr made a face. “Who’d want a knife from Crane’s bones?”
“The boatmen dug a trench,” Remo continued. “He was the first to go in it.”
“It’s not very deep,” said Barr, “but I imagine they’ll pile some river stones on top. Some of the boatmen were for making the bandits dig it themselves, but finally decided it was more trouble guarding them than it was worth.”
Remo added morosely, “One of the keelers had kin on one of the boats the bandits took a month or so back. He found out just what exactly had happened to them, I guess. Wain let him cut off Big Drum’s head personally. Little Drum’s, too, even though he was dead already. They’re going to put them up on poles in front of the cave as a warning to others.”
“We left right after that,” said Barr.
Healthy young men or no, to Fawn’s eye both looked as shaken as she felt, and not just from the extra sensitivity lent by groundsenses possibly not closed tight enough during these proceedings. Barr wandered out into the meadow to pat a horse, too, a tidy piebald mare.
“Hey,” he called back over his shoulder after a moment, “this one’s in foal! Whoever takes her is going to get a bonus horse!”
Remo walked out to see, and Fawn tagged after. She was reminded of Grace, left back in West Blue, and was washed by an unexpected wave of homesickness. How could you be homesick for a horse? But she suddenly missed her own mare fiercely, wondering how she was getting along, and if Grace’s round barrel looked any rounder yet. She stretched her hands and ran them over the black-and-white belly, speculating how far along this mare was. Dag’s horse-raising tent-sister Omba could have told exactly, with her groundsense. Maybe Barr shared the talent.
Remo put his hand on the mare’s withers and looked across at Barr, who had started picking burrs out of her mane. Remo pitched his voice low. “Wain said we were due a share of the salvage rights. We could take a couple of these horses. Ride back to Pearl Riffle before the snow flies.”
Barr looked up in surprise. “Huh! When did you change your mind?”
“Crane…was pretty awful. I’m thinking now it’s not such a good thing for a Lakewalker to be exiled from his kin. Even if they do badger him half to death. Maybe we should just go take our lumps.”
Fawn, stroking the mare’s warm flank, observed, “I don’t think it’s good for anyone to become outcast, Lakewalker or farmer. Look at all those bandits.”
“Speaking of ending up in a pit of your own digging, yeah,” said Barr. He picked at another brown, spiky burr, carefully separating the coarse hairs from it. “I thought you wanted to see the sea. Or else go drown yourself in it.”
“Neither one, anymore.” Remo’s voice went lower. “The world is uglier than I’d ever dreamed. I’ve had enough. Let’s go home.”
This hopeless world, Crane had said. And Crane had certainly done more than his share to make it worse.
“Not all of it’s that bad,” Barr said mildly. He glanced across the meadow; Fawn followed his gaze to Dag, still leaning head-back, looking utterly spent. “Thing is…I think I’ve changed my mind, too. And even if I hadn’t, I don’t think it’d be so good to let him”—he jerked his head Dag-ward—“go walking around out there all by himself, either. In fact,” he added judiciously, “I think that might be worse than the worst snag-brained thing I’ve ever done.” He raised his eyes. “And you know I’ve done some champion snag-brained things.”
Fawn cleared her throat. “Dag does have a partner,” she pointed out. She held up her cord-wrapped left wrist, drawing their eyes and maybe groundsenses as well. “We’re as roped together as any two Luthlian patrollers out on the ice. And I’m not about to let him go drown in the dark and cold, neither.”
Remo rubbed his lips. Barr undid another burr. Neither argued.
I’ve taken everythi
ng Dag was, and thought the trade fair because he did. But he needs more than just me. She stood straighter and said, “Still, I really think having you two along has been good for him. An anchor in the old when he’s straining and reaching for something so new no one has ever grasped it before. Because he’s not really a patroller anymore, not in his ground. He’s trying to turn into something else.”
Remo nodded. “Yes, medicine maker.”
“Or knife maker,” said Barr more doubtfully. “And if he’s going to be that, we sure enough have a duty to guard him. Camp or no camp!”
Fawn shook her head, though not in disagreement with that last. “First thing a new maker has to do is make himself. I think it’s hard for any youngster to do that, even apprenticed to a mentor in a chosen craft, but Dag’s trying to do it all on his own, somewhere in midair. I’ve seen him mend a busted glass bowl, and a lot of hurt people, and a lost sharing knife, and what he did in Raintree I can’t begin to describe, but what he really wants to mend is the world.”
Remo stared at her, appalled. “No one can do that!”
“No one, no. I ’spect Dag would say the world’s big and we’re small and I guess we all break in the end. But when all the old arguments about farmers and Lakewalkers have gone ’round and ’round ’bout sixteen times and plowed into exhaustion, the problem of Greenspring will still be sitting there.” Fawn swallowed. “We may not be able to win that toss, either, but it’d sure be nice to have some company while we’re losin’. That’s one.”
Remo’s lips moved, but no sound came out. He blinked rapidly.
Fawn drew breath and went on: “Cracking that beguilement mystery open was worth your coming along all on its own. That’s two. And I don’t know how many more boats and lives those bandits would have destroyed before the end if we hadn’t chanced along to stop them. That’s three. Three good reasons are good enough for going on with, Dag says.”
She glanced aside. I could wish it was less hard on Berry. But the boat boss was sitting on the log next to Whit, finally beginning to talk a bit. Whit was listening attentively. He had an arm around her waist in a comforting sort of way, and she was making no move to shrug it off. Berry’s strength still impressed Fawn, but she was glad that maybe she didn’t have to be strong so all-by-herself, now. Because that could be wearing on a woman.
“I don’t know,” said Remo. “I don’t think I know anything anymore.”
“Blight, I never did,” said Barr. “It hasn’t stopped me!” He blinked cheerily, and fell into his old, wheedling voice. “You’ve got to come along, Remo, to keep me from falling into the sea. Or to push me in, whichever.”
Remo scratched his head, and said wryly, “Hard choices.”
“Hey…!”
Leaving them to take up their comfortable, habitual squabbling, Fawn made her way back to Dag, satisfied.
A while after the last unnerving noises stopped drifting over the ridge, they all made their way back to the Fetch the long way around, back of the cave, avoiding both the woods and the new poles down by the shore. Fawn expected she’d go peek at those gruesome standards later, and then be sorry she had. She definitely wasn’t going to venture into the winter-bare woods until the crop hanging there had been harvested and planted. And maybe not even then.
Dag thought Berry would have been glad to shove off that very afternoon, as the Fallowfield family’s flatboat did, but they were all held there by the boatmen’s demands on Dag for medicine work. Yet by the following morning Chicory was doing better than Dag had anticipated, sitting up and eating, if wincing at his tender skull and throbbing headache. The Raintree men made plans to camp at the cave for a few more days, then ride home in gentle stages, taking the bandits’ horses and horse gear for their salvage share. Fawn opined that it was a good idea to get Chicory back into the hands of Missus Chicory as soon as might be to finish recovering. In all, Dag thought the Raintree hunters would be trailing home with fuller bags than if they’d managed to successfully complete their original river venture, and much sooner, so Missus Chicory might forgive the broken head. If perhaps not let anyone forget it for a good long time, or so Bearbait feared.
After Dag released his Lakewalker assistants around noon, the pair disappeared and did not return till after dark. He intercepted them at the end of the gangplank as they approached the Fetch somewhat surreptitiously, each lugging a sack.
“What’s this?” Dag asked.
“Shh,” said Remo, with a glance at the boat. Dag allowed them to lead him out of earshot along the bank.
Barr said, “We decided to patrol upstream a ways, and see if we could track where Crane and the Drums caught up with his two deserters. Which we did. We buried the bodies.” He grimaced, which Dag took to indicate the scene had been rather worse than just plain bodies. He did not feel any need to ask after the details.
Remo continued, “It took a bit longer to trace Crane’s cache. I don’t think anyone without groundsense could have found it.”
“Does Wain know about this?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Barr, “we took the goods to him first. He allowed as how since it was twice-stolen and wouldn’t have been found at all without us, we could keep it for our salvage share. We swapped out the things we didn’t want with some of the boatmen—there’s a regular market going on up at the cave just now. I couldn’t quite stomach the clothes and boots, but some of those keeler boys are not so finicky.”
“They didn’t fit us,” Remo interpreted this more precisely.
“A fellow could come back someday and do some real interesting treasure-hunting within a day or so’s ride of this place,” Barr said, a speculative look in his eye.
“That accounts for you two missing dinner, but why the tiptoeing?” asked Dag.
Remo rubbed his mouth. “Boss Berry refused any salvage share for the Fetch.”
Barr put in, “Which about broke poor Whit’s heart, I think, but he wouldn’t take any if she wouldn’t.”
Remo went on, “I know you said that wasn’t to apply to us, sir, but I figured it might be better not to trouble her mind.”
Dag, who had put his new sharing knife away deep in his saddlebags, because he flat declined to wear it around the same neck where he had kept Kauneo’s in honor for so many long years, nodded understanding. “Yes,” he agreed, “put those bags away discreetly, and no, don’t trouble Boss Berry just now.”
“Yes, sir,” said Barr brightly. Both patrollers looked relieved to be freed from responsibility for this ruling, although Dag doubted Berry would say anything even if she noticed. The pair made their way quietly across the gangplank, discretion somewhat spoiled when Daisy-goat bleated curious greetings. Dag shook his head and followed.
Berry’s hard quest was over, but time and the river flowed only one way, and flatboats perforce went with them. The Fetch left the cave landing the next dawn. Of the patients Dag was taking along, Hawthorn was recovering enough to be active, if still ouchy about his reset nose, but pleased to be let off chores for another few days. When active turned to pesky, Dag would pronounce him well. Bo was more worrisome, developing a rising fever. Dag gave up his sweep duties on the roof to sit with him and, together with Fawn, keep a close eye. Anxious for the old man, Hod proved a dab hand as an attendant, steady and careful when it came to the needed lifting and turning, and he bore up bravely even when the hurting Bo unjustly swore at him.
During the periods when Bo fell into an uneasy doze, Dag turned to another chore. Gathering up what few pieces of paper the Fetch harbored, he sat down at the kitchen table to pen a letter to Fairbolt Crow about the renegade Crane and his fate at the river cave. Whether as patrol leader or captain, the writing of reports had never been Dag’s favorite task, and he’d ducked it whenever he could. Which still meant that he’d written more of the blighted things than he could rightly remember. The lurid events and Crane’s evil history fit oddly into the well-worn forms and phrases of a patrol report, but Dag trusted Fairbolt, at least, to be able
to read between the lines. Dag was not entirely satisfied with the results, but he had no more paper to do it over. Fairbolt was not, strictly speaking, Dag’s camp captain anymore, but Dag could not escape the conviction that someone with his head on straight ought to have the facts.
Bo’s fever grew worse that night, and Dag gave ground reinforcements till he nearly passed out. But in the mid-morning, the fever broke. Dag fell wordlessly into his own bed, awakening in the afternoon with an incipient cold, his first in years. Happily Barr and Remo were both able to help with that, a familiar task for patrollers on search patterns in all weathers, and Dag—with another cup of oats silently proffered by Fawn—fended it off with no worse effects than a sore throat and slight sniffle.
Dag had the Fetch stop at the last Lakewalker ferry camp on the north bank of the Grace just long enough for him to deliver his letter to the patrol courier there, turn over the effects of the murdered Lakewalker couple for possible identification, and give a very truncated account of the late doings up in Crooked Elbow to the shocked camp captain. He did not linger.
They came to the Confluence in the late afternoon of the following day. Dag, Berry, and Whit were on the sweeps. Dag having now no need to beg—or attempt to beg—a knife, Berry was just as happy not to have to struggle to pull in the Fetch at the big Lakewalker camp that occupied the point, though Barr and Remo climbed to the roof to stare at the many tents to be seen amongst the trees, and at the wharf boats and goods-sheds maintained along the shore by the Lakewalkers themselves.
Fawn joined them as the Fetch swung past the point and the Gray River could at last be seen. She shaded her eyes with her hand, her lips parted in an unimpaired world-wonder that eased Dag’s heart. The waters of the two great streams did not at once mingle, but ran along side by side for some miles, clear-brown and opaque.