Fairbolt grimaced, and grumbled, “No,” as well.
Pakona stated, “Tent Redwing’s request is upheld. Camp council rules Dag Redwing’s camp credit is held aside until the Bearsford rehearing.”
A little silence fell, as it all sank in. Until broken by Saun, surging up to yell, “You blighted thieves…!” Razi and Griff both tackled him and wrestled him back into his seat. “After Raintree! After Raintree!” Mari turned and scowled at him, but seemingly could not force herself to actually chide. As she turned back, the look she shot at her nephew Dar would have burned bacon, Fawn thought.
Omba’s jaw had been working for quite some time. Now she snatched the speaking stick out of her surprised husband’s hand, waved it, and cried out, “Make him take his horse! Copperhead is a blighted menace. The beast has bitten three of my girls, kicked two, and torn more hide off his pasture-mates than I ever want to sew up again. I don’t care if Dag walks out bare to the skin, but I demand his horse go with him!” Which all sounded plenty irate, except that her eye away from Dar and toward Dag shivered in a wink.
“There’s a mental picture for you, Spark,” Dag said out of the corner of his mouth at her. “Me and Copperhead, bareback to bare-backside…”
She could have shaken him till his teeth rattled for making her almost laugh aloud in the midst of this mess. As it was, she had to clap her hand over her mouth and look down into her lap until she regained control. “Happy eyes!” she whispered back, and had the sweet revenge of watching him choke back a surprised guffaw.
Dar glowered at them both, furiously impotent against their private jokes. Which was also pretty tasty, amongst the ashes.
“Wherever did you come by that horse, anyhow?” Fawn asked under her breath.
Dag murmured back, “Lost a game of chance with a keelboat man at Silver Shoals, once.”
“Lost. Ah. That explains it.”
Pakona considered Dag, not in a friendly way. “That does bring up the question of where camp credit leaves off and personal effects begin.” And if she was picturing Dag walking out naked, it wasn’t with the same emotions Fawn did, by a long shot.
Fairbolt rumbled, “No, it doesn’t, Pakona. Unless you want to start a revolt in the patrol.”
Saun, still squirming in his seat with Utau’s hand heavy on his shoulder, looked as if he was ready to begin an uprising right now. And if steam wasn’t billowing from Dirla, Razi, and Griff, it was only because they weren’t wet.
Pakona raised an eyebrow at Fairbolt. “Can’t you keep your rowdy youngsters under control, Fairbolt?”
“Pakona, I’d be leading them.”
Her mouth thinned in lack of appreciation of his humor, or whatever that was—black and sincere, anyhow. But she veered off, nonetheless. “Very well. Till the Bearsford rehearing, the…former patroller can take away his horse Copperhead, its gear, and whatever personal effects it can carry. The farmer girl can leave with whatever she came with; it’s no business of ours.”
“What about all those bride-gifts he sent off?” said Dar suddenly.
Dag stirred, his eyes narrowing dangerously.
Mari looked up at this one. “Dar, don’t even start.” Fawn wasn’t sure if that was her patrol leader voice or her aunt voice, or some alloy of the two, but Dar subsided, and even Pakona didn’t reprimand her.
Pakona straightened her spine and looked around the circle. “Tent Redwing, do you have anything more to say before I close this session?”
Dar choked out through flat lips, “No, ma’am.” The camp-credit ruling had left him looking bitterly satisfied, but Cumbia, behind him, was drawn and quiet.
“Dag Redwing?”
Dag shook his head in silence.
Pakona held out her hand, and the speaking stick was passed back to her. She tapped it three times on the log table, leaned forward, and blew out the session candle.
At the door to his pegboard chamber, Fairbolt excluded Dag’s outraged escort of fellow patrollers and their increasingly imaginative and urgent offers to wreak vengeance on Dar. Dag was just as glad. Fairbolt gestured him and Fawn to seats, but Dag shook his head and simply stood, hanging wearily on his hickory stick. Not fellow patrollers anymore, I suppose. What was he now, if not Fawn’s patroller? He hardly knew. Fawn’s Dag, leastways. Always. She leaned up under his left arm, looking anxiously at Fairbolt, and Dag let some of his weight rest on her slim shoulders.
“I’m sorry about how that came out back there,” said Fairbolt, jerking his head in the general direction of the council grove. “I didn’t expect Dar to blindside me. Twice.”
“I always said my family was impossible. I never said they were stupid,” sighed Dag. “I thought it was a draw between the two of you, myself. I’d made up my mind to it when I walked into that circle that I was going to walk out banished for real, and if they didn’t offer it, I was going to take it myself.” He added, “You have my resignation, of course. I should have stopped in here before the session and not blindsided you with that, too, but I wasn’t just sure how things were going to play out. If you want to call it desertion, I won’t argue.”
Fairbolt leaned down and plucked Dag’s peg from the painted square on the wall labeled Sick List. He straightened up and weighed it thoughtfully in his palm. “So what are you going to do out there, walking around farmer country? I just can’t picture you plowing dirt.”
“Leastways it would involve movin’, though right now sitting looks pretty good. That mood’ll pass, it always does. I wasn’t joking when I said I do not know.” He had once traveled great distances. For all he knew, the next great journey would be all in one place, but walked the long way, through time, a passage he could barely envision, let alone explain. “No plan I ever made has been of the least use to me, and sometimes—plans keep you from seeing other paths. I want to keep my eyes clear for a space. Find out if you really can teach an old patroller new tricks.”
“You’ve learned quite a few lately, from what Hoharie says.”
“Well…yes.” Dag added, “Give my regrets and thanks to Hoharie, will you? She almost tempted me away from you. But…it would have been the wrong road. I don’t know much right now, but I know that much.”
“No lordship,” said Fairbolt, watching him.
“No,” Dag concurred. “I mean to find some other road, wide enough for everyone. Someone has to survey it. Could be the new way won’t be mine to make, but mine to be given, out there. From someone smarter than me. If I keep my ground open, watch and listen hard enough.”
Fairbolt said meditatively, “Not much point for a man to learn new things if he doesn’t come back to teach ’em. Pass ’em on.”
Dag shook his head. “Change needs to happen. But it won’t happen today, here, with these people. Camp council proved that.”
Fairbolt held his hand out, palm down, in a judicious rocking gesture. “It wasn’t unanimous.”
“There’s a hope,” Dag conceded. “Even if it was mainly due to Dowie Grayheron having a spine of pure custard.” Fairbolt barked a laugh, shaking his head in reluctant agreement
Dag said, “This wasn’t my first plan. I’d have stayed here with Spark if they’d have let me. Be getting myself ready for the next patrol even now.”
“No, you’d still be on the sick list, I assure you,” said Fairbolt. He glanced down. “How’s the leg? You were favoring it, walking back, I noticed.”
“It’s coming along. It still twinges when I’m tired. I’m glad I’ll be riding Copperhead instead of walking, bless Omba’s wits. I’ll miss that woman.”
Fairbolt stared out the hooked-open window at the glimmer of the lake. “So…if you could have your first plan back—sorry, Fawn, not even what you call Lakewalker magic could make that happen now, but if—would you take it?”
It was a testing question, and a good one. Dag tilted his head in the silence, his eyelids lowering, rising; then said simply, “No.” As Fawn looked solemnly up at him, he gave her a squeeze around the shoulde
rs. “Go on and chuck my peg in the fireplace. I’m done with it.”
Fairbolt gave him a short nod. “Well, if you ever change your mind—or if the world bucks you off again—you know where to find us. I’ll still be here.”
“You don’t ever give up, do you?”
Fairbolt chuckled. “Massape wouldn’t let me. Very dangerous woman, Massape. The day I met her, forty-one years gone, all my fine and fancy plans for my life fell into Hickory Lake and never came up again. Hang on to your dangerous woman too, Dag. They’re rare, and not easy to come by.”
Dag smiled. “I’ve noticed that.”
Fairbolt tossed the peg in his palm once more, then, abruptly, held it out to Fawn. “Here. I think this is yours, now. Don’t lose it.”
Fawn glanced up at them both, her eyebrows climbing in surprise, then smiled and folded the peg in her firm little grip. “You bet I won’t, sir.”
Dag made plans to leave in the gray light of dawn, in part to get a start on a day that promised to turn cool and rainy later, but mostly to avoid any more farewells, or worse, folks who still wanted to argue with him. He and Fawn had packed their saddlebags the night before, and Dag had given away what wouldn’t fit: his trunk to Sarri, his good ash spear to Razi, and his father’s sword to Utau, because he sure wasn’t passing it back to Dar. His winter gear in storage at Bearsford he supposed he must abandon with his camp credit. Tent Bluefield he left standing for Stores to struggle with, since they’d been so anxious for it.
Dag was surprised when Omba herself, and not one of her girls, appeared out of the mists hanging above the road leading Copperhead and Grace. She gave him a hug.
“Sneaking in a good-bye out of sight of the kin?” he inquired, hugging her back.
“Well, that, and, um…I have to offer an apology to Fawn.”
Fawn, taking Grace’s reins from her, said, “You never did me any harm that I know of, Omba. I’m glad to have met you.”
Omba cleared her throat. “Not harm, exactly. More of an…accident.” She was a bit flushed in the face, Dag was bemused to note, not at all like her usual dry briskness. “Fawn, I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid your horse is pregnant.”
“What?” cried Fawn. She looked at Grace, who looked back with a mild and unrepentant eye, and snuffled her soft muzzle into Fawn’s hand in search of treats. “Grace! You bad girl, what have you been up to?” She gave her reins a little shake, laughing and amazed.
“Omba,” said Dag, leaning against Copperhead’s shoulder and grinning despite himself, “who have you gone and let ravish my wife’s mare?”
Omba sighed hugely. “Rig Crow’s stallion Shadow got loose and swam over from Walnut about five nights ago. Had himself a fine old time before we caught up with him. You’re not the only mares’ owners I’m going to have to apologize to today, though you’re the first in line. I’m not looking forward to it.”
“Will they be angry?” asked Fawn. “Were they planning other mates? Was he not a good horse?”
“Oh, Shadow is a fine horse,” Dag assured her. “You would not believe how many furs Rig asks for, and gets, as a stud fee for that snorty horse of his. I know. I paid through the nose last year to have him cover Swallow, for Darkling.”
“And therefore,” said Omba, pulling on her black-and-white braid, “everyone will say they are very upset, and carry on as convincingly as possible. While Rig tries to collect. It could go to the camp council.”
“You’ll forgive me, I trust, for wishing them all a long, tedious dispute, burning many candles,” said Dag. “If Rig asks, my wife and I are just furious about it all.” He vented an evil laugh that made even Fawn raise an eyebrow at him.
“I wasn’t even going to mention Grace,” Omba assured him. “I’ll be having troubles enough over this.”
Utau and Razi came out to help them saddle up, followed by Sarri, and Mari and Cattagus together. Dag mostly exchanged sober nods, except with his aunt Mari, whom he embraced; Fawn hugged everybody.
“Think you’ll be back?” asked Utau gruffly. “For that Bearsford Council, maybe?”
“Not for that. For the rest, who can say? I’ve left home for good at least four times that I recall, as Mari can testify.”
“I remember a spectacular one, ’bout eight years back,” she allowed. “There was a lot of shouting. You managed to be gone for seventeen months.”
“Maybe I’ll get better at it with practice.”
“Could be,” she said. Then added, “But I sort of hope not.”
And then it was time to mount up. Razi gave Dag a leg up and sprang away, Copperhead put in his usual tricks and was duly chastised, and Utau boosted Fawn onto Grace. On the road, Dag and Fawn both turned and gave silent waves, as silently returned. As the blurring forms left behind parted to their different tents, the mist swallowed them all.
Dag and Fawn didn’t speak again till the horses had clopped over the long wooden span from the island. She watched him lean his hand on his cantle and stare over his shoulder.
She said quietly, “I didn’t mean, when I fell in love with you, to burn your life to the ground.”
He turned back, giving her a pensive smile. “I was dry, dry timber when you met me, Spark. It’ll be well.” He set his face ahead and didn’t look around again.
He added after a while, “Though I’m sorry I lost all my camp credit. I really thought, when I promised your folks I would care for you, to have in hand whatever you’d need for your comfort, come this winter and on for a lot of winters more. All the plunkins in the Bearsford cold cellars won’t do us much good now.”
“As I understand it, your goods aren’t lost, exactly. More like, held. Like my dowry.”
His brows rose. “There’s a way of looking at it I hadn’t thought of.”
“I don’t know how we’d manage traveling anyhow, with a string of, what did you say—eight horses?”
He considered this picture. “I was thinking more of converting it into Tripoint gold tridens or Silver Shoals silver mussels. Their monies are good all up and down the Grace and the Gray. But if all my camp credit for the past eighteen years were converted into horses—average horses, not Copperheads or Shadows…hm. Let me see.” He did some mental estimating, for the curiosity of it. “That would be about forty horses, roughly. Way too many for us to trail in a string, it’s true.”
“Forty horses!” said Fawn, sounding quite taken aback. “You could buy a farm for the price of forty horses!”
“But I wouldn’t know what to do with it once I had it.”
“But I would—oh, never mind.” She added, “I’m glad I didn’t know this yesterday. I’d have been a lot more upset.”
“Offends your notions of economy, does it?”
“Well, yes! Or my notions of something.”
He gave her a wink. “You’re worth it at twice the price, Spark. Trust me.”
“Huh.” But she settled again, thumping her heels gently against Grace’s wide-sprung sides to urge her to keep up, looking meditative.
They pulled their horses to a halt at the place, a mile from the bridge, where the road split in three. “So,” he said. “Which way?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. Well, not north. Not this late in the season.” In the meadows, the cicadas were growing noisier as the morning warmed, but the first frosts would silence them soon enough. “Whichever way we go, we’ll need to travel in easy stages, see, on account of Grace’s delicate condition.” He suspected he could get a lot of use out of Grace’s condition if he played it right.
Not fooled a bit, Fawn looked narrowly at him, and said, “Couldn’t agree more.” She swiveled her head. “But still…which road?” Her eye was caught by something, and she twisted in her saddle. “What’s this?”
Dag followed her gaze, and his stomach knotted coldly at the sight of Saun and Dirla, galloping madly from the bridge and waving at them. Please, please, not some other malice outbreak…I don’t want to have to do all this leaving
over again. But their flushed faces, when they pulled up and sat panting on their fidgeting mounts, weren’t that sort of anxious.
“I was afraid we’d missed you,” gasped Dirla.
“Kindly,” said Dag, touching his temple. “But I thought we’d all said good-bye yesterday?” And, while not enough…it had been enough.
Saun, catching his breath, waved this away. “It’s not that. It’s this.” He stuck a hand in his vest and pulled out a leather bag, which clinked. “A lot of folks from our company, and in the patrol, weren’t too pleased with how things went yesterday in the camp council. So Dirla and Griff and I took up a little collection. It’s nothing compared to what Dar stripped you of, I know, but it’s something.” He thrust out the bag toward Dag, who let Copperhead shy away a step.
“I thank you kindly, Saun, but I can’t take that.”
“Not as many chipped in as I thought should,” said Dirla, looking irate. “But at least the blighted camp council has nothing to do with this.”
Dag was both touched and embarrassed. “Look, you children, I can’t—”
“Fairbolt put in three gold tridens,” Saun interrupted him. “And told us not to tell Massape.”
“And Massape put in ten silver mussels,” Dirla added, “and told us not to tell Fairbolt.” She paused in reflection. “You do wonder what they’ll say if they catch up with each other.”
“Are you telling?” Saun asked her, interested.
“Nope.”
Well…the Crow clan was rich. Dag sighed, looking at those earnest, eager faces. He could see he wasn’t getting out of this one. “I suppose the patrol will be wearing out some of those horses I left behind.”
“Likely,” said Saun.
Dag smiled in defeat and held out his hand.
Saun passed the bag across, grinning. “I’ll try and remember all you taught me. No more swordplay in the woods, right.”
“That’s a start,” Dag agreed. “Duck faster is another good one, ’cept you learned that one all by yourself. It’ll stick better that way, I do allow. Take care of each other, you two.”
The Sharing Knife 2 - Legacy Page 34