Passage

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Fawn nodded vigorously.

  “That’s right,” said Berry, straightening in satisfaction. “We may make a riverman of you yet.”

  Whit smiled blindingly at her. “I sure hope so.”

  She smiled back involuntarily; not her usual wry grin, but something unwitting and almost unwilling. She rubbed her lips and shook her head. “And to top it, they’re running at night. Unless they got themselves their very own Lakewalker aboard, not too bright, I’m afraid.” She leaned on the back rail and stared down the river, her eyes growing grave and gray in the gathering gloom. Fawn barely heard her mutter: “Papa was no fool country boy. So what happened?”

  18

  During an easy stretch of river in the morning, Berry took Whit topside to give him a lesson on the steering oar. Mildly inspired, Dag assembled the Lakewalkers on the front deck for a drill in ground-veiling. He’d a shrewd suspicion such groundwork had been somewhat neglected by these two partners in favor of more vigorous training in bow, knife, sword, and spear.

  Dag took the bench, Barr leaned against the goat pen, and Remo settled cross-legged on the deck. Eyes closed or open, they went around the lopsided circle taking turns at that inward-furling blindness that sacrificed perception for privacy—or invisibility. Unfairly, Barr had the stronger native groundsense of the pair, though unsurprisingly, Remo was more disciplined at handling what he had.

  “You can’t veil yourself any better than that, and they let you out on patrol?” said Dag to Barr. “Amma Osprey must be harder up for patrollers than I thought.”

  Barr waved a hand in protest. “Going blind like this feels like being a little kid again,” he complained. “Back to before my groundsense even came in.”

  “There’s a deep difference in vulnerability. But leaking like you do, you’d never get close enough to a malice to make a rush with your knife.” If you had a knife.

  “At that range, it could see me, couldn’t it? I mean, they do have eyes, right?”

  “Usually. But that’s not the point. A good ground-veiling also resists ground-ripping, at least by a weak sessile or early molt. Which you’d better hope is what you’ll find yourself facing.” It occurred to Dag that this could be another use for his own weak ground-ripping ability—training young patrollers to resist it. He was tempted to test the notion, except for the certainty that it would scare the crap out of these two even worse than it scared him, and then there would be all those awkward explanations. But it was a heartening realization that any patroller who could resist a malice could resist Dag, as readily as a brawler could block a blow to his face. If he saw the blow coming, leastways.

  But not any farmer.

  He bit his lip and pushed that troubling thought aside for later examination. “And whether you’re the patrol member who places the knife or not, the better your ground-veiling, the better the chance of not spending the week vomiting your guts out from the blight exposure, after.”

  Remo eyed him. “You ever do that?”

  “It was closer to two weeks,” Dag admitted. “After that, I took my ground drills a lot more seriously. Let’s go around again. My turn to veil. You two close your eyes, but leave your groundsenses open and try to watch me.”

  Dag furled himself firmly, watching as the two obediently scrunched their eyes closed. Softly, he rose from his seat.

  Barr grinned. “Hey, where’d you go?”

  “Here,” he breathed in Barr’s ear.

  The boy yelped and jumped sideways. “Blight! Don’t do that!”

  “It’s how you get close to a malice. You need to learn, too.”

  “I’ve heard an advanced malice can ground-rip you all the same,” said Remo dubiously.

  “I’ve only tangled with two that strong, in my forty years of patrolling. The Wolf Ridge malice I didn’t see close-up, just heard about from the survivors of the actual attack on the lair. The Raintree malice I saw eye-to-eye. That malice opened up one of the best ground-veilers in my company as easy as you’d gut a trout.”

  “How can you even take down a malice that strong?” asked Remo.

  “Gang up on it. Go after it all at once with a lot of patrollers with a lot of knives, and hope one gets through. Worked at Wolf Ridge, worked the same at Raintree.” He added after moment, “Well-veiled patrollers. So let’s go around again.”

  After a couple more circuits, Barr remarked, “So, are you saying if I stayed this lousy at my ground-veiling, I’d never be chosen for one of those suicide-rushes?”

  “In Luthlia, we’d set you out for bait,” Dag said.

  Remo sniggered. Barr grimaced at him.

  “Again,” said Dag. Interestingly, Barr improved; but then, Barr had more room for improvement. Judging by his increased flickering, Remo was growing fatigued. Time to wind up.

  “That’s enough for today,” said Dag, easing back onto the bench. “I think we’ll spend an hour a day in this drill from now on.”

  Barr stretched and rolled his shoulders, squinting. “So much for the benefits of running away from home.”

  “Depends on what you run into,” Dag drawled. “If we rode slap into a river malice around the next bend, would you be prepared?”

  “No,” said Remo bitterly. “None of us has a primed knife.”

  “Then your job would be to survive and run for help to the next camp. Which is where?”

  “Blight,” said Barr. “I’m not even sure where we are.”

  “Amma made us memorize the locations of all the camps in Oleana,” Remo offered.

  “Good,” said Dag. “Too bad you’re in Raintree now.” And led the boys through a list of every Lakewalker ferry camp and its location in river miles from Tripoint to the Confluence, and made them each recite it back, individually and in chorus. Granted, the obscene version of the old memory-rhyme sped the process.

  The cool morning was failing to warm, the climbing sun absorbed by graying skies. Dag glanced down the river valley to see dense mist advancing up it. Berry popped her head over the roof edge.

  “If you can spare one of your patroller boys to pilot duty up here in a few minutes, I’d be much obliged,” she said. “Looks like we’re in for a real Grace Valley fog, and I don’t want to run up over it into some pasture half a mile inland like in Bo’s tale. The Fetch’d look funny on rollers.”

  “I’ll come up,” said Dag. “I could do with a stretch.”

  He joined Berry and Whit on the roof; Bo and Hod climbed down for a turn at the hearth.

  “If I’m right in my reckoning,” said Berry, “we’re coming up on a big island around this next bend that I don’t want to get on the wrong side of.”

  “Do we want the right- or left-hand channel?”

  “Right-hand.”

  “Will do, Boss.” Dag took a sweep and matched Whit’s slow sculling—just enough to give Berry’s rudder steering-way—which they had learned how to keep up for hours if necessary. The mist thickened about them, beading on Dag’s deerskin jacket, which Fawn had lately lined with quilting to help fit his scant summer gear for fall. They followed the main channel as it hurried around the wide bend; Dag extended his groundsense to its full mile range to locate the split in the current before they were swept wrongside-to.

  “Hey,” he said. “There’s somebody on that island.”

  “Can’t be,” said Berry, peering into the clinging damp. They could see maybe three boat-lengths ahead, now. “With this rise from the Beargrass, that island’s under three, maybe four feet of water.”

  “That could explain why they don’t seem too happy.” Dag reached, opening himself as wide as he could, ignoring the familiar, and much louder, grounds close-by. “Seven men. Blight, I think they may be those same Raintree flatties who passed us by backwards last night.” He added after a moment, “And a bear. They’ve all taken refuge from the flood up in the trees!”

  “Must be exciting for the one who’s sharing with the bear,” said Whit dubiously.

  “Bear’s got his own priva
te tree.” After a moment, Dag added, “No sign of their boats. Not moored within a mile, leastways. I think those fellows are in trouble over there, Boss. At least one ground shows signs of being hurt.”

  Berry drew breath through her teeth. “Bo!” she bawled. “Hod! You patroller boys, git out here! We need to get the skiff in the water afore we float too far!”

  The rest of the crew turned out onto the back deck, and Berry leaned over and explained the situation. After Dag confirmed the head-count of men stranded on the island, they decided to launch both the skiff and the narrow boat, in the hope of rescuing them all in one pass; also, Dag pointed out, so the two boats could partner each other in case of snags literal or figurative. Dag stayed with the Fetch to guide it down the channel. Whit and Remo each took an oar in the skiff; Barr paddled his narrow boat.

  “You sure about those fellows, Dag?” Remo called up from the water, once they’d all clambered down and were ready to push off.

  “Yep. Just over half a mile that way.” He pointed.

  Barr’s head turned. “Oh, yeah, I’ve got ’em now! Follow me, Remo! It’ll be just like old times.” His boat shot away as his paddle dipped and surged.

  Remo snorted, but trailed dutifully. Whit’s voice drifted back through the fog: “Beats shifting sheep, anyhow…”

  “Sheep?” said Berry.

  Dag shook his head.

  Long minutes slid past as the Fetch slipped downstream. Floating with the current, the banks obscured, it felt as if they’d stopped altogether in a quiet, fog-walled harbor. Running full-tilt into a snag or a big rock at five miles an hour and opening the Fetch’s seams would cure that illusion right quick, Dag thought; he kept all his senses alert.

  “Them Lakewalker boys’ll be able to find their way back to us, won’t they?” said Berry uneasily.

  “That’s why we put one in each boat,” Dag assured her. “They’ve made it to the island; ah, good for the narrow boat! Barr can get it right in between the trees.”

  “Just so’s he don’t catch it sidewise to the current and lean too far over. He could fill it in an eyeblink that way.”

  “These Pearl Riffle patrollers are up to the river’s tricks, I expect,” said Dag. “Handier than I would be. And those narrow boats are made to float even full of water. Air boxes in the prow and stern, tarred up and sealed.”

  “So that’s how they do that! I always wondered.” She added after a moment, “We thought it was magic.”

  Fawn took Hod and Hawthorn below to help assemble a warming welcome for the expected influx of unhappy boatmen—or boatless men. It was nearly an hour before the narrow boat appeared out of the fog astern. Two cold, wet strangers crouched in a miserable huddle in the center, clutching the thwarts nervously, but a third sat up in the bow, helping Barr paddle. Bo and Hod gave them hands to climb stiffly out—one nearly dumped the boat over in his clumsiness, but Barr kept it upright.

  “Whee-oh!” said the paddling man, straightening up and pulling off a shapeless felt hat much the worse for wear. He was a lean, strappy fellow, unshaven and shoeless; his feet were scratched and his toes purple with the cold. “We sure are glad to see you folks. We hit the top of that there island broadside in the dark last night, and it just sucked our boats down under that big towhead like the river was swallowing ’em!”

  Bo leaned over the steering oar and nodded sagely. “Yep. It would.” Fawn, hovering in the rear hatch, looked on wide-eyed.

  They had barely hoisted the narrow boat back aboard when the skiff, too, emerged from the mist, Remo and Whit rowing strongly. The skiff rode low in the water with the weight of the four rescued men. One was not only shoeless but shirtless, the skin of his shoulders and torso scraped bloody, some hanging in ugly strips. He handed up an ash boar spear, of all the things to have hung on to in the wreck. He groaned as he was hauled and pushed up by his anxious companions, but when he found his battered feet and gingerly straightened, clinging to the upright spear, he gazed around with a lively smile. Unbent, he proved a tallish man by farmer measures, with black hair straggling down his neck, and bright, brown eyes.

  “This here’s our boat boss, Captain Ford Chicory,” the paddling man explained.

  “I’m Boss Berry, and this is my boat, the Fetch,” said Berry, raking an escaped hank of hair out of her eyes. “You’re right welcome aboard.”

  The skinned flattie blinked at her in frank appreciation. “Well, ma’am, you folks sure fetched us out of a heap o’ trouble! We called all night from those trees as the water was gettin’ higher, till we got so hoarse we couldn’t yell no more, but you’re the first as heard us.”

  “Thank the Lakewalker, here,” said Berry, nodding to Dag. “He’s the one that spotted you. We’d have passed you right by in this soup.”

  “Yeah, and if we had heard you, we’d likely’ve thought you was ghosts crying to lure us to our doom in the fog,” Hawthorn offered helpfully.

  The skinned flattie’s startled eye was drawn from Dag by this; he looked down at Hawthorn in bemusement and scratched his head. “Yeah, I could see that.”

  “Too many tall tales,” Berry explained, cuffing Hawthorn on the ear. “Go help Fawn.” She turned to her crew. “I want at least one of you patroller boys topside with Bo.” Both volunteered, and climbed up. “And, Bo,” Berry called after them, “this time, if Remo tells you it’s a sand bar or snag, you mind him!”

  His crew herded their skinned boat boss—or former boat boss—through the back hatch; Dag ducked in after, mentally locating his medicine kit. The crowded kitchen was warm and steamy, and there he found Fawn had prepared gallons of hot tea and a huge heap of potatoes fried with onions and bacon, drenched in salt butter. A basket of apples stood ready. Warmed, if not hot, water waited for washing up. Stacks of every blanket and towel the boat carried were heating in front of the hearth. The exhausted men fell on it all with moans of gratitude. The limited supply of spare dry clothes was shared around as best as might be, with blankets making up the rest.

  Hot water, soap, and Dag’s kit waited by the hearth as well. It seemed he was expected to take on the injured, which he was willing enough to do. It was mostly cuts and scrapes, which he set Hod to washing with strong soap. Whit helped bandage, with a little instruction. The flattie leader was the worst off, and Dag set him on a stool before the fire and borrowed Fawn’s hands to help clean the odd injuries on his torso.

  “What in the wide green world happened to you?” Fawn asked him as she started in with rags and soap. “Did that bear claw you?”

  The fellow smiled back at her the way most sane fellows did, despite his winces from her scrubbing. “Not this time, missy.”

  “Why didn’t you bring back the bear, too?” demanded Hawthorn of Whit, both pausing to watch this process.

  “It wasn’t a cub, Hawthorn,” Whit said impatiently. “It would’ve sunk the skiff, if it didn’t try to eat us.”

  Boss-or-Captain Chicory told Hawthorn kindly, “Bears can swim fine, if they’ve a mind. It’ll get itself off that island when it gets bored.” He whispered to Fawn, “I’ve got a boy about that size at home, and his little brother to keep him in trouble in case he runs out. Which he never has yet, I admit.” He raised his voice, “No, see, how it was—ow!”

  “Sorry,” said Fawn, folding a cloth to pat new blood leaks from a scrubbed scab.

  “Keep on, missy, I can tell you’re doing me good. How it was, was, we’d come up shorthanded just before we reached the Grace, because three of our fellows got scared at the size of the river and run off with our skiff. So we lashed the boats together, but now I think that wasn’t such a good idea, as the rig was mighty obstinate after that. We pretty much gave up and just went with the river, figuring we’d get a chance to sort out and maybe hire on a real pilot downstream a ways.”

  “Had any of you been on the river before?” asked Berry, joining the circle.

  “No, not down this far. Some of my hands had worked the upper Beargrass a time or two, but b
oats are a new start for me. My main line is hunting—bear and wild pig mostly, though my missus keeps her garden. I’m no hand at farming. Tried it once. If things are mainly going to die on a man anyway, hunting’s a more natural trade for him, I figure.” He took a long swallow of tea, warming to his tale.

  “I was sitting down by the fire last night in the trailing boat, trying to get my feet thawed and wishing I was back hunting bears on hard land, where a man can at least pick his own direction, when I heard the fellows running and yelling over my head. Then we struck that towhead, thunk! I knew right off we were getting sucked under tail-end first, because the upstream side o’ the floor tilted down like a rooftop. I bolted for the hatch, which was in the middle of the roof, but the river was already a-pouring in like a regular cataract. The only other opening was this little window in the side, which we’d mainly used for dipping up water before we’d lashed the boats together.”

  Berry glanced fore and aft to the Fetch’s two exits, and its generous pair of windows. “I see. You boys make those boats yourselves?”

  “Not exactly. I bought ’em from a widow woman whose man was killed in that ruckus in north Raintree this summer. Seemed a way to help her out. He’d been in my company, was how it was.” He took another swig and continued, “I scrambled over to our dipping hatch, but it was plain to see it was too small for me. But with the river pouring in, it was plainer it was go through it or be drowned, and my papa always said I was born to be hanged, so I chucked out my good ash spear, stuck my arms through, and yelled for Bearbait and the fellows to grab me and pull with all their might or I was a goner.”

  The man with the battered hat—Dag trusted that Bearbait was a nickname—nodded earnestly. “We didn’t so much pull, as just hang on tight and let the boat get yanked off around you. I was mainly thinking how much I didn’t want to go back to your wife and explain how you was drownded, after all that. She being strongly not in favor of this whole scheme in the first place,” he added aside to Fawn, who nodded perfect understanding.

  “That little hatch scraped off my shirt and skinned me like a rabbit, but they got me through!” Chicory beamed around at his crew, who grinned back despite their fatigue. “We all scrambled onto the towhead before the second boat went after the first, and spent part of the night clinging to the wrack like wet possums, till it started to break up, too. Then we waded back and found some trees that were right-side-up and not moving. You know, I suppose I should have been glum, having lost my boats and lading and all my trouble, not to mention my clothes and skin, but I felt prime, up in that fine tree. Every once in a while I’d break out chuckling. Couldn’t help it. It felt so good to be breathing air and not river.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see my poor boats again.”