Here.
Ah. Hm.
His chosen tree turned out to be a shagbark hickory with a trunk a bit less than a foot and a half wide. And no side branches for twenty feet straight up.
This was a mixed blessing. It would certainly be a challenge for the boys to follow him up it. If he could get up it. He pulled his right arm from the sling and let it swing out of his way, reached up with his left, jammed in his hook, clapped his knees around the trunk, and began shinnying. Yanked the hook out again, reached, jammed, shinnied. Again. Again. He was about fifteen feet in the air when the pursuit arrived, winded and swearing and waving their cudgels. It occurred to him, in a meditative sort of way as he dragged his body skyward, that even without the unpleasant searing feeling in his left shoulder muscles, he was putting an awful lot of trust in a small wooden bolt and some stitching designed to pull out. The rough bark strips crackled and split beneath his gripping knees, small bits raining down in an aromatic shower. If his hook gave way and he slid down, the bark would have an interesting serrated effect between his legs, too.
He made it to the first sturdy side branch, put an arm and a leg over, winched himself up, and stood. He searched for his objective. Absent gods, another fifteen feet to go. Up, then. A dry branch gave way under one foot, which was partly useful, for he was then able to kick it free and drop it on the upturned face of the skinny fellow who was being urged up the tree in Dag’s wake by his friends. He yelped and fell back, discouraged for a moment. Dag didn’t need too many more moments.
To his delight, a rock whistled up past him, then another. “Ow!” he cried realistically, to lure more of them. A couple more missiles rose and fell, followed by a meaty clunk and an entirely authentic “OW!” from below. Dag made sure they could hear his evil laugh, even though he was wheezing like a smithy’s bellows by now.
Almost to goal. Absent gods, the blighted thing was well out on that side branch. He extended himself, gripping the branch he was half-lying across under his right armpit, feet sliding along the wobbly bough below it, wishing for almost the first time in his life for more height and reach. Overbalance at this elevation, and he could swiftly prove himself stupider than Stupid Sunny. A
little more, a little more, get his hook around that attachment… and a good yank.
Dag clung hard as the rough gray paper-wasp nest the size of a watermelon parted from the branch and began its thirty-five foot-drop. Most of the nest’s residents were home for the evening, his groundsense told him, settling down for the night. Wake up! You’re under attack! His feeble effort to stir up the wasps with his ground seemed redundant when the plummeting object hit the dirt and ruptured with a loud and satisfying thwack. Followed by a deep angry whine he could hear all the way up here.
The first screams were a deal more satisfying, though.
He cuddled back against the trunk of the tree, feet braced on some less flexible side branches, gasping for breath and applying himself to a few refinements.
Persuading the furious wasps to advance up trouser legs and down collars proved not as difficult as he’d feared, although he could not simply bounce them like mosquitoes, and they were much less tractable than fireflies. A matter of practice, Dag decided. He set to it with a will.
“Ah! Ah! They’re in my hair, they’re in my hair, they’re stinging meee!” came a wail from below, voice too high-pitched to identify.
“Augh, my ears! Ow, my hands! Get them off, get them off!”
“Run for the river, Sunny!”
The shuffling sounds of retreat filtered up through the leaves; the pell-mell flight wouldn’t help them much, for Dag made sure they left under full guard.
Even without groundsense, though, he could tell when his trouser-explorers made it all the way to target by the earsplitting shrieks that went up and up until breath was gone.
“Limp for the river, Sunny,” Dag muttered savagely, as the frantic cries trailed away to the east.
Then came the matter of getting down.
Dag took it slowly, at least till the last ten feet when his hook slipped free and scored a long slash down the trunk in the wake of the flying bark bits from under his knees. But he did manage to land on his feet and avoid banging his splint very much on anything on the way. He staggered upright, gasping. “It was easier… when I could just… gut them…”
No. Not really.
He sighed, and did his best to tidy himself up a trifle, brushing bark and sticks and wide papery leaves from his clothing and hair with the back of his hook, and gratefully slipping his throbbing right arm back into its sling. A
few stray wasps buzzed near in investigative menace; he sent them off after their nest mates and slithered back down the slope to where the horses were tied.
He picked apart their ties and did his best to loop up their reins so they wouldn’t step on them, led them out onto the road, and pointed them south, trying to plant horsey suggestions about barns and grain and home into their limited minds. They would either find their way, or Sunny and his friends could have a fine time over the next few days looking for them. Once the boys could get their swollen selves out of bed, that is. A couple of the would-be bullies, including Sunny—Dag had made quite sure of Sunny on that score—would definitely not be wishing to ride home tonight. Or for many nights to come.
As he was wearily climbing back up the lane, he met Sorrel hastening down.
Sorrel gripped a pitchfork and looked thoroughly alarmed.
“What in thunder was that awful screeching, patroller?” he demanded.
“Some fool young fellows trespassing in your woods thought it would be a grand idea to chuck rocks at a wasp nest. It didn’t work out the way they’d pictured.”
Sorrel snorted in half-amused vexation, the tension draining out of his body, then paused. “Really?”
“I think that would be the best story all around, yes.”
Sorrel gave a little growl that reminded Dag suddenly of Fawn. “Plain enough there’s more to it. Have it in hand, do you?” He turned again to walk up the lane side by side with Dag.
“That part, yes.” Dag extended his groundsense again, this time toward the old barn. His future brother-in-law was still alive, though his ground was decidedly agitated at the moment. “There’s another part. Which I think is your place and not mine to deal with.” It was not one patrol leader’s job to correct another patrol leader’s people. On the other hand, teaming up could sometimes be remarkably effective. “But I think we might get forward faster if you’d be willing to take some direction from me.”
“About what?”
“In this case, Reed and Rush.”
Sorrel muttered something about, “… ready to knock their fool heads together.”
Then added, “What about them?”
“I think we ought to let Rush tell us. Then see.”
“Huh,” said Sorrel dubiously, but he followed as Dag turned aside from the lane at the old barn.
The sliding door onto the lane was open, and a soft yellow light spilled out from an oil lantern hung on a nail in a rafter. Grace, in a box stall by the door, snorted uneasily as they entered. The packed-dirt aisle smelled not unpleasantly of horses and straw and manure and dove droppings and dry rot.
From Copperhead’s box sounded an angry squeal. Dag held out a restraining hand as Sorrel started to surge forward. Wait, Dag mouthed.
It was hard for Dag not to laugh out loud as the scene revealed itself, although the sight of half his gear strewn across the stall floor being well trampled by Copperhead did quite a lot to help him keep a straight face. On the far wall of the stall, some wooden slats were nailed to make a crude manger, and above it a square was cut in the ceiling to allow hay to be tossed down directly from the loft above. Although the hole was big enough to stuff down an armload of hay, it wasn’t quite big enough for Rush’s broad shoulders to make the reverse trip.