At the moment, having scrambled off the top of the manger as a partial ladder, Rush had one leg and both arms awkwardly jammed through the hole, and was attempting to twist the rest of his body out of range of Copperhead’s snapping yellow teeth. Copperhead, ears flat back and neck snaking, squealed and snapped again, apparently for the pure evil pleasure of watching Rush squirm harder.
“Patroller!” Rush cried as he saw them come up to the stall partition. “Help me!
Call off your horse!”
Sorrel shot Dag a worried look; Dag returned a small headshake and draped his arms over the partition, leaning comfortably.
“Now, Rush,” said Dag in a conversational voice, “I distinctly remember telling you and your brothers that Copperhead was a warhorse, and to leave him alone.
Do you remember that, Sorrel?”
“Yes, I do, patroller,” said Sorrel, matching his tone, also resting his elbows on the boards.
“I know you magic him in some way! Get him off me!”
“Well, we’ll have to see about that. Now, what I’m mightily curious about is just how you happened to be in his stall, without my leave, but with my saddlebags and bedroll and all my gear, which I had left in Aunt Nattie’s weaving room. I think your pa would like to hear that story, too.” And then Dag fell silent.
The silence stretched. Rush made a tentative move to swing down. Copperhead, excited, stamped and snapped and made a most peculiar noise, halfway between whipsaw menace and a horselaugh, Dag thought. Rush swung up again hastily.
“Your brute of a horse savaged me!” Rush complained. His shirt was ripped on one shoulder, and some blood leaked through, but it was clear to Dag’s eye by the way Rush moved that there was nothing broken.
“Now, now,” said Dag in a mock-soothing tone. “That was just a love bite, that was. If Copper’d really savaged you, you’d be over there, and your arm would be over here. Speaking from experience and all.”
Rush’s eyes widened as it dawned on him that if he’d wanted sympathy, he’d gone to the wrong store with the wrong coin. Dag didn’t say anything some more.
“What do you want to know?” Rush finally asked, in a surly tone.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Dag drawled.
“Pa, make him let me down!”
Sorrel vented an exasperated sigh. “You know, Rush, I’ve drawn you and your brother out of wells of your own digging more than once when you were younger, because every boy’s got to survive his share of foolishness. But as you’re both so fond of telling me, you’re not youngsters anymore. Seems to me you got yourself up there. You can get yourself down.”
Rush looked appalled at this unexpected parental betrayal. He started blurting a somewhat garbled account for his predicament involving an imaginary request relayed from Fawn.
Dag gave Sorrel another small headshake. Sorrel looked increasingly grim.
“No,” Dag interrupted in a bored voice, “That’s not it. Think harder, Rush.”
After a moment, he said, “I should also mention, I suppose, that Sunny Sawman and his three strapping friends are now on their way downriver to West Blue.
Under escort. Underwater, mostly. I don’t think they’ll be back for some several days.”
“How did you—I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
More silence.
Rush added in a smaller voice, “Are they all right?”
“They’ll live,” said Dag indifferently. “You can remember to thank me kindly for that, later.” And fell silent again.
After a couple more false starts, Rush at last began to ‘fess up. It was more or less the story Dag expected, of alehouse conspiracy and youthful bravado. In Rush’s version, Reed was the ringleader, valiantly horrified at the thought of his only sister marrying a Lakewalker corpse-eater and thus making him brother-in-law to one, and Rush’s motivations were lost in a mumble; Dag wasn’t sure whether this was strict truth or blame-casting, nor did he greatly care, as it was clear enough both boys were in it together. They had found a strangely enthusiastic helper in Sunny, fresh from a summer of stump-pulling and happy to show off his muscle. Unsurprisingly, it appeared Sunny had not seen fit to mention to the twins his prior encounter with Dag. Dag chose not to either.
Sorrel looked grimmer and grimmer.
Rush at last stuttered to a halt. A cool silence fell in the warm barn. Rush began to sag down; Copperhead lunged again. Rush tightened up once more, clinging like a possum to a branch. Dag could see that his arms were shaking.
“Now, Rush,” said Dag. “I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be. I am actually prepared to forgive and forget your brotherly plan to beat me crippled or dead and buried in your pa’s woods on the night before my wedding. The fact that you also seriously endangered the lives of your friends—because I would not, facing that death, have held back in defending myself—I leave to your pa to take up with you two. I’ll even forgive your lies to me.” Dag’s voice dropped to a deadly register that made Sorrel glance aside in alarm. “What I do not forgive is the malice of your lies to Fawn. You’d planned for her to wake up joyful on her wedding morning and then tell her I’d scunnered out in the night, make her believe herself shamed and betrayed, humiliate her before her friends and kin, set her to weeping—although I think her real response might have surprised you.”
He glanced aside. “You like that picture, Sorrel? No? Good.” Dag took a long breath. “Whatever reasons your parents tolerated your torment of your sister in the past, it stops tomorrow. You claim Reed was afraid of me? He wasn’t near afraid enough. Either of you so much as look cross-eyed at Fawn tomorrow, or anytime thereafter, I will give you reason to regret it every day for the rest of your lives. You hear me, Rush? Look at me.” Dag hadn’t used that voice since he was a company captain. He was pleased to note it still worked; Rush nearly fell from his perch. Copperhead shied. Even Sorrel stepped backward. Dag hissed,
“You hear me?”
Rush nodded frantically.
“All right. I will halter Copperhead, and you will climb down from there.
Then you will pick up every bit of my gear and put it back where you found it.
What’s broken, you and your brother can fix, what’s been rolled through the manure you can scrub—which will keep you two out of further mischief for the rest of the evening, I think—what can’t be fixed, you’ll replace, what can’t be replaced, I leave you to work out with your pa.”
“You heard the patroller, Rush,” said Sorrel, in a deeply paternal snarl.
Really, it was almost as good as the company-captain voice.
Dag extended his ground to his horse, a familiar reach long practiced; he’d been saddled with this chestnut idiot for about eight years, now. Disappointed at the loss of his toy, Copperhead lowered his head to the stall floor and began lipping straw, pretending that it all never happened. Dag thought he had a lot in common with Rush, that way. “You can get down,” said Dag.
“He isn’t haltered,” said Rush nervously.
“Yes, he is,” said Dag, “now.” Sorrel’s eyebrows climbed, but he didn’t say anything. Cautiously, Rush climbed down. Red-faced, his eyes wary on Copperhead, he began collecting Dag’s strewn possessions: clothing and saddlebags and ripped bedroll, knocked-about saddle and pummeled saddle blanket. The adapted bow, though kicked into a corner, was undamaged; Dag was glad. Only the reasonably benign outcome was keeping him from utter fury right now—that, plus not thinking too hard about Spark. But he had to think about Spark.
“Now,” Dag said, as Rush made his way out of the stall with his arms loaded, and Dag closed the stall door after him. Rush set the tangled gear down very carefully. “We come to the other question. What of all this would you have me tell Fawn?”
The place had been quiet like a barn; for a moment, it grew quiet like a tomb.
Sorrel’s face screwed up. He said cautiously, “Seems to me she’d be near as distressed for the word of this as for the thing itself. I mean, with respect to Reed and Rush,” he added, visions of Fawn weeping over Dag’s battered corpse evidently presenting themselves to his mind’s eye, as indeed they did to Dag’s.