Dag grimaced at that one, not, Fawn thought, in disagreement.
Fairbolt shook his head, although his glance was sympathetic. “Folks are spread all over the lake right now. It’ll take all afternoon just to get the word out. You can’t outpace the company you’re leading, pathfinder.”
Saun gulped and nodded.
Fairbolt gave a gesture of dismissal, and everyone scattered, Razi and Utau for their tent, where Sarri had come to the awning post with her little boy on her hip, staring hard at the scene, Mari and Cattagus to theirs. Saun waved and started jogging up the road back to his own campsite on the island’s other end.
Fairbolt slid down from his horse and left it to trail its reins and browse. Dag motioned toward Tent Bluefield, sheltered in the orchard, and Fairbolt nodded. Fawn hurried after their matched patrollers’ strides. Fairbolt eyed her, neither inviting nor excluding, so when each man took a seat on an upended log in the shade of her tent flap, she did, too. Dag gave her an acknowledging nod before turning his full attention on his commander.
“With three patrols sent out in a bunch, they’re going to need an experienced company captain,” Fairbolt began.
“Rig Crow. Or Iwassa Muskrat,” said Dag, watching him warily.
“My first two choices exactly,” Fairbolt said. “If they weren’t both a hundred and fifty miles away right now.”
“Ah.” Dag hesitated. “Surely you’re not looking to me for this.”
“You’ve been a company captain. Further, you’re the only patroller in camp right now who’s been in on a real large-group action.”
“And so successfully, too,” murmured Dag sourly. “Just ask the survivors. Oh, that’s right—there weren’t any. That’ll give folks lots of confidence in my leadership, sure enough.”
Fairbolt made an impatient chopping motion. “Your habit of picking up extra duty means you’ve worked, at one time or another, with almost every other patroller in camp. No problem with unfamiliar grounds, or not knowing your people pretty much through and through. Weaknesses, strengths, who can be relied on for what.”
Dag’s slow blink didn’t deny this.
Fairbolt lowered his voice. “Another angle. I shouldn’t be saying this, but your summons to stand before the camp council is due out in a very few more days. But they can’t set a hearing if you’re not here to receive the order. You wanted delay? Here’s your chance. Do a good job on this, and if you’re still called to stand before the council, you’ll do so with that much more clout.”
“And if I do badly?” Dag inquired, his voice very dry.
Fairbolt scratched his nose and grinned without humor. “Then we are all going to be having much more pressing problems than one patroller’s personal lapses.”
“And if I’m killed in the field, the problem goes away, too,” said Dag with false brightness.
“Now you’re thinking like a captain,” said Fairbolt affably. “Knew you could.”
Dag huffed a very short laugh.
Patroller humor, Fawn realized. Yeep.
Fairbolt sat back more seriously. “Not my first pick of solutions, though. Dag, when it comes to malices you’re known as about the most volunteerin’ fellow in camp. This is your chance to show ’em all nothing’s changed.”
Dag shook his head. “I don’t know what’s changed. Changing. More than…I sometimes think.” His hand touched his left arm, and while Fairbolt might take it to mean his marriage cord, Fawn wondered how much the gesture was for his ghost hand.
Fairbolt glanced at Fawn. “Aye, it’s a hard thing to ask a patroller newly string-bound to go out in the field under any circumstances. But this one’s bad, Dag. I didn’t want to give more details in front of Saun right off, but word from the courier is that they’ve already lost hundreds of people, farmers and Lakewalkers both. The malice has shifted from its first lair under that poor farmer town to attack Bonemarsh Camp. Most everyone got away, but there’s no question the malice captured some. Once our first company is dispatched, I’m going to start scraping up a second—absent gods know from where—because I have an ugly hunch they’ll be wanted.”
Dag rubbed his brow. “Raintree folks will be off-balance, then. Focusing on the wrong things, defense and refugees and the wounded. People will get frantic for each other, and lose sight of the main chance. Get a knife in the malice. Everything else is a distraction.”
“An outsider might be better at keeping his head,” said Fairbolt suggestively.
“Not necessarily. It’s been thirty years since I patrolled in north Raintree, but I still remember friends.”
“And the terrain?”
“Some,” Dag admitted reluctantly.
“Exactly. Never been out that way, myself. I figured, by the by, that I’ll pair Saun as pathfinder with the company captain.”
Dag did not respond directly to this, but touched his throat. “I don’t have a primed knife right now. First time I’ve walked bare in decades. I usually carried two, sometimes three. You wondered how I took out so many malices, besides the extra patrolling? Folks gave me more knives. It was that simple.”
“Not the captain’s job to place the knife. It’s his job to place the knife-wielders.”
“I know,” Dag sighed.
“And I know you know. So.” Fairbolt stood up. “I’m going to finish passing the word up this side of the island. I’ll ride back this way. You can give me your answer then.” He didn’t say Talk it over with each other, but the invitation was plain. He stared a moment at Fawn, as if thinking of making some plea to her, but then just shook his head. His horse came wandering over in a way that she suspected was not by chance, and he stepped up on his log seat and swung his leg over. He was back on the road in moments, setting the animal into a lope.
Dag had risen when Fairbolt had; he stood staring after him, but his face was drawn and inward-looking, as if contemplating quite another view. Her own face feeling as stiff and congealed as cold dough, Fawn rose too, and went to him. They walked into each other’s arms and held on tight.
“Too soon,” whispered Dag. He set her a little from him, looking down in anxiety. Fawn wondered whatever was the use of putting on a brave face when he could see right through to whatever wild roil her ground was in right now. She stiffened her spine anyhow, fighting to keep her breathing even and her lips firm.
“Fairbolt’s right about the experience, though,” he continued, his voice finding its volume again. “This sort of thing is different from hunting sessiles, or even from that mess we had near Glassforge. I run down the patrol lists in my head and think, They don’t know. Especially the youngsters. How far north of Farmer’s Flats was that town, anyway? Farmer settlements aren’t supposed to be allowed above the old cleared line…” He shook his head abruptly, and grasped her hands. His gold eyes glittered with an expression she’d never seen in them before; she thought it might be frantic.
She swallowed, and said, “You did this once. So the question isn’t, Can you do it? but, Can you do it better than someone doing it for the first time ever?”
“No—yes—maybe…It’s been a while. Still—if not me, who am I condemning to go in my place? Someone has to—”
She reached up and pressed her fingers to his lips, which stilled. She said simply, “Who are you arguin’ with, Dag?”
He was silent for the space of several heartbeats, though at length a faint wry smile turned his mouth, just a little.
Fawn took a deeper breath. “When I married a patroller instead of a farmer, I figured I must be signing up for something like this. You for the leaving…me for the being left.” His hand found her shoulder, and tightened. “It’s come on sooner than we thought, but…there has to be a first time.” She raised her arms to catch his beloved cheekbones between her hands, pressing hard, and gave his head a stern little shake. “Just you make sure it’s not the last, you hear?”
He gathered her in. She could feel his heartbeat slow. The scent of him, as she turned and buried her face in his shirt, overwhelmed her: sweat and summer and sun and just plain Dag. She opened her mouth and widened her nostrils as though she could breathe him in and store him up. Forever. And a day. Well, there wasn’t any forever. Then I’ll take the day.