The man turned around while Dall still had the knife on his ankle. “What are you doing?” he asked sharply.
“Nothing,” Dall said, pulling his hand back quickly. “Just seeing how bad it hurt if I touched it.”
“Hmmm.” The man cocked his head. “You know, boy—what is your name, anyway?”
“Dall Drop—Dall, son of Gory,” Dall said.
“Dall Drop? That’s one I haven’t heard.”
“My father calls me ‘Drop-hand’,” Dall said, ducking his head.
“Drop-body, if last night was any example,” the man said, chuckling. Dall felt himself going hot. “Nay, boy—it’s not so bad. Your dropping in no doubt scared those thieves away. Maybe it was all accident, but you did good by it. Let’s see about your wounds…”
“They’re not wounds,” Dall said. “Just cuts and things.”
“Well, cuts or whatever, they could use some healing,” the man said. He looked around. “And none of the right herbs here. We’ll have to get you down to a wood, and you can’t walk on that ankle.”
“’M sorry,” Dall muttered.
“Nonsense,” the man said. “Just let me get the blood off this—” He took his wadded shirt back to the creek. Dall gaped. Was he going to pollute the pure water with his blood? But the man sat down, pulled off one of his boots, and scooped up a bootful of water, then stuffed his shirt into the boot and shook it vigorously. The water came out pink; he dumped the wet shirt on the ground, emptied the bloody water into a clump of grass, and did it again. That was bad enough, but at least he wasn’t dipping the shirt itself in the water.
After several changes of water, he came back to Dall with the sopping mess of his shirt, wrung it out, and reached for Dall’s foot. “This’ll hurt, boy, but it’ll help, too.”
It did hurt; every movement of the foot hurt, and the wet shirt was icy. The man wrapped it around his ankle, and used the sleeves to tie it tightly. Dall could feel his bloodbeat throbbing against the tight wrapping.
“Now, boy, give me your hand.”
Dall had reached out his hand before he thought; the man took it and heaved him up in one movement.
“You’ll have to walk; I’m still too drunk to carry you safely on this ground,” the man said. “I can help, though. Let me guide you.”
“Sir,” Dall said. His foot hurt less than he expected as he hobbled slowly, leaning on the man’s shoulder. The other aches also subsided with movement, though his cuts and scrapes stung miserably.
It was a slow, painful traverse of the slope, down and across, even when they came to the thread of a path the man said he’d followed the night before. “Sheep are not men,” the man said, when they came to the first drop in the path. He slid down first, and Dall followed. The man caught him before his bad ankle hit the path. That was almost all the man said, other than the occasional “Mind this” and “That rock tips.”
The sun was high overhead when the path widened abruptly at the head of a grassy valley, where several sheep trails came together. Ahead, smoke rose from a huddle of low buildings. Dall could smell cooked food for the first time in days; his stomach growled again and he felt suddenly faint. He sagged; the man muttered something but took more of his weight. “Come on, boy—you’ve done well so far,” he said.
Dall blinked and gulped, and managed to stand more on his own feet. The man helped him down the wider track to an open space where someone had placed a couple of rough benches around a firepit. No one was visible outside the buildings, but from the smell someone was busy inside them. The man lowered Dall to one of them, then bent to unwrap his ankle. “I need a shirt, boy, if I’m to talk someone into giving us food. And down here I should be able to find the right leaves for your injuries.”
Dall’s ankle had turned unlovely shades of green and purple; now his foot was swollen as well. The man shrugged into the wet, dirty shirt, and headed for one of the huts as if he knew it. Dall glanced around, and caught sight of someone peeking around a house-wall at him. A child, younger, smaller. He looked away, then looked back quickly. A boy, wearing a ragged shirt much like his own over short trews… barefoot as he was. The boy offered a shy smile; Dall smiled back. The boy came nearer; he could have been Dall’s younger brother if he’d had one.
“What happened to you?” the boy asked. “Did he beat you?”
“No,” Dall said. “I fell on the mountain.”
“You need to wrap that,” the boy said, pointing to his ankle. “Are you hungry?”
“I have nothing to share,” Dall said.
“You’re hurt. It’s Lady’s grace,” the boy said. “Don’t you have that where you come from?”
“Yes… I just…”
“I’ll get something,” the boy said, and was gone like a minnow in the stream, in an instant.
He was back in a moment, with a hunk of bread in his hand. “Here, traveler; may the Lady’s grace nourish us both.”
“In grace given, in grace eaten, blessed be the Lady.” Dall broke the bread, giving a piece back to the boy, and looked around for the man. He had disappeared; an empty doorway suggested where he’d gone. Dall took a bite of bread and the younger boy did also.
The bread tasted better than anything he’d ever eaten, so much better that he forgot the pain in his foot, and his other pains. He could’ve eaten the whole piece, but he set aside a careful half for the man, in case no one shared with him.
But the man was coming back now, carrying a jug and another loaf. “I see you’ve made friends,” he said.
“I saved you a bit,” Dall said. “It’s Lady’s grace.”
The man raised his eyebrows. “I suppose we could all use grace.” He ate the piece Dall had set aside, then broke the loaf he carried. “Here—you could eat more, I daresay. And here’s water.”
Dall wanted to ask if this too had been given as Lady’s grace, but he didn’t. The man sat a few minutes, eating, and taking sips of the water. Then he stood. “I’d best be going to work,” he said. “There’s a wall to mend.” He nodded at the far end of the village, where one wall of a sheepfold bulged out, missing stones at the top. Dall started to push himself up and the man shook his head. “Not you, boy. You’re still hurt. Just rest there, and one of the women will be out to tend you shortly. She’s boiling water for boneset tea for you.”
That night Dall lay on straw, his injured ankle wrapped in old rags. Sleeping under a roof again after so many nights in the open made him as wakeful as his first nights on the trail. He could hear the breathing of others in the cottage, and smell them all too. He wanted to crawl outside into the clean night air scented with growing things, but that would be rude. Finally he fell asleep, and the next morning ate his porridge with pleasure. Cooked food was worth the discomforts of the night, he decided.
He and the man stayed in the village for six hands of days; the man worked at whatever chores anyone put him to, without comment or complaint. As Dall became able to hobble around more easily, he too worked. It was strange to do the familiar work he had grown up with, but for strangers. When he dropped something—less often than before—he waited for the familiar jibes, but none came. Not even when he dropped a jug of new milk and broke the jug.
“Never mind,” said the woman for whom he’d been carrying that jug and two others. “Its my fault for giving you more than you could carry, and the handle on that one’s been tricky for years.” She was a cheerful dark-haired woman with wide hips and a wider smile; all her children were like her, and the boy who had first given him bread was her youngest.
One evening after supper, Dall had an itch down his back, and scratched at it with the point of the wooden knife. The man watched him, and then asked, “Where did you get that knife?”