“They had sixty or seventy fellows. And that one-handed Lakewalker—he had to be at least a patroller captain. Acted like this was all in a day’s work, he did. It’s all up with us now.” Alder sounded almost relieved. “We’ve got to cut and run.” His voice went wheedling. “You told me yourself you didn’t expect the Cavern Tavern to last out the year. Those Tripoint fools was the warning, you said. Best we heed it.”
Crane sighed. “Well, at least it seems I get a new horse out of the deal…” He paused, his head turning toward the bow. His curiously chiseled lips pinched; his eyes narrowed. Consulting his groundsense? “Aw, what’s Little Drum stirred up now?” He wheeled and, quite without expression, struck Hawthorn in the face with his knife haft hard enough to knock him across the room. Hawthorn fell in a stunned heap, breath stuttering. Berry cried out; Hod whimpered. Fawn strained uselessly against the heavy grip that held her.
Crane drew a long breath. “We’re about to have company. Too late to get off this boat. Alder, go cast off the rear lines. Big Drum, drop the bow lines and then get yourself up on the roof and get an oar ready. You too, Alder. We’ll push out and take it down to the crook of the Elbow, instead—should give us enough of a start. Give me that spare girl.”
Reluctantly, Big Drum handed Fawn over to his leader; Crane grasped one arm with bruising pressure and turned her in front of him. The knife blade rose to her neck and pressed there, most convincingly.
“What about Little Drum?” Big Drum demanded.
“That’ll depend entirely on how quick he can run. We’ll see if she can buy him time to get here, but we’re not waiting long.” Following Big Drum, Crane shoved Fawn ahead of him out onto the front deck.
Dag’s legs jarred like hammer blows as he bounded downhill so fast it felt like falling. Fawn’s fear howled through his groundsense. He tried to make out what was happening on the Fetch through a cacophony of distress: Bo hurt bad, Hawthorn and Berry in terror, Hod distraught—Alder loose and moving. And two new grounds, both grossly knotted and distorted, the darker one half-veiled.
On the way back from wherever they’d gone, Crane and his lieutenants must have checked their lookout point and seen the inexplicably deserted boats tied up along the creek below. Crane’s Lakewalker groundsense would have found Alder on the Fetch—not happy, but for all Crane knew, still hoodwinking the boatmen. If Alder was still duping his victims, Crane might want to support him; if a prisoner, maybe free him—but in either case the first thing Crane had to do was slip aboard and reach him, between groundsense and the dank mist eluding notice by the sleepy watchmen. And then things went bad. For both sides.
By the time he’d barged through the last of the trees and the Fetch came into sight, Dag was so winded he had to stop and put his hands on his knees as black patterns swarmed in his vision. He raised his head as his eyes cleared. The big fellow with the knotty ground tossed the second of the two bow ropes over the side and retreated to the roof, unshipping a broad-oar. The man with the half-veiled ground shouldered through the front hatch, coming out onto the deck. He held Fawn. A knife blade gleamed against her neck; he wiggled it to make it wink and nibble into that soft flesh, and he looked up to lock Dag’s gaze, frozen not twenty feet away beyond the end of the gangplank. Whit came dashing up, his bow waving in one hand and an arrow in the other; with shaking hands, he tried to nock it.
“Your little friend can just drop that bow,” said the man dryly, shoving Fawn in front of him for a shield and tightening the bite of the knife. Dag thought he saw a line of red spring along its edge.
“Drop it, Whit,” said Dag, not taking his eyes off the stranger. Crane, without doubt. Whit’s lips moved in protest, but he let his bow fall to his feet. Fawn’s eyes shifted, and her feet; Dag prayed she would not try to break away. This one would slice her head off without a blink. A trio of boatmen, attracted at last by the ruckus, thumped down the creek bank toward the Fetch. Dag’s fear of no help coming gave way to terror that this help’s clumsy advance would crowd Crane into dreadful action.
Behind this tense tableau, Alder climbed to the roof and unshipped the second oar.
“Push off,” the leader called over his shoulder.
“What about Little Drum?” asked the big man.
The strange Lakewalker glanced up the hill. “Not coming.”
Alder’s oar swept backward, although the other oarsman still hesitated. The gangplank creaked as the boat began to pull away under it. Dag lurched forward.
“Ah!” Crane chided, lifting his knife under Fawn’s chin so she rose on her toes. “You really need to believe me.” He flicked open his ground to display his cold determination to Dag.
It wasn’t even a decision.
Dag raised his left arm, stretched out his ghost hand twenty feet, and ground-ripped a cross section as thick as a piece of boot leather from Crane’s spinal cord, just below his neck.
The man’s dark eyes opened wide, astounded, as the knife dropped from his nerveless fingers. He crumpled like a blanket folding, and his head, unsupported, hit the deck with a weird double thump. He did not cry out; it was more of a questioning grunt.
Fawn, after a gasping hesitation, leaned over, snatched up the knife, and pelted inside. The big oarsman trod forward to the edge of the roof to see what was happening. He met Whit’s arrow, released from his grabbed-up bow, square on. One hand lifted to grasp the shaft half-buried in his broad gut, but as the boat shifted, he stumbled and fell over the side with a cry and a smacking splash.
Dag leaped for the gangplank, but not before he glimpsed Berry jump up from the stern to grab the short end of the steering oar, jump down again to swing on it like a tree branch, and bring the long end around in a mighty arc, smashing into Alder’s hip and sweeping him over the opposite side of the roof and into the cold creek water.
21
What Dag most wanted to do was question Crane: Fawn knew this because, putting her back on her feet after grabbing her up in a breath-stopping hug and mumbling a lot of broken words into her hair, it was the first thing he said that she could actually make out. But after one glance at Bo he reordered his plan, dispatching the panting Whit to organize the boatmen who’d been drawn by the ruckus to fish Alder and Big Drum out of the water and secure them, preferably on some boat other than the Fetch.
“What about Crane?” Whit demanded.
“Just leave him lay. He’s not going anywhere.”
Dag had the queerest look on his face as he said this, but before Fawn could figure it out, she was drafted as his hands, helping to straighten out the groaning Bo atop a blanket on a hastily cleared stretch of kitchen floor, peel away his shirt, and wash around the stab wound. Dag sat cross-legged, irritably cast off his arm harness, and fell into the healing trance that was becoming increasingly familiar to Fawn—and, she thought, to him. He was in it for a long time, while the shaken Berry, cut ropes still dangling from her wrists, tended to an even more shaken Hawthorn, who was bleeding from a broken nose and crying. Hod helped everyone as best he could.
Whit took a long time to report back. The arrow-riddled Big Drum had been easy to capture, as he’d waded to shore and put up no fight when he got there. Alder had tried to swim away. Some boatmen chased him down in a skiff and wrestled him out of the water, beating him into submission. He’d almost drowned, and Fawn, glancing at Berry’s stiff face, thought it was a pity he hadn’t. Dragging out his existence one more miserable day seemed a great waste of time, emotion, and hemp. Both men had been tied up on the Snapping Turtle, the shaft in Big Drum’s belly cut off but left in, lest botching its removal keep him from his hanging.
Fawn was wondering if she should shake Dag’s shoulder, or send someone to find Barr or Remo to do whatever it was Lakewalkers did to break unintended groundlocks, when he at last drew a long breath and sat up, animation returning to his face. He stared around blinking, found her, and cast her the ghost of a smile. Emerging from his task, he looked much less wild and distraught, as though the effort had recentered him somehow. Except that Fawn hadn’t seen him look so drained since Raintree.