Bo had been conscious throughout, but silent, watching Dag with a brow furrowed as much in wonder as in pain. “Well, Lakewalker,” he breathed at last, then muffled a cough.
“That healin’ o’ his is a thing, ain’t it?” commiserated the hunkering Hod.
“Don’t try to talk,” whispered Dag. His dry voice cracked, and he cleared it; Fawn hustled to retuck the blanket she’d put around his shoulders and to fetch him a drink. He raised the tin cup to his lips with a trembling hand, swallowed, and went on more easily. “I’ve ground-glued together the two slices through your stomach walls where the blade punched in and out, and likewise some of the bigger blood vessels in there. Crane’s knife missed the biggest ones, or you’d have bled to death before I got here. Fawn’ll have to stitch up your skin.” Fawn nodded, carefully washing away the gory matter that Dag had drawn from the wound by ground projection. She had Dag’s medicine-kit needle already threaded, and bent to the task. Bo made little ow noises, but endured.
Dag went on cautiously, “Biggest danger now’s infection. I expect there’ll be some. Got to wait and see how that plays out.”
Truly. A gut-wound like this was more usually a death sentence, fever finishing what bleeding started, as Bo likely knew, because he nodded shortly. When Fawn tied off her last thread, Whit, Hod, and Berry combined to lift Bo carefully into his bunk. Dag simply lay back on the floor and stared up at the roof.
Fawn was just wondering if they should also unite to lift Dag to his bed, when Barr and Remo clumped in to apologize for killing what they sincerely hoped had been an escaping bandit up in the woods. Fawn nipped to the front hatch to peek out, and saw a couple of saddled horses beyond the gangplank. Over one was draped the body of a skinny, red-haired fellow, his sharp, contorted face pale in death.
Crane was still lying in a heap beside the animal pen; his chin moved and his eyes shifted to glare at her, and she flinched and fled back inside. Dag, what did you do to him? That was like no making I ever seen or heard tell of…
In the kitchen, Barr was frowning down at Dag and asking the very question she’d longed to: “Dag, what the blight did you do to that fellow out on the front deck?”
“Is that Crane?” Remo added, glancing toward the bow.
“Yes,” said Dag, still staring at the roof. “I broke his neck. In effect. He won’t be getting better, in case anyone was worried about tying him up.”
His expression glazed, Dag watched Fawn upside down as she bent and peered at him in worry. She remembered the shock in Crane’s eyes when he’d dropped the knife and collapsed like a wall falling. In effect. But not in any other way? Would the patroller boys think to follow up that little flag of truth amongst Dag’s laconic misdirection? Either Dag would explain in his own time, or she’d wait for a private moment to ask, she decided.
Hod and Whit took tumbling turns giving a description of the events around and aboard the Fetch to the two patrollers, with an occasional corroborating moan or snort from Bo. Berry added little, still holding the sniffling Hawthorn. But as their words turned his frightening experience into a tale, he seemed to revive, uncurling from his childlike clutch in his big sister’s lap, slowly regaining the dignity of his eleven years, and finally adding a few flourishing, if gruesome, details of his own. By the time they’d finished, he mainly wanted to go off and inspect the corpse of Little Drum. Dubiously, Berry released him.
“I about swallowed my heart when I saw that big knife at Fawn’s throat,” said Whit, “but I swear she looked more mad than scared.”
“I was plenty scared enough,” said Fawn. And yet…Crane hadn’t been nearly as scary as the Glassforge malice, even if she might have been equally dead at either’s hands. How odd. Flying from a knife at her throat to an immediate need to pull things together for Bo’s sake, maybe she just hadn’t had time to fall apart yet.
Some boatmen called from outside, a troop sent back from the cave to help guard the boats—a bit belatedly, Fawn thought tartly. The two young patrollers and Whit went off to help sort out things. It was full dawn. Dag sat up.
“I have to…I can’t…let me sleep for one hour. Bo can have a few sips of water, nothing else.” He climbed to his hand and knees, then to his feet, making no protest when Fawn lent him a shoulder to help him lurch to their bed nook. She did insist on pulling off his boots. He was asleep by the time she flung a blanket over him.
Barr, Remo, and Whit had been grimly excited, describing their victory at the bandit cave. After they’d defeated the Glassforge malice, Fawn recalled, Dag had been wildly elated despite his weariness. There was not a trace of triumph in him now, and she wondered at the difference. In the kitchen space that still reeked of the night’s terror, the floor splotched with blood, Fawn sighed and quietly started fixing breakfast.
Fawn let Dag sleep for closer to three hours; he woke on his own when the Fetch pulled away from shore. Stumbling out to the kitchen, he ran a hand through his bent hair, and asked, “What’s been happening?”
“Not much,” she said, passing him a mug of tea. “Everybody decided to move their boats around to the cave landing. Berry, Whit, and Hod are topside.” She gestured upward with her thumb. “I sent Hod and Remo out to clean Crane up a while back.”
Dag’s brows bent, whether in bewilderment or disapproval she was not sure.
She explained, “It was more for us than him. Getting paralyzed like that loosed his bowels and bladder, seemingly. He was stinkin’ up Berry’s boat. Besides…even corpses get washed before burying.”
He nodded glumly. She ran him out onto the back deck to wash up, took his bloodied clothes to soak in a bucket, and handed him fresh ones. The day was turning pale blue as the weak sun climbed, not so much warming up as thinning the chill. Since his hand was still shaking, she also helped him shave, a skill she’d acquired that time his arm had been broken, just before their marriage. Hot food and a cleanup were worth at least a couple hours of the sleep he hadn’t got, she figured.
Their rattling around woke Barr from his own nap; Remo had been lying in his bunk but not sleeping, and he too rose to join them.
“I have to question Crane,” Dag repeated. He nodded to the patrollers. “You two had best sit in. A quorum of sorts.”
“I want to hear that tale, too,” said Fawn.
He shook his head. “It’s like to be nasty, Spark. I would spare you if I could.”
“But you can’t,” she pointed out, which made him wince. Feeling pressed by his dismay, she struggled to explain. “Dag…I’ll never be a fighter. I’m too little. My legs are too short to outrun most fellows. The only equal weapon I’ll ever have is my wits. But without knowing things, my wits are like a bow with no arrows. Don’t leave me disarmed.”
After a bleak moment, he ducked his chin in assent. When he’d finished swallowing down his breakfast and his tea, they all followed him out onto the front deck. The Snapping Turtle was out ahead, approaching the crook of the Elbow, and the keelboat from Silver Shoals trailed them at some distance. The Fetch seemed very far from any shore, running down this stretch of swollen river.
Crane was laid out—like a funeral, Fawn couldn’t help thinking—in Remo’s spare shirt, covered by a blanket and with another folded under his head. His arms lay flaccid along his sides, nerveless feet to the bow. Dag settled down cross-legged next to him. Tidying up the two men first had lent this encounter a curious formality, as though they were couriers from distant hinterlands meeting to exchange news.