“I wouldn’t have made…” He hesitated.
“For Berry, you just be there, Whit. Be the one person in the wide green world she doesn’t have to explain it to, because you were there and saw it all for yourself. Hand her a clean cloth if she cries or bleeds, and some warm thing for the pain that doubles her over. The time to hold her will come. This day isn’t over yet.”
“Oh,” said Whit. Quietly, he followed her up the riverbank to rejoin Saddler and Berry.
22
Flanked by Remo, Dag exited the cave and dragged his hand over his numb face. The groundwork on the Silver Shoals fellow’s cut neck was holding, and Chicory had opened his eyes a while ago, swallowed a mouthful of water, complained that his head hurt like fire, and pissed in a pot—all good signs—then fallen back into something more resembling sleep than blackout. In the meanwhile, however, one of the flatboat men—not the papa or his son, thankfully—had died unexpectedly when a deep knife cut his friends had thought was stanched had opened again beneath his bandages and blood had filled his lungs.
If I had been here, I might have saved him. But if Dag had been here, he wouldn’t have been at the Fetch, and others would surely have perished. If I were ten thousand men, everywhere at once, I could save the world all by myself, yeah. Dag shook his aching head, grateful to Fawn for sneaking him those extra hours of sleep, because that last blow, atop his fatigue, might well have shattered him else. He had an old, deep aversion to losing those who followed him in trust. They weren’t following you. They were following Wain and Chicory. Dag considered the argument dubiously, for who had aimed Wain and Chicory, after all? But it was bandage enough on his brain for now.
It was a bright though chilly noon; if he looked out into the distance, he could take it for a peaceful early winter day on the river, which glimmered beyond the fantail of scree that swept down from the cave to the shore. As long as he kept his eyes to the silvery-gray tree branches, and didn’t let them drop to take in the mob of men scattered below. Some cook fires had been started along the edge of the woods, with men moving around to tend to them. Other men slept in bedrolls, or lay injured. Or tied up. Dag’s squint at the latter was interrupted by Barr, hurrying up to him and Remo.
“Dag, you better come over here.”
Another man gravely hurt? Dag let himself be dragged down the slope, stones turning under his boots. “Why haven’t they hanged those fellows yet? I confess, I was hoping that part would all be over by the time we got here.”
“Well, there’s a problem with that,” said Barr.
“Not enough rope? Not enough trees?” Berry had rope in her stores, he thought. Although if they had to lend it to hang Alder, it might be best not to tell her.
“No, there’s—just listen.”
“I always listen.”
A circle of men sat on logs and stumps at the edge of the scree, near the line of moored boats. Wain was there, and Bearbait, and the other three boat bosses: Greenup from the big Oleana flatboat, who looked not much older than Remo; Slate from the Silver Shoals keel, a muscular man of an age with Wain; and the one named Fallowfield, the fatherly flattie from south Raintree. They seemed variously confused, worried, or angry, but all looked mortally tired after being up all night for the brutal fight. Followed by the uncovering of the cave’s full history of horrors in whatever confessions they’d collected from the bandits, possibly in even more gruesome detail than what Dag had obtained from Skink, Alder, and Crane. Crane himself now lay in his blankets over on the opposite side of the scree, shadowed by the leafless scrub, walked wide around by the nervous boatmen. Whatever the debate was, it had apparently been going on for a while.
“There he is,” said Slate.
An unsettling greeting. Dag nodded around the circle. “Fellows.” He didn’t add anything hazardously polite like What can I do for you? He squatted to avoid looming, and after an uncertain glance at each other, Barr and Remo copied him.
Wain, never loath to take the lead, spoke first. “There’s a problem come up with the bandits and this Lakewalker of theirs.”
Dag said cautiously, “We agreed that the farmers would look to the farmers, and the Lakewalkers to the Lakewalker. Luckily, we caught Crane early this morning while he was trying to get to Alder on the Fetch.”
Gesturing at Barr, Bearbait said, “Yeah, your boy here told us that tale. I hear you got Big and Little Drum, too. Good so far, aye.”
“Thing is,” Wain continued, “some of these here bandits are claiming they shouldn’t ought to be hanged, because they couldn’t help what they did. That they were forced to it by Crane’s sorcery.”
Boss Fallowfield put in, “Yeah, and once one of ’em claimed it, they all took up that chorus.”
“What a surprise,” muttered Barr.
Dag ran his hand through his hair. “And you entertained that argument for more ’n five seconds?”
Bearbait frowned. “Are you saying they aren’t none of ’em beguiled and mind-fogged? Because some of ’em seem more than a bit that way to me.”
And Bearbait would have seen the real thing, in the Raintree malice war last summer. Dag bit his lip. “Some are, some aren’t. Skink was beguiled, as you know.” Nods from all who had helped interrogate Skink when they’d been planning the attack yesterday, which was everyone but the late arrival Slate. Dag added, “Have you all heard anything yet about that cruel recruiting game of Brewer’s and Crane’s?”
“Oh, aye,” said Wain. Troubled nods all around seconded this, although some didn’t seem as troubled as others. It occurred to Dag that the game was a bit like the rougher keeler tavern duels, in a way. And yet…not.
“I don’t believe there was any of what you call sorcery involved with that—it worked for Brewer just the same, remember,” Dag pointed out.
“Besides, some men were here before Crane ever arrived. And some drifted in on their own—the Drum brothers, for instance.”
Bearbait squinted at Dag. “Could you pick out which of them bandits over there was beguiled and which was lying?” He nodded toward the prisoners amongst the trees opposite.
Dag said carefully, “Do you think it should make a difference in their fates, when all of them are red to the elbows pretty much the same?”
“You’re surely not thinking of letting any of these murdering thieves go?” said Remo in a voice of indignation. “After all the trouble we went to catching them!”
Greenup grimaced. “At least one was begging to be hanged to end it.” Dag wasn’t sure what the grimace meant. Did the young boat boss prefer his bandits to be stoical? Granted, hangings were much less embarrassing that way.
Bearbait dug in the ground with the stick in his hand, then looked across at Dag. “See, the way it was, I saw folks the malice had mind-slaved up in Raintree. When the spell was broken—or outrun, anyways—they would come back to themselves. Their true selves.”
“With their memories intact,” Dag murmured.
“That was a mixed blessing, true,” sighed Bearbait.
Dag picked through his next words very carefully. “What Crane did was very different from a malice’s compulsion.” Was it? “In power, if nothing else. It’s like comparing a pebble to a landslide.”
Boss Fallowfield scratched his graying head. “Landslides’re made of pebbles. So—are you actually saying it is the same?”
Dag shrugged. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever been caught in a landslide.” He must not be drawn into being made judge of these men, selecting some to live and some to die. But if he was the only one with knowledge enough to make the judgment…“Look.” He leaned forward on his hook, gestured with his hand. “All here are either survivors of the game, or helped run it. They all had another choice once—and there are a lot of bodies up in that ravine or down in the river bottom to prove it was possible for some men to choose otherwise. I don’t think any here were so beguiled that they couldn’t have escaped, or at least tried. In fact, that’s why Crane was away from the cave last night—because he was hunting down two fellows who’d chosen to walk away from the horrors. Grant you, they didn’t make it.”