Fawn suspected that the animals—calm, warm, and nearby in his groundsense—maybe helped blot out what was going on beyond the tree-clad ridge that lay between them and the cave. If Dag had any groundsense range left after all that performance, he could furl it in, Fawn supposed, but that would leave him alone in silence. Silence was all right just now; the alone part, maybe not so good.
Whit wandered out amongst the horses, looking them over in expert evaluation. Berry, who had also stopped to stroke a quiet one, if more dubiously, turned her head at a faint cry. Out of sight of the cave they might be; apparently they weren’t quite as far out of earshot as could have been hoped. She stepped away from the horse and stood rigid, staring back up the slope at the woods, face set. Tall. Alone. And at the next cut-off cry, trembling. She looked, Fawn thought, like an aspen tree being gnawed down, slender and doomed.
Whit watched her anxiously, then held out his open hands toward Fawn in desperate question. Fawn cast him an encouraging nod. He gulped, walked over to Berry, and, still without a word, folded her into his embrace. It wasn’t a gesture of courtship, simply one of comfort offered in a bleak hour. Something warm to wrap herself around when the pain folds her over. Berry rested her head on Whit’s shoulder, eyes closing tight. The blond head was a little higher than the dark one—Whit was a sawed-off Bluefield, after all—but with her chin bent down, their hair mingled on a level that was close enough.
Whit held her for a long time, till she stopped shaking, then led her to a more comfortable seat on a fallen log near the stony creek side. He put his arm around her and snugged her in tight as they watched the horses graze.
“Do patrollers ever hobble their horses?” Fawn asked Dag. Because she didn’t think she could bear to talk about anything harder just yet.
“You do wonder how well those things work to keep ’em from running off.”
He fell in willingly with her lead, perhaps for similar reasons. “We use them sometimes. Because if a patroller’s horse gets out of his ground-sense range, he’s put to the same wheezing work of chasing it down as any farmer.” Dag’s lips turned up in some wry memory. He opened his eyes to stare out on the benign scene. “Hobbles don’t slow a horse down much if it’s seriously panicked. I imagine the habit of feeding them here does more to keep them close.”
“They don’t look as ill-cared-for as you’d think. I wonder how many were stolen from boats, and how many came with the bandits? Well, I suppose Wain and the boatmen will work it out.”
“Yeah, it’s all salvage at this point,” Dag said. He tucked the knife sheath out of sight in his shirt and leaned his head against the bark once more.
After a time, Remo and Barr came over the ridge and picked their way across the creek to Dag’s tree. They both looked gloomy.
Dag opened his eyes again. “Hangings finished?”
“Not quite,” said Remo. “We did get Crane laid out. I’m glad we didn’t have to butcher him.”
Barr made a face. “Who’d want a knife from Crane’s bones?”
“The boatmen dug a trench,” Remo continued. “He was the first to go in it.”
“It’s not very deep,” said Barr, “but I imagine they’ll pile some river stones on top. Some of the boatmen were for making the bandits dig it themselves, but finally decided it was more trouble guarding them than it was worth.”
Remo added morosely, “One of the keelers had kin on one of the boats the bandits took a month or so back. He found out just what exactly had happened to them, I guess. Wain let him cut off Big Drum’s head personally. Little Drum’s, too, even though he was dead already. They’re going to put them up on poles in front of the cave as a warning to others.”
“We left right after that,” said Barr.
Healthy young men or no, to Fawn’s eye both looked as shaken as she felt, and not just from the extra sensitivity lent by groundsenses possibly not closed tight enough during these proceedings. Barr wandered out into the meadow to pat a horse, too, a tidy piebald mare.
“Hey,” he called back over his shoulder after a moment, “this one’s in foal! Whoever takes her is going to get a bonus horse!”
Remo walked out to see, and Fawn tagged after. She was reminded of Grace, left back in West Blue, and was washed by an unexpected wave of homesickness. How could you be homesick for a horse? But she suddenly missed her own mare fiercely, wondering how she was getting along, and if Grace’s round barrel looked any rounder yet. She stretched her hands and ran them over the black-and-white belly, speculating how far along this mare was. Dag’s horse-raising tent-sister Omba could have told exactly, with her groundsense. Maybe Barr shared the talent.
Remo put his hand on the mare’s withers and looked across at Barr, who had started picking burrs out of her mane. Remo pitched his voice low. “Wain said we were due a share of the salvage rights. We could take a couple of these horses. Ride back to Pearl Riffle before the snow flies.”
Barr looked up in surprise. “Huh! When did you change your mind?”
“Crane…was pretty awful. I’m thinking now it’s not such a good thing for a Lakewalker to be exiled from his kin. Even if they do badger him half to death. Maybe we should just go take our lumps.”
Fawn, stroking the mare’s warm flank, observed, “I don’t think it’s good for anyone to become outcast, Lakewalker or farmer. Look at all those bandits.”
“Speaking of ending up in a pit of your own digging, yeah,” said Barr. He picked at another brown, spiky burr, carefully separating the coarse hairs from it. “I thought you wanted to see the sea. Or else go drown yourself in it.”
“Neither one, anymore.” Remo’s voice went lower. “The world is uglier than I’d ever dreamed. I’ve had enough. Let’s go home.”
This hopeless world, Crane had said. And Crane had certainly done more than his share to make it worse.
“Not all of it’s that bad,” Barr said mildly. He glanced across the meadow; Fawn followed his gaze to Dag, still leaning head-back, looking utterly spent. “Thing is…I think I’ve changed my mind, too. And even if I hadn’t, I don’t think it’d be so good to let him”—he jerked his head Dag-ward—“go walking around out there all by himself, either. In fact,” he added judiciously, “I think that might be worse than the worst snag-brained thing I’ve ever done.” He raised his eyes. “And you know I’ve done some champion snag-brained things.”
Fawn cleared her throat. “Dag does have a partner,” she pointed out. She held up her cord-wrapped left wrist, drawing their eyes and maybe groundsenses as well. “We’re as roped together as any two Luthlian patrollers out on the ice. And I’m not about to let him go drown in the dark and cold, neither.”
Remo rubbed his lips. Barr undid another burr. Neither argued.
I’ve taken everything Dag was, and thought the trade fair because he did. But he needs more than just me. She stood straighter and said, “Still, I really think having you two along has been good for him. An anchor in the old when he’s straining and reaching for something so new no one has ever grasped it before. Because he’s not really a patroller anymore, not in his ground. He’s trying to turn into something else.”
Remo nodded. “Yes, medicine maker.”
“Or knife maker,” said Barr more doubtfully. “And if he’s going to be that, we sure enough have a duty to guard him. Camp or no camp!”
Fawn shook her head, though not in disagreement with that last. “First thing a new maker has to do is make himself. I think it’s hard for any youngster to do that, even apprenticed to a mentor in a chosen craft, but Dag’s trying to do it all on his own, somewhere in midair. I’ve seen him mend a busted glass bowl, and a lot of hurt people, and a lost sharing knife, and what he did in Raintree I can’t begin to describe, but what he really wants to mend is the world.”
Remo stared at her, appalled. “No one can do that!”
“No one, no. I ’spect Dag would say the world’s big and we’re small and I guess we all break in the end. But when all the old arguments about farmers and Lakewalkers have gone ’round and ’round ’bout sixteen times and plowed into exhaustion, the problem of Greenspring will still be sitting there.” Fawn swallowed. “We may not be able to win that toss, either, but it’d sure be nice to have some company while we’re losin’. That’s one.”