Sorrel looked grimmer and grimmer.
Rush at last stuttered to a halt. A cool silence fell in the warm barn. Rush began to sag down; Copperhead lunged again. Rush tightened up once more, clinging like a possum to a branch. Dag could see that his arms were shaking.
“Now, Rush,” said Dag. “I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be. I am actually prepared to forgive and forget your brotherly plan to beat me crippled or dead and buried in your pa’s woods on the night before my wedding. The fact that you also seriously endangered the lives of your friends—because I would not, facing that death, have held back in defending myself—I leave to your pa to take up with you two. I’ll even forgive your lies to me.” Dag’s voice dropped to a deadly register that made Sorrel glance aside in alarm. “What I do not forgive is the malice of your lies to Fawn. You’d planned for her to wake up joyful on her wedding morning and then tell her I’d scunnered out in the night, make her believe herself shamed and betrayed, humiliate her before her friends and kin, set her to weeping—although I think her real response might have surprised you.”
He glanced aside. “You like that picture, Sorrel? No? Good.” Dag took a long breath. “Whatever reasons your parents tolerated your torment of your sister in the past, it stops tomorrow. You claim Reed was afraid of me? He wasn’t near afraid enough. Either of you so much as look cross-eyed at Fawn tomorrow, or anytime thereafter, I will give you reason to regret it every day for the rest of your lives. You hear me, Rush? Look at me.” Dag hadn’t used that voice since he was a company captain. He was pleased to note it still worked; Rush nearly fell from his perch. Copperhead shied. Even Sorrel stepped backward. Dag hissed,
“You hear me?”
Rush nodded frantically.
“All right. I will halter Copperhead, and you will climb down from there.
Then you will pick up every bit of my gear and put it back where you found it.
What’s broken, you and your brother can fix, what’s been rolled through the manure you can scrub—which will keep you two out of further mischief for the rest of the evening, I think—what can’t be fixed, you’ll replace, what can’t be replaced, I leave you to work out with your pa.”
“You heard the patroller, Rush,” said Sorrel, in a deeply paternal snarl.
Really, it was almost as good as the company-captain voice.
Dag extended his ground to his horse, a familiar reach long practiced; he’d been saddled with this chestnut idiot for about eight years, now. Disappointed at the loss of his toy, Copperhead lowered his head to the stall floor and began lipping straw, pretending that it all never happened. Dag thought he had a lot in common with Rush, that way. “You can get down,” said Dag.
“He isn’t haltered,” said Rush nervously.
“Yes, he is,” said Dag, “now.” Sorrel’s eyebrows climbed, but he didn’t say anything. Cautiously, Rush climbed down. Red-faced, his eyes wary on Copperhead, he began collecting Dag’s strewn possessions: clothing and saddlebags and ripped bedroll, knocked-about saddle and pummeled saddle blanket. The adapted bow, though kicked into a corner, was undamaged; Dag was glad. Only the reasonably benign outcome was keeping him from utter fury right now—that, plus not thinking too hard about Spark. But he had to think about Spark.
“Now,” Dag said, as Rush made his way out of the stall with his arms loaded, and Dag closed the stall door after him. Rush set the tangled gear down very carefully. “We come to the other question. What of all this would you have me tell Fawn?”
The place had been quiet like a barn; for a moment, it grew quiet like a tomb.
Sorrel’s face screwed up. He said cautiously, “Seems to me she’d be near as distressed for the word of this as for the thing itself. I mean, with respect to Reed and Rush,” he added, visions of Fawn weeping over Dag’s battered corpse evidently presenting themselves to his mind’s eye, as indeed they did to Dag’s.
Rush, who had been rather red, turned rather white.
“Seems that way to me, too,” said Dag. “But, you know, there’s eight people who know the truth about what happened tonight. Granted, four of them will be telling lies when they drag home tonight, though I doubt even those will all be the same lies. Some kind of word’s going to get around.”
Dag let them both dwell on this ugly vision for a little, then said, “I’m not Reed’s and Rush’s linker, though I should have been. I will not lie to her for them. But I’ll give you this much, and no more: I’ll not speak first.”
Sorrel took this in almost without expression for a moment, clearly thinking through the deeply unpleasant family ramifications. Then he nodded shortly.
“Fair enough, patroller.”
Dag extended his groundsense briefly, for all that the proximity of the two shaken Bluefields made it painful. He said, “Reed is coming back to the house with Fawn, now. I’d prefer to leave him to you, Sorrel.”
“Send him down here to the barn,” said Sorrel, somewhat through his teeth.
“That I will, sir.” Dag gave a nod in place of his usual salute.
“Thank you—sir.” Sorrel nodded back. Fawn returned to the kitchen with Reed in some annoyance with him for dragging her out in the dark. She lit a few candle stubs on the mantel to lighten both the room and her mood. Better still for the latter was the sound of Dag’s long footfalls coming through from the front hall. Reed, who had ducked into Nattie’s weaving room for some reason, came out with an inexplicable triumphant smile on his face. She was about to ask why he was so happy all of a sudden when the look was wiped clean at the sight of Dag entering the kitchen. Fawn bit back yet more irritation with her brother. She had better things to do than fuss at Reed; hugging Dag hello was on the top of that list.
He gave her a quick return embrace with his left arm and turned to Reed. “Ah, Reed. Your papa wants to see you in the old barn. Now.”
Reed looked at Dag as though he were a poisonous snake surprised in some place he’d been about to put his hand. “Why?” he asked in a suspicious voice.
“I believe he and Rush have quite a lot to say to you.” Dag tilted his head and gave Reed a little smile, which had to be one of the least friendly expressions to go by that name Fawn had ever seen. Reed’s mouth flattened in return, but he didn’t argue; to Fawn’s relief, he took himself off. She heard the front door slam behind him.
Fawn pushed back her unruly curls. “Well, that was a fool’s errand.”
“Where did you two go off to?” Dag asked.
“He dragged me all the way to the back pasture to help rescue a calf stuck in a fence. If the brainless thing had got itself in, it had got itself out by the time we made it there. And then he wanted to walk the fence line while we were out there. I didn’t mind the walk, but I have things to do.” She stood back and looked Dag over. He was often not especially tidy, but at the moment he looked downright rumpled. “Did you have your quiet think?”
“Yes, I just spent a very enlightening hour. Useful, too, I hope.”
“Oh, you. I bet you never sat still.” She brushed at a few stray bits of bark and leaf stuck to his shirt, and observed with disfavor a new rip in his trouser knee stained with blood from a scrape. “Walking in the woods, I think. I swear, you been walking so long you don’t know how to stop. What, were you climbing trees?”
“Just one.”
“Well, that was a fool thing to try with that arm!” she scolded fondly. “Did you fall down?”
“No, not quite.”
“That’s a blessing. You be more careful. Climbing trees, indeed! I thought I was joking. I don’t want my bridegroom broken, I’ll have you know.”
“I know.” He smiled, glancing around. Fawn realized that, miraculously, they were actually alone for a moment. He seemed to realize this at the same time, for he sat in the big wooden chair by the hearth and pulled her toward him.