“Can’t you Lakewalkers, like, persuade them to stay away?” asked Fawn nervously. “If you can summon your horses, can’t you, um, unsummon snakes? ”
Ash raised his ax. “If we all worked together, I bet we could clear them out of here permanent.”
Arkady remarked, as if to the air, “The most common snakebite victims I’ve treated are young men. Beer is frequently involved. Mostly, the bites are on the arms, but one fellow managed to get bitten on his ear and one . . . well, I trust it happened in his bedroll. Because it would have taken a great deal of beer to account for it, otherwise.”
“Bedroll? ” said Fawn.
“Snakes are attracted to body heat,” Dag explained. “They like to cuddle up with you under your blankets. In snake country, patrollers learn to wake up very carefully.”
“Yeah,” muttered Barr. “Especially if there are other patrollers around.”
A white grin flickered over Dag’s mouth that didn’t reassure Fawn one bit. Their bedroll would be laid out on the grass tonight . . . “Dag . . . ?” It wasn’t loud enough to be a wail, exactly, but it was quite pitiable nonetheless.
He gave up some inner vision, which she resolved not to ask about till they were miles from here, and motioned to Barr and Arkady.
“Come on. Let’s show these farmer boys and girls a patroller snake drive.”
Arkady sighed in a Must I? sort of way, but didn’t argue when Dag assigned him to the other side of the little river. He picked and waded his way across, and trudged up the opposite slope.
“Calla, Indigo—you want to learn how to do this? ”
“No!” said Calla, and “Um . . .” said her brother.
“It might be a good trick to know if you ever get snakes on your porch or under your house. Before your children find ’em,” Dag remarked.
An arrested look came over Calla’s long face. After a brief silence, she nodded and joined Dag. After another moment, Indigo trod reluctantly after Barr. Sage gulped, gripped his ax, and followed Calla. Dag’s voice faded in the distance, rising and falling in his patrol-leader lecture cadence, as he led them upstream and angled into the woods.
Fawn stayed atop Magpie. If I ever find snakes on my porch, I’ll yell for Dag, she decided firmly.
She couldn’t spot them at first, but she could see the grass quiver: here, then there, then over there, then seemingly everywhere. And she could hear the rustling, growing louder. Then, at the water’s edge, sinuous diamond-patterned forms in brown and dirty white appeared, thick, spade-shaped heads questing. First in ones and twos, and then in tangled dozens, the rattlesnakes slid into the churning water and were swept downstream, swirling in clotted mats like tangled branches.
On the opposite bank, Arkady’s snakes approached in neat ranks of ten across, and entered the water in a synchrony that unfortunately broke up as soon as they encountered the rocks and Dag’s snakes. Dag and Arkady called rather rude critiques upon each other’s snake-herding styles across the water. The important part, Fawn decided, was that they were all going away.
Dag, Barr, and Arkady and their reluctant apprentices moved down the valley in a wide ragged line, passing out of sight around the river’s curve. In about an hour, they all came trudging back. The rest of the company had finally unsaddled the horses and unharnessed the mules, a task somewhat impeded by the big sticks everyone was carrying.
“Mules may safely graze,” Dag announced cheerfully. “By the time those poor snakes get out of the water, they’ll be chilled through, and then nightfall will keep ’em sluggish. It should take them a few days to find their way home again.”
Barr put his hands on his hips, stared down the valley into the setting sun, and shook his head. “You know, if anyone’s camping downstream of us, they’re going to be in for quite a surprise.”
———
To give the animals time to graze their fill, they made a late start from what Fawn now thought of as Rattlesnake Vale. She was grateful to be on the road before any of the wet and surly inhabitants returned.
As the day wore on, she could see that they were finally passing out of the Barrens. Streams grew more common, and trees taller and more abundant, climbing out of the watercourses to crown the heights once more. There were no farms as yet, though Dag said roving herders brought their flocks up for spring grazing. A debatable country; the southerners called it northern, and the northerners called it southern.
Another day, Dag assured her, and the Trace would begin its long descent toward the valley of the Hardboil River, the largest eastern tributary of the great Gray south of the Grace. After that, they’d soon reach the ferry—and beyond, Dag promised her green mountains like vast rolling waves. Fawn stayed awake on Magpie all that afternoon just for the excitement of the thought.
They passed their first crossroad for a hundred miles, and soon after that, another, plainly rutted with wagon-wheel tracks. Riding ahead between Arkady and Dag so as to eat the least road dust, Fawn spotted the return of local traffic: a few riders and walkers not burdened with camping gear, a farm wagon or two, a man, a boy, and dogs with some sheep. The passersby stared and a few times glared back, and Fawn was reminded that not everyone might be as friendly toward a mixed party of farmers and Lakewalkers as the rivermen had proved. Like the rivers, the road passed through places yet was apart from them, no one’s native country and everyone’s, a space where strangers had to get along with one another will or nil.
Fawn was suggesting they ought to send Barr ahead with Finch tonight to scout for their campsite, just in case, when Arkady turned in his saddle. Coming up around the wagon at an easy lope was a pair of rangy Lakewalker mounts. Their riders were probably partners, Fawn thought; couriers, perhaps. You couldn’t tell a patroller man from a patroller woman at a distance by their clothes, but as they neared Fawn saw they were one each, both fit and tall with hair in single braids. The woman wore a long, dark leather coat, loosely open in the warmth, split up the back for riding. Her black braid swung behind her, still as thick as Fawn’s arm where it was cut off bluntly to clear her cantle.
Her partner’s braid only made it past his shoulders, thinning to a sad tail at the end. The woman’s face turned curiously toward them as their horses blew past; she had the coppery skin of a true northerner, and her eyes flashed gold.
“Great hair,” murmured Arkady. Dag stared, too; Fawn wondered if either man had even noticed the fellow.
“I know that coat!” Dag stood in his stirrups, staring harder. “Could it be—? ” He raised his hand to his mouth, and bellowed, “Sumac!”
The woman reined in her mount so hard it nearly squatted on its haunches, wheeling around in almost the same stride. She, too, stood up in her stirrups. Dag switched his reins over and waved his hook.
The woman’s gold eyes widened. In an equally startled voice, she yelled back, “Uncle Dag!”
———
Dag grinned as his niece trotted back to him and pulled up her mount.
He gave Copperhead’s rein a sharp yank as the gelding attempted to snap. “Now, be nice to the family, old fellow. Redwings are too rare to waste.”
Sumac’s eyes gleamed with laughter. “I see you still have that awful horse!”
“I see you still have my awful coat.” It actually fit her less loosely than it had her older brother, years back, but then Dar’s eldest had been a skinny pup during his youthful stint in the patrol. It had then descended through Sumac to her younger brother; Dag had thought it lost.
“You bet I do. I made Wyn give it back soon as he got home from his final exchange. You’ll like this—look.” She twisted around in her saddle and lifted her thick braid. “See that scratch across the back? ”
“Is that new?” It was dyed red, barely visible against the black leather.
“ ’Bout a year old. My patrol ambushed a malice just going off sessile above Eagle Falls. One of its mud-men yanked a boar spear away from one of my patrollers. Which I made him eat much dirt about later?
??you’d have been proud. The spear point would have gone straight in and out my chest wall, and just ruined my new shirt, but instead it skittered across my back. I let it knock me the rest of the way down and came up rolling, then got inside the swing with my knife and did for the mud-man, very tidy.”
Dag concealed the skip in his heartbeat and gave this tale a proper death’s-head patroller grin. She had not told this story at home, or he would have heard about it before this. With reproaches. “First time that ratty old garment paid for itself, I do believe, after all those years of carting it around.”
They were interrupted as the wagon rolled past. Dag waved on a concerned-looking Sage and Calla, and the boys with the pack animals as well. Barr stared over his shoulder, handed his pack string off to Ash, and came trotting back to them.
Fawn’s eyes were wide, looking across Dag’s saddlebow at tall Sumac. “Is that your old magic coat that was supposed to turn arrows, Dag? ”
Sumac’s gaze flicked with equal curiosity toward little Fawn. “I’ve not tried arrows. Rain and spears, definitely. I’ve become very attached to it, tatters and all. I paid Torri Beaver a pot of coin to renew the groundwork when last I was home, though she offered to make me a new one for not much more. I had her leave the scratch in, for bragging rights. Er . . . you don’t want it back, do you, Uncle Dag? ”
“Not me. You keep it. My patrolling days are done.”
Sumac rolled back in her saddle, fine lips pursing, doubt replacing the merriment in her slitted eyes. “In truth, I hardly recognized your ground. I hardly do recognize it.”
“Well, it’s been what, over a year since we crossed paths? When were you home last? ”
“This fall. Just about a month after you left, I was told.”
“So you’ve heard about, um . . . everything.”
“And in so many different versions.” Her voice slowed. “So . . . is this your infamous farmer bride, Uncle Dag? ”
Dag lowered his eyelids, let them rise. “Sumac Redwing Hickory, meet Fawn Bluefield. My wife. You may observe our marriage cords, if you please.”
Sumac turned her head, blinked twice. “It seems Dirla and Fairbolt were right about those.”
She could have said, It seems Papa and Grandmama were right about those;
Dag breathed relief. Or maybe Sumac was just being polite. He trusted that her past few years as a patrol leader under Fairbolt Crow had taught her a little more leaderly tact, however much she scorned the mealymouthed.
“Making me Dag Bluefield, ah . . . No-Camp, at present,” he went on.
Her black brows quirked, but she let that pass. “So—Missus Bluefield—I guess that makes you my aunt Fawn, eh? ” The two young women regarded each other in mutual contemplation of this absurdity.
Sumac shook her head. “Uncle Dag. Who would have guessed? ”
And after another moment, “What in the world is wrong with her ground? ”
“Nothing. It’s a little experiment of mine. A ground shield for farmers.”
“Groundwork? You? ”
“It’s a long tale.”
Fawn put in, “Dag’s studying to be a medicine maker. Arkady here is teaching him. He’s a real respected groundsetter from the south.”
Sumac’s astonished lips shaped the word, Medicine . . . !
Arkady touched his temple in an almost Dag-like salute. “Arkady Waterbirch New Moon Cutoff, at your service.” He’d been almost expressionless, listening to all this family gossip, but now his lips lifted a trifle.
“Maker Waterbirch.” Sumac returned a courteous nod, looking deeply bemused.
Barr cleared his throat.
“And Barr from Pearl Riffle Camp, up on the Grace,” Dag supplied.
“Barr’s, um . . . with me.”
Barr smiled sunnily. Most young men did, when first exposed to Sumac. Most all men did, actually. The tears came later.
Sumac nodded all around and introduced her partner, or follower.
“And this is Rase from New Elm Camp. I took a returning exchange patroller down to New Elm last fall, then stayed on a bit to help train their youngsters. Rase here is coming back with me to Hickory for his first exchange.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting the famous Fairbolt Crow,” Rase confided to Dag.
Dag quelled the impulse to say something unnerving, and chose instead, “You’ll be made welcome. We send out far more patrollers than we ever get back.” We? How easily that old habit of speech slipped in.
“Fairbolt will also work your tail off, but it’ll be good for you.”
“So I’m hoping, sir.” Rase nodded earnestly.
Blight, but trainee patrollers were getting younger every year . . .
Dag’s half-opened groundsense noted a primed knife in the boy’s saddlebags.
At least he’d come prepared.
About to turn and lead them out onto the road again, Dag followed Fawn’s arrested look to Sumac’s knee, and noticed for the first time a bouquet of a couple of dozen fresh rattlesnake skins hanging from her saddlebags—to dry, presumably. A similar lashing hung on the other side, tails down, free to swing and rattle interestingly as she rode. Barr choked. Arkady twitched his brows. Dag resolved not to be the first to break down and ask.
Indigo came cantering back to them. “Dag? Are you coming, or should we wait for you, or what? ”
Dag waved at him. “We’re coming.”
Sumac’s eyes lifted to the receding green-painted wagon. “You’re with them? ” she said. “But they’re farmers!”
“It’s another long story. We’ll be making camp soon—care to join us?”
She glanced at her partner, and up the long road ahead. “We’d planned to reach—never mind. Of course. I wouldn’t miss this tale for anything.”
Dag let Fawn introduce her—absent gods!—new niece and Rase to Indigo, who rode off to let the others know what was happening. Barr fell behind to talk with Rase, not much younger than himself; Dag, Sumac, Fawn, and Arkady rode abreast at an easy walk.
“It’s actually your fault I spent the winter at New Elm, Uncle Dag,” Sumac confided to him.
“Oh? And me so . . . not there.”
She grinned. “When has that ever stopped anyone from blaming you? No, it was your marriage adventure did it. Of course, Grandmama’s been pressing me forever to bring home a husband to help prop up the tent, and you know how much she loves me being in the patrol.”
Dag nodded full understanding at this last sarcasm. Of all his sins, inspiring his niece to stay in the patrol was the one that most irked his family. And he hadn’t even done it on purpose.
“Lately even Papa’s been wading in on her side, or at least not on mine, not that he ever was on mine, but you’ll never guess who put in the next oar.”
“Omba?” With her elder son safely string-bound, and her two younger children apprenticed to makers and happily courting, Dag hadn’t thought his tent-sister would be quite so concerned.
“Of course not Mama! You know when Redwings start to argue she just ducks out and goes to pet her horses. It’s likely how she survived all these years. It was Fairbolt. Fairbolt!” Sumac shook her head at this defection. “I was joking around with him about when the next company captain place would open up—well, half joking, half angling, you know the way it is when you’re trying to get information out of Fairbolt—and he flat out told me I’d be a shoo-in for it—as soon as I returned to the patrol from my child-years. Then he went on about Massape and Greataunt Mari.”
“Ah,” said Dag.
“Without you to hide behind, it seems I’m the new prime target for the Redwing matchmakers.”
“Well, you are destined to be the next head of Tent Redwing.”
She jerked her chin, making her heavy braid swing. “Shouldn’t that be Mama? ”
“I’m afraid Cumbia’s always thought of your mama as a sort of placeholder.”
“I’ve long plotted that when Grandmama passes, I’ll change my name back t
o Waterstrider. Just to show her, although I suppose it couldn’t show her anything by then.”
From the far right of the row, the intently listening Arkady made an inquiring noise.
Fawn turned her head to him and put in helpfully, “Dag’s mama Cumbia only had the two boys, Dar and Dag. She persuaded Omba Waterstrider to change her name to Redwing when she married Dar, so’s she’d have a girl to carry on her tent. It was sort of like an adoption, I reckon.”
Sumac shook her head. “Mama being the youngest of six girls, there’s no shortage of Waterstriders at Hickory Lake Camp. I have about a thousand Waterstrider cousins. And Grandmama’s good for another forty years just for stubbornness, I guess, by which time I likely won’t care. But she does make me so mad, sometimes. Uncle Dag never could do anything right for her.”
Not that he wanted to discourage one of his few partisans, but Dag groped for his supposed maturity and managed, “Cumbia never had an easy life. Nor very rewarding. Or not the rewards she wanted.”
Sumac shrugged, and sighed. “I know. Oh, feh, of all the ways Grandmama makes me crazy, the worst is when I end up going on about her like this. Don’t listen, Dag.”
You and me both, youngin’. “How’re Cattagus and Mari? ” he asked, to put her at her ease again.
She brightened. “Still wheezing and bickering. I love Great-uncle Cattagus. I’ll give Fairbolt this, if I could make a marriage like Mari and Cattagus, or like Massape and him, it wouldn’t seem half bad.”
“So, um,” said Fawn—it would be Fawn—“where’d you get all those snake skins, Sumac? ”
Sumac’s eyes sprang wide. “And if that wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever seen! We’d taken a short cut across the Barrens to reach the Trace, and went to ford a river, and found all these drowned snakes!”
“Half-drowned snakes,” came a bitter voice from behind. Dag glanced over his shoulder at Rase, who seemed to be reminded of some grudge.
“I told you to use your groundsense,” said Sumac, entirely without sympathy. “Anyway, we stopped to collect as many as we could. The skins will fetch us some useful coin at the ferry, I figure.”