Rase put in, “It had us in a puzzle, how all those rattlers came to be washed up there. I wondered if there’d been a flash flood, but Sumac said there was no other sign of it. The Barrens are a queerer place than I’d thought.” He shook his head in wonder.
Dag smiled benignly.
———
Camp that night was lively with the exchange of tales. Dag eventually confessed to the snakes. To Dag’s relief, Fawn and Barr took up much of the burden of explaining Raintree and their river journey. Sumac had less to offer, but her words seemed just as exotic to the entranced farmer boys, describing a quiet winter patrolling out of New Elm, a camp some forty miles west of the Trace that covered most of the territory between the Barrens and the Hardboil. Rase had been a trainee in her patrol, and showed every sign of the usual hopeless infatuation Sumac tended to engender in young men. Dag did not waste pity on his plight. If he was any good—and she wouldn’t be taking him back to Fairbolt if he weren’t— one of the younger Crow girls would doubtless make short work of him.
One way or another, the boy might never see his home camp again. Dag stifled a grin.
Watching his niece across the flickering firelight, Dag found himself curiously unsettled. She was like a breath of bracing northern air to him, a song of his lost home. He did not regret his exile. One glance at Fawn was still enough to lift his heart near into his throat in wonder.
He’d cut off the weight of his past like shearing through a towrope, and he had no desire to drag that barge again. But. Yet. Still. . .
Sumac threw curiously unsettled glances back. Ever since Dag had returned from Luthlia maimed and strange when she was rising fifteen, she’d made a bit of a hero of her only Redwing uncle. Unlike Neeta, she had few illusions about him—she’d surely seen him at his worst, many times—but everyone in the family knew she’d chosen the patrol over the knife-making apprenticeship her father had offered because of him.
All her adult life he’d been the same dry patroller fellow, the one kinsman who never criticized her choices, as solidly planted as her favorite tree. She could not have been more startled if a hickory tree had risen up, shaken the dirt from its roots, and run off with a farmer girl. Leaving whatever hammock end she’d had tied to him lying forlorn upon the ground.
Despite any confusion in her heart, she was polite and even friendly to Fawn. As the tales of malices and river bandits, medicine making and walnut magery wound on, Dag trusted she realized Fawn was his partner, not his pet. She managed choked but sincere congratulations at the news of their impending child, and a wholly sincere gleam of evil delight that was pure Sumac when she said, “I can’t wait to tell them at home!”
———
When Dag made his habitual bedtime patrol of their camp’s perimeter that night, Arkady fell in beside him.
In a voice remarkably neutral even for him, Arkady said, “Interesting woman, your niece.”
“She is that.”
“ . . . How old is she? ”
Dag’s brows rose. He’d thought Arkady shrewder at estimating folks’ ages than anyone he’d ever met. “Let me think. I was about twenty-two when she was born, because it was the year I was patrolling up on the Great North Road. So she must be, um, almost thirty-five, now. She’s Dar’s second-born, see. Her arrival was greeted with much relief and rejoicing in Tent Redwing, I can tell you. Omba’s credit with our mama rose immensely.”
“She does not appear to be string-bound.”
“No.”
“Betrothed? ”
“Not as far as I know.”
“One wonders why not. No tragedies? ”
“I’m not sure she would have said. She’s certainly had serious suitors. Omba calls them the String of Bodies.”
Dag could feel Arkady’s slow blink in the darkness.
Dag set aside a truly overwhelming temptation to tease Arkady, and said seriously, “You’re a subtle man, when it comes to folks’ insides. If you can figure it out and tell us, Tent Redwing would be grateful. I’ve patrolled with her a time or two. She doesn’t hate men, she doesn’t prefer girls. Granted, her first few dewy suitors were crushed by Dar, but they weren’t up to her weight anyway. After that she kept ’em out of sight, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“The family stopped worrying that she’d make a mistake some time back. Now I suspect the family has started wondering if even a mistake might be better than nothing.” To think Omba would know was unjust. Sumac’s parents were loyal to each other, even if Dar was a difficult man.
“She’s more of a puzzle than she looks at first glance.”
“Yep.”
“Rather like her uncle, that way. Hm.” Arkady wandered off into the darkness.
Dag watched him go. Hm, indeed!
15
A cracking thunderstorm, blowing in hard just before dawn, ended their nice dry spell. By the time everyone turned out to settle the spooked animals and recapture wind-scattered gear, gray daylight arrived, but it wasn’t till midmorning that they set off through the trailing drizzle, bleary-eyed. Fawn let Dag talk her into riding inside the wagon; he and Barr were protected in the boatmen’s rain cloaks Fawn had fashioned back on the Fetch. At least the boiling brown creeks in this more settled country were mostly bridged again.
Fawn wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or not that Sumac and her partner elected to trail along with them at the wagon’s pace “just till the ferry.” Sumac rode between Dag and Arkady, chatting animatedly whenever the rain eased. Fawn supposed she and Dag had a lot of catching up to do. Arkady didn’t seem to be saying much, but he didn’t come up on the wagon box at all that day to continue Calla’s lessons. Edged out of the prime spots at Sumac’s stirrups by their seniors, Barr and Rase trailed a trifle disconsolately. But camp that night was not nearly the sodden misery Fawn expected, because Finch and Indigo scouted out a run-down barn that its owner let to benighted Trace travelers. The roof leaked and the old boards thrummed in the gale, but it beat huddling together under the wagon all hollow.
The clouds broke up into a humid pale heat by the next noon as they came to the edge of the Hardboil Valley, quite as wide as that of the Grace. The shining ribbon of river wound through spring-green woods and fields that steamed with the recent rains. As they slithered carefully down the muddy road, Fawn caught her first glimpses of the ferry town, which bore the arresting name of Mutton Hash, and of the ferry itself, which seemed to be the familiar flat barge hauled from shore to shore by a rope-wound capstan. But here, two big boats worked in parallel, one coming while the other was going.
The water was wider than Fawn had imagined, over half a mile, and Mutton Hash the biggest settlement she’d seen for weeks, not a mere village but a lively river town. As they neared she could make out boatbuilders and goods sheds, hotels and liveries, brewers, bakers, smiths, a ropewalk, tanneries, and horse dealers, and she marveled at how comfortably familiar it all seemed to her now. There was also, she discovered as they arrived near the riverbank, a line for the ferry backed up for two blocks. Besides local wagons, riders, and a lot of foot traffic, the entire forty-mule tea caravan had somehow got ahead of them again.
Such a clot seemed to be an expected thing, because the way down to the landing was lined with booths and hawkers selling food, drink, and goods to the bored and waiting travelers. Fawn stood in her stirrups and sniffed inviting smells: meat pies, funnel cakes, beer, honeyed tea.
Sounds, too—someone was playing a fiddle quite as well as Berry did, quick and sweet. The fiddler started an old river song, the music dancing high and low, and Fawn’s heart caught. She kicked Magpie closer.
The fiddler was a lean, tall woman standing on a stump to the side of the road, elbow sawing, her blond hair drawn back in a lank horsetail shining in the sun . . .
“Berry!” shrieked Fawn in astonishment.
Berry looked up and grinned across the heads of the crowd clustered around her, seized a breath before a repeat to whip her bow
through the air in greeting, and continued with her tune. She looked much less surprised than Fawn felt. Hawthorn stood at her feet holding out Bo’s shapeless felt hat. When he craned his neck and spotted Fawn, he plunked the hat down between his sister’s tapping toes and elbowed his way toward her. By the time he arrived, she’d slid from her saddle and was able to give him a heartfelt hug, which he didn’t even shrug off in boy embarrassment. Oh, my! He’s taller than me!
“What are you doing here? ” Fawn demanded.
“Waiting for you, partly. Mostly waiting for Whit to finish fussing with his little pack train.”
What pack train? “Is everyone all right? ”
“Oh, sure. ’Cept my raccoon eloped, halfway up the Gray.” Hawthorn frowned in memory of this defection.
Fawn didn’t think there was any oh sure about it, but she gave up the urge to shake him as Berry finished her tune and cried, “Lunch break! Try Mama Flintridge’s dried peach pies over there, best in the valley!”
She jumped off the stump, stuffed her fiddle in its leather bag, grabbed the hat, and passed through the throng to Fawn, collecting a few more coins on the way. The hugs this time were mutual.
“Berry!”
“Sis! You made it! We figured if we were going to cross paths at all, this would be the place.”
“Where’s Whit and the others? ”
Berry swung an arm toward the river. “He has a day job working the capstan on one ferryboat, and Hod’s on the other. Bo’s keeping an eye on our horses and gear at a place across the river. Farther from the taverns.”
Dag and Barr dismounted and made their way to Berry, rather more easily than Fawn had, in time to hear this. Folks glanced at the tall Lakewakers and edged back, mostly—then stared openmouthed when they exchanged happy hugs with the grinning fiddler.
“How did you all end up here? ” asked Fawn. “I thought you’d taken berths on a keelboat bound for Tripoint.”
“We did, and I do believe upstream keelboat hauling was a shock to Whit—he’d thought he worked hard on a farm. Anyways, our fool boat boss managed to get his hull stove in by a floater just above the mouth of the Hardboil. We made it to shore and worked back to the village there, but it was plain that boat wasn’t going anywhere for some time, not to mention we’d lost half its lading to the wet. Well, we heard there that the ice hadn’t even broke up yet on the upper Grace, but the Hardboil was clear. So we found berths on another keel headed up to Mutton Hash, that being as high as we could get by boat.”
Mutton Hash marked the head of navigation for the Hardboil River. The Trace crossed the Hardboil, not by chance, Fawn guessed, just below some thirty miles of impassable shoals and rapids, the hazard that gave the whole river its name. Legend had it there had once been a bridge and a city upstream at a narrow high point, but both were fallen into the mists of time, buried by the encroaching woods.
Fawn nodded.
“Whit always was divided in his mind between the river and the road,” Berry continued. “This way he gets some of both. I was agreeable, because I figure it’ll cut three or four weeks off the trip home. If we’re to build another flatboat before the fall rise, we’ll need that time.”
Might we get there in time to plant a kitchen garden, too? “Did you get the letter I sent you in Graymouth? ”
“Yep, thanks.”
“You didn’t come all this way just on the chance of meeting us, did you? Because we weren’t sure till the last we’d even be coming home this year.”
“No, but we’ve been keeping a lookout all the same. We knew from asking at the ferry that you two hadn’t passed ahead of us—Dag is memorable all by himself, and when the pair of you are together, folks notice. I won’t say we haven’t been lingerin’ a bit in hope, but I want to start north soon. Before your brother buys any more horses.” She made a face.
The ferry pulled into the landing with shouts and a rumble as the gangplank was laid out. Walkers and wagons heaved up the slope, and the crowd shifted as the new passengers hurried to take their place.
While some of the tea caravan’s younger and less jaded mules were taking exception to their offered boat ride, Hawthorn dashed down to tell Whit about the arrivals.
Whit came thumping up grinning like mad, hugged Fawn, and wrung Dag’s hand. “You made it! Hoped you might! Hey, I bet I could squeeze you on right now.”
“Thanks, but we’re not alone,” said Dag. “We’re traveling with some other folks. Young homesteaders. Theirs is that green wagon up there.”
“Sage is a blacksmith, going to look for work in Tripoint,” Fawn added.
“Even better. Bring them along! I have so much to show you.” Whit glanced back at the filling ferry; a big fellow guarding the gangplank, clearly the ferry boss, was glowering after him. “But I have to go back to work now. Can’t quit in the middle of a day, it wouldn’t be right. I’ll talk to you more when you get aboard, unless you end up on Hod’s boat, and then he’ll tell you all about it. Berry or Hawthorn will take you to our digs, I guess. Where’s Remo? ”
Barr stiffened a little. “He stayed at New Moon.”
Whit blinked. “Oh. Why? ”
“There was this girl,” said Fawn, as the simplest answer. Which had to suffice, as the ferry boss followed up his glower with a bellow. Whit waved and ran back to the boat.
Whit seemed both changed and unchanged. He was definitely broader in the shoulders. He plainly retained his sometimes-alarming enthusiasm for the new; if his ability to stick with a tough job to the end was improved by his marriage, so much the better. As Dag led them all over to introduce Berry and Hawthorn to the company, Fawn decided to save her most important family news for some less crowded moment.
Whit’s ferry slogged all the way across the river and back again before their turn came to clamber aboard. Fawn thought the boat rode alarmingly low in the water when the ferry boss finally slid the gate pole across. Whit and the southern boys seemed to become instant comrades, Whit because he was a friendly cuss, and the others because they’d heard so much about him that it likely felt they already knew one another. Despite their growing up not thirty miles from the Gray, the Hardboil was the largest river some of them had yet seen, and they were agog with it. Under the ferry boss’s amused eye they were permitted a few turns on the four-man capstan.
Dag’s attention was mainly taken keeping Copperhead from picking a fight with all the strange horses jammed up around them. Some of the other travelers eyed the Lakewalkers suspiciously, but the ferrymen evidently saw enough of their sort as to excite no comment, at least not out loud. Well, Sumac drew covert stares, but if any of the men were thinking rude thoughts, the Lakewalkers doubtless kept their groundsenses furled in this crowd, and so could take no offense.
As she led Magpie across the echoing gangplank onto the northern shore, Fawn thought with a thrill, We’re halfway home!
———
Dag was unsurprised when Berry led them two miles off the Trace to another farm with a dilapidated barn, cheaper to let because it was not so near the road. It offered good pasturage, though, important as their mob of hungry animals joined the six horses that Whit had acquired.
Since Whit had started this whole venture with a mere pair and the clothes on his back, it seemed good progress, except for his new beasts being near breakdowns. Yet on closer look, his selections were shrewd.
Most of the animated racks of bones needed no more than worm medication, rest, and grain, which Whit had already supplied. A couple showed signs of prior abuse, now stitched, patched, and plastered.
“All mares,” Whit, when he arrived from the ferry at sunset, pointed out to Dag. “By the time we get to Clearcreek, I’ll know which ones I want to cull and which I want to keep for breeding. D’you think Mama’s colt Darkling might be ready to cover them by next fall? ” A light of equine enterprise shone in Whit’s eye.
Whit was ecstatic to find that Sage was an experienced farrier, and the two promptly put their heads togeth
er on a problem of corrective shoeing for one of the mares. The company’s animals being overdue for a rest, they also obtained an extra day of pasturage and shelter from the farm’s owner in exchange for a promise to shoe one of his horses. It seemed to Dag that an uneven burden had fallen on Sage, but the young smith was willing, and the other boys all turned out to help him as best they could.
He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty was praise for a man whether northern or southern; Arkady was let off from any ragging about his cleanliness when he supplied value by doing ground checks of all the new acquisitions to sort the serious from the remediable problems. As a result, Whit took one of his mares back to the Mutton Hash market the following morning and returned with a different one. So it was late in the afternoon before Whit whipped out his newest prize to show off.
It was a crossbow with a spring steel bow and a cranking mechanism for cocking, the work of some Tripoint artisan. “I got it in trade from a broke-down keeler back on the Gray,” Whit explained eagerly, turning it in his hands to point out its notable features, which seemed to be all of them. The farmer boys were drawn to it as swiftly as if it were fresh apple pie. Everyone wanted to try it at once except Sage, who wanted to take it apart and see if he could copy the mechanisms, an operation Whit was unwilling to allow just yet.
“I only have seven bolts for it,” Whit explained. “I used to have eight, but I lost one already, not having a Lakewalker around to help me find the misses.” He made a sad face.
Fawn frowned, turning one of the short steel-tipped bolts in her hand. “I guess I couldn’t make arrows for this bow. I suppose Sage might.”
“Oh, hey, actually, I was hoping you would. Make me some wooden ones for practice bolts, that is. I don’t want to lose any more of the fancy steel-head ones just on target practice.”
Fawn brightened a trifle. “Sure. I could try, anyhow.”
The mob of them went off to set up a target at the end of the pasture, then retreated to shooting distance to flip a coin for turns. The Lakewalkers leaned on the pasture fence watching, at least till the first frenzy wore off. As the rattle of the ratchet rose in the air, Dag could tell that Barr, Rase, and Sumac were all itching to try out the new toy.