The fevered man mumbled something about Kill us in our beds, which his wife ignored in her fresh concentration on Indigo. “Grouse’ll make better sense when this bog ague spell passes off. One more day, I promise, and he’ll be back on his pins. Oh, please . . . oh my, so cruel, oh, you shouldn’t ought to have said it if you didn’t mean it . . . !”
Which was how, that night, they all ended up camped at the top of the pass in a chill fog, instead of lower down in some more pleasant location, and Dag and Arkady were pressed into trying to force bog-ague remedy into a half-delirious man who fought them every step. Grouse’s terror took the form of swearing and abuse, mainly. His wife was helpless in the face of it, but Berry lent a hand, and a voice, that settled him as swiftly as a drunken keeler. Arkady was less taken aback than Dag expected; his prior experience with difficult sick farmers seemed to be wider than he’d quite let on.
Dag walked his perimeter patrol wondering if anybody was going to stumble over a precipice while trying to take a piss tonight, and if Arkady had any headache remedies in his pack. Strong ones . . .
He paused, arrested by the feel of horses and riders coming up the trail behind them. Honest folks had little reason to dare the Trace after dark, and sensible ones none, here in this mist only made more blurry by the meager light of a half-moon. Bandits preyed on travelers in these unpeopled stretches. He extended his groundsense anxiously.
A very familiar ground bumped his.
Dag strode down the road in time to see three riders loom up out of the milky haze. Remo. And Neeta. And Tavia.
“Absent gods, Dag!” Remo’s aggravated voice echoed weirdly in the damp air. “It’s blighted time we caught up with you!”
16
Dag was able to avoid the confrontation that night only because Arkady was already asleep in his bedroll, but in consequence he and Arkady were cornered by Neeta and her little company at first light the next morning. It would be optimistic to call it sunup; it was more of a brightening fog. Water droplets beaded on blankets, gear, and in everyone’s hair, dank and chill. The crackling flames of the patroller breakfast fire, not quite out of earshot of the farmers’ wagons, seemed wan and pale, much like the people clustered around it. In this orangeand- gray light even Arkady looked unshaved, road-worn, and bleary.
“I thought we’d catch up with you before you’d reached the Barrens,” Neeta explained earnestly. “We might have, too, if only we’d been allowed an earlier start.”
Remo said to Dag, “We wasted the first five days on Antan Bullrush’s attempt to wait you out. I told him Arkady might be bluffing, but you wouldn’t be. When he finally let me ride out to the Bridger farm to check, you were already four days down the road.”
“Yes,” said Neeta, “and then we wasted another two days arguing about it all. It took the camp council to finally overrule the captain. We should have gone after you courier-style, and swapped out the horses along the way, but Antan wouldn’t even authorize that.”
“We had good luck in the road and weather,” said Dag. I pushed us along. He wished he’d had a few more days to push; the farther, the better.
“Anyway,” said Neeta, “you’ve no need now to travel another foot north. We’ve won!”
Arkady squinted curiously. Barr, lurking at his shoulder, frowned.
“I’m pledged to the north, and to my Bluefield tent-kin,” said Dag.
“And these farmer youngsters are relying on me to be their guide on this road, which is all new to them. I’ve more or less promised to see them safe to the Grace Valley, leastways.” He gave Arkady a hooded glance. “Naturally, I hope Arkady will ride on with us. I haven’t even begun to show him all the north has to offer. There’s a lot to see and learn, yet.”
Neeta said, “No, sir, you don’t understand! I mean we’ve won you everything. Dag to be let back in camp, and tent-rights despite the farmer girl, and the medicine booth at the farmer’s market! Maker Challa’s actually become very interested in that, since you’ve shown her all about your unbeguilement trick.”
Arkady blinked. So did Dag.
Barr looked around. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you all come north with us? At least for a while. We’re better’n halfway there, and I was told last fall not to come home without you, Remo. I’ve a suspicion nothing about Pearl Riffle Camp will look the same to me, but I’d like to finish up proper, before making a clean start doing . . . whatever else. You might, too.”
Remo shook his head. “You don’t see. I’ve found a new place for myself—a place that doesn’t think I’m dirt under its boot heels. I don’t have to go back and crawl on my belly to get a place in a good patrol. New Moon really wants me!”
Shedding his imagined sins as a snake sheds its skin, along with his past and his faultfinding family—Dag could understand the appeal of the southern camp to the boy.
“Wants isn’t the same as needs,” said Barr. “New Moon Cutoff has enough patrollers. There isn’t a camp north of the Grace that would make that claim.” He glanced meaningfully at Tavia, who touched her lips in doubt.
Neeta tossed her head. “Barr can suit himself. We were sent to escort Arkady and Dag home.” She did not, Dag noted, add Fawn to that tally. “Anyway”—she turned to Arkady—“surely you’ve had enough of living rough, sir, at your age. We can whisk you right back to your own comfortable house. It’s all being kept for you.”
Arkady rubbed his sleeve across his eyes. “Gods. I can’t think when I’m covered with trail filth.”
Dag didn’t see that Arkady was any grubbier than anyone else, but he bit his tongue on saying so. Fawn and Sumac had been collaborating on rustling up the breakfast tea. Sumac rose and wordlessly handed the first sweetened cup to Arkady. He took it with a grateful grimace, and sipped.
Sumac looked Neeta over rather coolly. “No one’s going forward or back for another day. If our animals are due for a rest, your mounts must be in worse case, from covering the same distance in two-thirds the time. Dag can’t leave his party scattered over ten miles of trail—it would be very poor patrol procedure. At the very least, we need to get everyone safely to the bottom of this pass and reorganized. There’s plenty of time to think about all this later. After breakfast.”
Dag said, “I agree.”
Arkady looked around the circle of faces and shrugged. “Dag’s the trail boss.”
Neeta doubtless sensed she was being outmaneuvered by the older woman, but couldn’t muster a reasonable objection, since it was quite true about the horses. With the reminder of breakfast, the debate broke up amongst growling stomachs, and was prevented from re-forming by the bustle of breaking camp.
“After lunch,” Dag overheard Sumac murmur to Arkady, “when we’re lower down, I’ll show you a patroller trick for finding warmer water to wash in.”
“That would help,” sighed Arkady.
It had taken a full day to get the party to the top of the pass, but only cost half that to descend the other side. It likely aided things that the cantankerous Grouse remained bedridden in his wagon, as his wife seemed the more sensible half of the couple. Ash and Indigo helped her out. They all made it to the bottom without losing any wagons over the edge of the twisty road, despite having to shift two fallen trees and a small rock slide along the way. Between the mist lifting and the lower elevation, it was a soft, warm spring afternoon by the time they’d found a new campsite in the valley. More bustle followed, to get the four southern boys and Whit fed and off back over the pass to fetch Bo, Hod, and the rest of their gear; they likely wouldn’t traipse in again till the following afternoon.
When Dag finally went to look for Arkady, he was nowhere in sight.
Nor in groundsense range.
“Did you see where Arkady went? ” he asked Fawn.
“Um . . .” said Fawn.
“What? ”
“Sumac took him off into the woods to find him a warm bath. She said.”
Dag raised his brows at her.
“Well,
Arkady did take his scented soap and his towels and razor.”
She added after a moment, “Sumac had a blanket, which I guess you could want for a bath.” And after another, shyer moment, “Do you suppose they’ve gone to scout for squirrels? ”
Dag drew breath. “Not sure.”
Fawn eyed him uneasily. “You don’t think it’s your duty to go after them, do you? On account as Sumac is your niece? ”
“And get my other hand bitten off? No. Sumac is a woman grown. And Arkady’s . . . not an ineligible suitor.” Arkady’s maker bloodlines were plainly as superior as they could be, and the age gap between the pair was something Dag wouldn’t have dared remark on.
Fawn sighed relief.
A slow smile lifted Dag’s lips at a vision of Arkady and Tent Redwing tangling with each other, if he were to be dragged home as a prize by Sumac. Dag had no doubt Arkady could hold his own—blight, Dar wouldn’t last five minutes. And Cumbia—well, Arkady would doubtless be exquisitely polite to Cumbia. But she wouldn’t budge him half an inch from any course he’d chosen.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, old patroller. Arkady and Sumac were both complicated people, which might or might not help them suit. They’d not drawn each other out very deeply in front of Dag, Arkady seeming content to listen to Dag and Sumac reminisce. Concealing his vulnerable heart? A man would be wise to do so with Sumac, and Arkady was a wise man.
Still . . . Sumac and Rase had meant to leave the company days ago, back at the Hardboil, and be a hundred miles closer to Hickory Lake by now. Maybe the reunion with good old Uncle Dag wasn’t the sole reason for her delay?
And then had come Neeta, and the hot breath of competition, if of a rather indirect kind. Dag suspected Sumac wasn’t used to rivalry over men, seldom a thing she had to deal with when they all followed her like ducklings. Though as a patrol leader, she was trained to quick thinking and action in an emergency. And if Arkady went south tomorrow, it was unlikely they would ever cross paths again . . .
“Poor squirrels,” Dag murmured. “They haven’t a chance.”
Fawn grinned up at him. “Maybe we should go find some of our own. If Sumac can spot a warm creek in these woods, seems to me you could, too.”
“A fine plan, Spark.”
“I’ll fetch our soap.”
“And blanket. Which direction shall we scout? ”
“Any but northwest. I think the squirrel menace is likely covered in that direction.”
“Right.”
When Dag, smiling, went off to find Barr and warn him of their afternoon’s planned absence, he found Neeta and Tavia at the boy’s elbow.
“Have you seen Arkady?” Neeta demanded. “I have to talk some sense into him.”
“He went off to get his bath, I believe.”
“Which way? ”
“I didn’t see him,” said Dag, with perfect truth. And with less perfect truth, added, “Downstream, wouldn’t you think?” Southeast, as the creeks ran here.
“Come on, Tavia,” said Neeta. “Arkady shouldn’t be wandering around in these woods on his own. It’s not safe.”
“I don’t think he went far, and I doubt he’d care for your company,” Dag observed. “He’s a man who likes his privacy.”
Tavia set her heels at the alarming thought of interrupting Maker Arkady at his bath; the pair were sitting on a log still arguing when Dag and Fawn snuck away in their own right. Westerly.
———
The languid afternoon was everything Dag had dreamed of, back when he’d still been envisioning this as a wedding trip. Deep in the woods, he and Fawn found a creek trickling over clean rocks into a sunlit pool, as warm as the season could give, with their bedroll even warmer laid beside it on a sun-dappled bank of soft green horsetails. Mountain wildflowers abounded. But despite their decided lack of hurry, when they strolled back to the quiet camp Arkady and Sumac were still not there.
The mountain ridge they’d just crossed blocked the sun early, casting the woods into cool shadow under a still-luminous sky. Those shadows were thickening when Dag at last spotted Arkady and Sumac emerging from the fringe of the trees. He rather thought the pair supplied their own glow, leaking through their half-closed grounds. They stopped and unlinked hands, then Arkady turned to arrange Sumac’s loose, drying hair, falling like night’s shadow to her hips, combing it through his fingers.
Fortunate fingers . . . It took Dag another moment to realize what was different about Arkady—besides the obvious. His silver-gilt hair was no longer in its mourning knot, but braided down the back of his head and then set in a loose queue to his shoulders. A northern style—Sumac’s handiwork?
Nevertheless, and quite maddeningly, neither made any interesting announcements, but slipped back into the reduced camp’s dinner routine almost separately. The Basswoods kept to themselves, but Fawn, Calla, and Berry teamed up to grill the trout Remo and Barr had collected from the nearby rushing river. Neeta watched Arkady in concern, but either had the sense not to badger him, or was too caught up in the evening camp chores and horse care to get the chance.
Dag, wondering if he ought to ask Arkady his intentions, decided that was the wrong end of the stick. As the stars came out, he cornered Sumac.
“Pleasant afternoon? ” he inquired genially.
“Very. You? ”
“Likewise. I suspect. Not to pry.”
He could feel her smirk in the shadows of the tall blooming tulip tree they’d ducked behind. “You’re dying to pry.”
“Well. I do feel a certain responsibility for my partner.”
Sumac tilted her head back and remarked as if to no one in particular, “I do like a man with clean hands. Who knows what to do with them.”
“Should I ask you if your intentions are honorable? ”
“Intentions are like wishes. You don’t always get them.”
“Arkady . . . is a right sensitive man. If strong in his own way. You could—if you—” Dag strove for neutral wording. “He could be hurt.”
“I am aware.” Her eyes, glinting in the shadows, grew serious at last.
“We talked.”
“Talked.” Dag tried to imagine Arkady talking. It was an effort.
“What about? ”
“A lot of things. What we had in common, for one.”
“Like what? ” said Dag. They were not an obviously matched pair, for all that he suspected subtler compatibilities.
That dark smile, again. “I don’t think I’ll tell you. But you were right—the man’s insight is unholy.”
Dag cleared his throat. “Did he, um . . . tell you anything about his first marriage? ”
“With Bryna? Oh, days ago.”
“Oh.” Dag stumbled on: “A week’s not very long to make up your mind, after fifteen years of avoiding . . . whatever you’ve been avoiding.”
“Yes, I’m off to a late start. And he’s worried it could be his and Bryna’s sorrows all over again. He does feel it might be better not to get string-bound till we’re sure things will work out. So’s I wouldn’t quit the patrol and turn my life upside down for nothing. We’d both be glad of your blessing, though.”
Not seeing why his blessing was worth a pig’s whistle, it took Dag a moment to decode this. He imagined it: Why, yes, Arkady, by all means, impregnate my niece! The family will be ecstatic! Except that they likely would be, by now.
“It’s time, you see,” said Sumac simply. “After fifteen years, I’ve had so much practice at sorting out what I don’t want, it doesn’t take that long to see what I do. Even if I’ve never seen the like before. How long did it take you and Fawn to decide on each other? ”
“Er . . . several weeks.” Honesty compelled: “Well, two days. Several weeks to get up the courage.”
A flickering fox-grin. “Well, then.” She drew breath. “When I was twenty, I knew everything about my future. Now, I know nothing. But I do know your partner will go north when I do. So you can say, Thank you, Sumac.”
“T
hank you, Sumac,” Dag echoed dutifully. And added more gently, “All the joy in the wide green world to you two.”
Her lips eased in quite the softest smile he’d ever seen on her toughgirl face. She nodded gravely.
———
Sumac proved right about Arkady’s sense of direction.
Neeta, however, did not give up and turn around, in part because Remo had been argued into a tizzy of indecision by Barr. Tavia said little. But the upshot was that when the reunited company at last took the Trace north again, it was swollen to twenty-three people and an entire drove of horses and mules. Leastways, Dag reflected, it made them a more daunting target for bandits.
The Trace here ran for three days travel up a slot flanked by running ridges, vast green sky-blocking humps. It was a thinly peopled country.
A few hamlets, carved out of what little flat land the valley offered, supplemented their meager livings by supplying the needs of travelers.
Grouse, recovering from his ague attack enough to take the reins on his wagon box, eyed the land hungrily, but any vale with a creek bottom worth having was clearly already taken.
Inevitably, Whit saw and recognized the birthday walnut around his sister’s neck. Rather than having to talk his tent-brother into being his next target, Dag found him to be an eager volunteer. Dag was at first inclined to seek some private spot for the trial, then recalled the show he’d put on with Crane and his first sharing-knife bonding. The memory was disturbing, and he disliked doing complex and chancy groundwork with an audience, but this crowd was captive and mostly friendly. His own words came uncomfortably back to him: Never miss a chance to befriend and teach.
Around the campfire that night, Dag took on his next major making.
The first few minutes were spent sorting out whose hair Whit was to borrow to supplement his own too-short curls, his sister’s or his wife’s.
They settled on Berry’s. She made a face as Fawn did the snipping, filching a generous blond hank. Whit’s thicker fingers proved considerably less deft at cord braiding than Fawn’s, especially when his added blood made the mixed hair slippery. Everyone gathered around, the Lakewalkers watching more wide-eyed than the farmers when Dag straddled a log behind Whit and helped him draw his ground out into the growing length of braid.