Arkady overrode the answer. “What does it look like, you unutterable fool? I told you how it would be, did I not? Did I not?”
Arkady’s outward appearance was typically fastidious, barring ride-rumpled clothing and a few wisps of hair escaping its knot. But the roil in his usually serene ground and look of wild exasperation in his eyes put Dag forcibly in mind of a cat that had been stuck in a barrel and rolled downhill.
“You broke your word to me!” Arkady went on.
“I didn’t seek to, sir. The problem came to me, and I couldn’t turn aside.”
“Did you have the first notion what was being thrown away? No, of course you didn’t. Patrollers! Antan’s a bull and you’re a mule. The only one who really understands is Challa, and even she didn’t come in on my side!”
“Side?” said Dag. His glance at Barr was not enlightening. Barr wasn’t actually staring up at the sky and innocently whistling, but he might as well have been.
“It’s unconscionable—unconscionable!”
Dag admired Arkady’s ability to even pronounce such a jaw-breaking word while sputtering with rage, but he was still adrift, here. If Arkady hadn’t been sent out to offer Dag a pardon, why was he here? Just to vent his feelings?
“—to waste a talent like yours. Still worse to turn you loose on the world one-tenth trained and wholly unsupervised. So since that pack of fools won’t let you come back to New Moon”—Arkady’s voice dwindled—“I’m coming with you.”
Dag’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“You heard me.” Arkady’s eyes sought the dirt. “I’m coming along with you. To continue your training till it’s complete to my satisfaction.”
“Where?”
“North, I suppose. That’s where you’re going, isn’t it? Your wife will be homing like a pigeon—women in her condition generally do, you know. That much was obvious.”
Dag wanted to say Not to me, but came up instead with, “Arkady, you mean to ride the Trace with us?”
Arkady nodded.
“It’s eight hundred miles and more, you do know that?”
He nodded again, more shortly.
“What’s the longest you’ve ever ridden at a stretch?”
Arkady raised his chin. “Twenty miles.”
“For how many days?”
Arkady cleared his throat. “One.”
“And how long have you ever gone without a bath?”
Arkady glared, but didn’t deign to answer that one. He straightened his shoulders and dismounted; Barr followed suit. The maker rather absently handed the young patroller his reins, then stepped up to the porch.
“Is New Moon going to allow this?” Dag’s staggered wits were finally beginning to work again. If this offer was real, he should fall on his knees and thank the absent gods. Was it? “Do they even know you’re out here?”
“They’ll figure it out,” snapped Arkady. “I warned Antan, and the rest of those ditherers on the camp council. If they imagined I was bluffing, well, they’ll know better next time.”
“You can’t live on the road the way you do in camp.” Dag looked away at the tree line along the road, hazy in the damp warmth of the late afternoon, looked back, caught Arkady’s evasive eyes square. “It looks like I’m going to have a lot more people on my hands this trip than I expected. I can’t be your nursemaid, and Barr can’t be your servant.”
“I will not crumple into a heap from a horseback ride, thank you,” said Arkady through his teeth. “Not even one eight hundred miles long.”
“The world under the skin is your home hinterland, but the world outside it is mine. My road, my rules. Can you accept that?”
“About as well as you ever did, I expect,” Arkady returned. Their stares held each other for an uncomfortable stretch.
“Then you can begin by taking care of your own horse,” Dag said at last. “The barn’s around back.”
Arkady’s glare turned scorching. Barr looked very alarmed. But after a long hesitation, Arkady merely said, “All right,” and took back his reins. As he started around the house, he added over his shoulder, “When I return I want to inspect what you did to that boy with the lockjaw.”
Lines drawn clearly enough; Dag nodded acceptance.
This still left Barr holding the leads of five horses, although Copperhead’s ground showed signs of recent heavy persuasion; that and the gelding’s ten-mile jaunt this morning doubtless explained why he wasn’t trying to tear strips out of his trail mates just now. Dag took him and Magpie off Barr’s hands. Barr yielded gratefully.
“Where’s Remo?” Dag asked.
Barr’s face went bleak. “He stayed.”
“Ah.” An unexpected exchange. Dag frowned after Arkady. “Barr—is Arkady bluffing, with this crazy gambit? Holding himself hostage, to force the camp council to knuckle under and take me back?”
The corner of Barr’s mouth tucked up. “I think he thinks he is. I’m sure they think he is.”
Dag nodded somewhat relieved understanding, then shot him a sharper look. “Then what’s the use?”
“Well, I got him this far. I figured the rest would be up to you.”
“Yeah…?”
Challa made medicine; Arkady made medicine makers. Fawn might dub it the difference between corn and seed corn. When going off to break new land, the latter was clearly the more valuable. So would it be better to call Arkady’s bluff, or the camp council’s? With a slow smile, Dag thought, Neither. Best of all would be to grab your gift of seed corn and run before the original owners could demand it back.
“I’ll tell Finch we can all be ready to start north tomorrow,” said Dag, and led the horses off toward the barn.
Their departure in the morning was much delayed, but with only fifteen miles to cover till their first planned stop, they hadn’t really needed to be off at dawn. Dag and Barr readied their horses with patrollers’ efficiency, but either Finch or his mama kept thinking of last-minute items to add to his packs. In a strange way, it reminded Fawn of her leave-taking at West Blue after her wedding, minus the wedding. Finch, too, was a younger child with no land and a meager due-share, and his space was needed for the next generation even more than his hands were wanted for labor.
His family wasn’t glad to see him go, but they weren’t arguing very hard against it, either. His mama’s feelings were likely the most mixed. His papa seemed pleased he’d found a grown-up guide, even if he still found Dag unsettling. Arkady and Barr just baffled the Bridgers, despite Barr’s entertaining the family at dinner with an account of their journey on the Fetch—although he’d glanced at Mama Bridger and left out the river bandits, to Fawn’s relief. Bo’s tallest tales could scarcely have won wider eyes; the great river, barely thirty miles west of here, plainly seemed an exotic world to them.
I was more ignorant than that, once. Time seemed tilted, as if ten years of change had been packed into her last ten months. Fawn shook her head in wonder and kicked Magpie after long-legged Copperhead. Finch kept twisting in his saddle and waving, though once they turned onto the road and the budding trees hid the house, he set his face forward eagerly enough.
It was Barr and Arkady who kept glancing back. Fawn suspected Barr was still wishing Remo might change his mind and chase after them, and Arkady had similar hopes about his camp council. Arkady wasn’t used to losing arguments, Fawn reckoned. She dropped back next to Barr as they rode along in the soft spring air. He was encumbered with the two packhorses, but they seemed to follow without protest.
“Where did you get the horses and gear?” she asked.
“It’s all Arkady’s. I gather he barely tapped into his camp credit even after mounting me. Though one whole packsaddle is crammed with nothing but his medicine stuff he didn’t want to leave behind. I had to remind him to pack clothes.” Barr grimaced. “He said if he didn’t take the portable medicine tent, the council wouldn’t believe he was serious.”
“Is he serious?”
Barr smirked. “Dag is.”
“Huh.”
It was a promising day for their start, pale blue overhead, pale green alongside, and as the warming afternoon wore on, Fawn found herself nodding. Then yawning and slumping, fighting heavy eyelids and seductive visions of laying a bedroll beneath the bushes and taking a long nap. She blinked awake briefly at the shock of realization. I really am pregnant. Her fatigue the past few days at the farmhouse had enough other excuses that she’d not noticed it creeping up on her. If not for Dag’s groundsense, this would be her first suspicion. She stared down at her stomach, neatly clad in her riding trousers, in a mixture of awe and alarm. This time, can I get it right?
“Sleepy, Spark?” Dag’s voice jolted her awake.
“’Fraid so,” she mumbled. “Maybe I could tie myself to my saddle, the way you say couriers sometimes do.”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t you come over here”—he indicated his lap—“and we can double up the way we rode into Glassforge.”
She smiled at the memory. “What about Magpie?”
“She’s Lakewalker trained. She’ll follow.”
“Well, if you think it’ll work…”
Copperhead stepped alongside, and Fawn knotted her reins on her mare’s neck and let Dag help her slide across. She tucked up reasonably neatly, arm around his back, her cheek to his heart, and sniffed clean cotton and warm Dag. Happy nose.
“This is so nice,” she murmured, cuddling in tight. “But I won’t close my eyes. I don’t want to miss a mile of the Tripoint Trace.” Although so far, all the miles had looked rather alike, flat farm country broken up by shaded brown watercourses. At least all the looming trees, bearded by swags of that gray hanging moss, were different from Oleana. Bald cypress and magnolia and live oak…what a dozy afternoon…
“Spark?”
At Dag’s murmur, she unglued her eyelids. “What? What did I miss?”
“About four miles of nothing. Swamp, mostly.”
“I slept for an hour?” She squinted, hoping she hadn’t drooled on his shirt. “Your arm must be ready to fall off!”
“It’ll stick. But we’re coming up on Alligator Hat.”
“Oh!”
Dag stopped to let her down, and she seized an invigorating stretch before remounting Magpie. They trotted after the others, which also helped bounce her awake.
Alligator Hat seemed typical of the small villages straggling up the Trace. A few dozen wooden houses were set back from the road, with gardens of varying neatness. Some front gates bore painted signs advertising rooms and stall space for rent for weary travelers. A sturdy bridge led over a weir for a mill. The road widened into a square around which clustered businesses that served both the local farmers and the Trace: a couple of alehouses, a neat two-story inn with its own large stable out back, the village clerk’s office, another livery, signs for harness and repair, a wagon wright’s, and a big smithy. Finch waved his arm and led their caravan around back into the smithy’s yard.
A large wagon was set to one side, tongue to the ground. It was new-painted green with fine, curling yellow stripes, the wheels picked out in scarlet. Under its arching canvas roof, Fawn glimpsed a female shape fussing with some baskets. The double back door to the smithy was flung wide, a red glow winking from the forge inside where a bulky young man waited with his hand on the bellows. Near the door in the better light, a tall, lanky young man held the head of a big brown mule, scratching its poll and making soothing murmurs in its long ears. No twitch looped its cream-colored lip, even though it rolled its eye in worry. A wiry young man held its back hoof trapped between his knees on his leather apron, a nail in his mouth, a hammer in his hand.
He glanced up briefly at Finch and waved the hammer, calling around the nail, “Be righ’ wi’ you!,” then returned to shoeing the mule. The clack clack of hammer on hoof echoed around the yard, the nail went in neatly, and he wrenched off the protruding point, clinched it, and filed it down. He sprang back as he released the hoof, but the mule merely sighed and leaned into its ear scratching. The two young men grinned at each other, then the lanky one tied the mule’s rope to a ring on a post.
Bulky, lanky, and wiry all came out to the yard. Despite his friend’s broader shoulders, it seemed the wiry one was the smith, because he greeted their party with the air of a host. “Finch! You made it!” He came up as Finch and the rest dismounted, and asked more quietly and anxiously, “How’s Sparrow?,” then blew out his breath with relief when Finch replied that his nephew was going to be all right.
Wiry glanced in some confusion at the rest of the party, clearly wondering if they were customers off the Trace. “What can I do for you folks? Shoeing, repairs?”
It seemed to occur to Finch for the first time that four strangers and six beasts were rather a lot to spring onto his friends’ travel party unannounced. He hastened to make introductions. “This is Dag Bluefield, who’s the fellow we owe Sparrow’s life to. He’s a Lakewalker medicine maker who wants to go north to Oleana and treat farmers, and this is his wife, Fawn Bluefield, which is why, I guess.” He glanced at Fawn and evidently decided it wasn’t necessary to add, She’s a farmer. Fawn made her little knee dip; the three boys gaped at her in wonder and, after a second look at Dag, the usual surprise. “And this is Dag’s, um, friend Arkady Waterbirch, who’s going along with him, and Barr, um—did you ever say your last name?”
“Barr will do,” the patroller said, staring with interest at these farmer near-age-mates. Barr, who had always looked like a puppy next to Dag, seemed suddenly an older dog.
“And these are my friends, Sage Smith”—wiry—“Ash Tanner”—that was bulky—“and Indigo Axe.” Lanky, with deeply tanned skin despite the recent winter, a long face, and an impressively beaky nose.
The woman, meanwhile, had hopped down from the wagon and strolled over to the group. Sage reached out and grasped her hand.
“And this is my wife, Calla,” he announced with shy pride. “Indigo’s her little brother.”
The latter hardly needed stating. Calla Axe Smith was half a head taller than her new husband, as tall and lanky as Indigo, with the same warm skin, long face, and beaky nose. Black hair, scarcely longer than her brother’s, was cropped in fine wisps around her head. She wasn’t beautiful, but Fawn imagined that once she outgrew her youthful awkwardness she might be striking. Fawn had trouble guessing her age, but thought Calla might be even younger than herself, which would be a nice change. Except that Indigo looked to be in his late teens like the other boys, so Calla had to be older than that.
“How de’!” said Fawn, with another eager knee dip. “I’m right glad to hear there’s to be another married woman in the party.”
“Are all those folks going with us?” Calla said, not sounding at all delighted. She frowned coolly up and down at the mismatched couple of Dag and Fawn. Indigo regarded them downright warily.
“Dag knows the Trace,” Finch put in. “He’s been all along it.”
“This is our rig.” Sage pointed proudly at the wagon, seeming oblivious to his wife’s standoffishness, although Dag glanced at her sharply. “What do you think of the new paint, Finch? Calla did the stripes.”
“Yeah!” said Finch in admiration.
“It’s beautiful, but it’s big for the Trace. What do you have to pull it?” asked Dag, in a tone of friendly interest.
“Six fine mules.” Sage jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the sturdy beast he’d just finished shoeing. “The team and their tack were Calla’s due-share. Calla’s family used to make harness.”
Calla gave a little grimace, but Sage went on with undaunted enthusiasm. “I have all my tools aboard, and my new anvil Papa gave me. As long as a smith has his anvil, he can make every other tool he needs to make every other tool you need.”
“Six mules will likely do till after the Hardboil River, unless you need to pull out of a mud hole,” Dag said. “But there’s at least three long hills—mountain passes, really—north of the ferry that will need more to get this weig
ht up them. Most folks who take wagons on the Trace do it in groups, and double or triple the teams on those slopes, hauling the wagons up in turns.” Dag surveyed the animals standing in the yard. “If you hitch on Finch’s two mules and our two packhorses, and maybe take part of your load up separate, it’ll likely do. You want to be sure you pack harness for the extra pairs, though.”
Sage took in this new information with vast interest. “That’s good to know! We only had the one spare set. I’ll beg an extra set from Papa before we go.”
“Are you going to break land?” Fawn stood on tiptoe to look over the tailboard at the array of tools and supplies neatly arranged inside. Sage pointed out yet more features of his rig, including a folded feather bed; Calla frowned in faint embarrassment, but didn’t blush. “Do you know which part of Oleana you’re going to try, yet?”
“No plowing for me! That would be Finch and Ash. I’m heading to Tripoint!” Sage took a deep, exultant breath. “Where Tripoint steel comes from! I have to see that.”
“Really? You might do well there.” Dag extended his left arm and turned his hook, which he’d been holding nearly behind his back till now. “It was a couple of Tripoint artificers made this for me.”
“Oh, yeah? When? What kind of steel did they use for that little spring-tongue back of the curve, there? That’s clever—gives you a pinch grip, doesn’t it? Light but strong—”
Sage was the first person Fawn had yet met who, if not tongue-tied altogether by Dag’s maiming, asked about the arm harness and not the hand. Dag, she could see, was rather cheered by this, and the two fell into a discussion about the merits of Tripoint artificers that threatened to run on till everyone else fell over.
Fortunately, an older woman came out from the frame house bordering the yard, and called, “Is that you, Finch? Will you be wanting dinner?”
She proved to be Sage’s mama, Missus Smith, leading to a repeat of the introductions all around. She looked taken aback to be presented with five extra mouths to feed within an hour of the meal, and Dag instantly volunteered to take his share of the party down the street to the inn. This, however, she rejected indignantly, especially after learning about Sparrow.