Horizon

  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 mealy-mouthed. “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 p
atroller 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 to 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.”

  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.”