Dag tracked Fairbolt down at last at the end of a string of several campsites devoted to the extensive Crow clan on the western side of the island. Fairbolt took one look at his face and led him away from the noisy group of tents, crowded with his and Massape’s children and grandchildren, and down to the dock. They sat cross-legged on the boards. Fairbolt’s leathery skin was turned to blood-copper by the sunset light, which painted the silky wavelets lapping the shore purple and gleaming orange; his eyes were dark and unrevealing.
Dag drummed his fingers on the wood, and began, “I spoke with Dar a bit ago. Or rather, he spoke to me. He’s threatening to go to the camp council. What he thinks they can do, I can’t imagine. They can’t force a string-cutting.” He faltered. “He speaks of banishment.”
Fairbolt scarcely reacted. Dag continued, “You’re on the council. Has he talked to you?”
“Yes, some. I told him that was a bad plan. Though I suppose there could be worse ones.”
Dag braced himself. “What are folks saying, behind my back?”
Fairbolt hesitated, whether embarrassed to repeat the gossip or just organizing his speech Dag wasn’t sure. Perhaps the latter, for when he did begin, it was blunt enough. “Massape says some are cruelly amused to see Cumbia’s pride crack.”
“Idle talk,” said Dag.
“Maybe. I’d discount that whole line, except the more they make your mother squirm, the more she leans on Dar.”
“Ah. And are there other lines? Naming no names.”
“Several.” Fairbolt shrugged in a what-would-you? gesture. “You want a list? Naming no names.”
“Yes. Well, no, but…yes.”
Fairbolt drew breath. “To start, anyone who’s ever been part of a patrol that came to grief relying on farmer aid. Or who endured ingratitude rescuing farmers whose panic resulted in unnecessary patroller injuries or deaths.”
Dag tilted his head, half-conceding, half-resisting. “Farmers are untrained. The answer is to train them, not to scorn them.”
Fairbolt passed on this with a quirk of his lips and continued, ticking off his fingers, “Anyone who has ever had a relative or friend harassed or ambushed and beaten or killed by farmers over misguided fears about Lakewalker sorcery.”
“If we kept less to ourselves, there wouldn’t be such misunderstandings. Folks would know better.”
Fairbolt ignored this, too. “More closely still, any patroller or ex-patroller who has ever been made to give up a farmer lover themselves. Some pretty bitter anger, there. A few wish you well, but more wonder how you’re getting away with it. Those who have had the ugly job of enforcing the rules aren’t best pleased with you, either. These people have made real sacrifices, and feel justifiably betrayed.”
Dag rubbed his fingers gently back and forth along the wood grain, polished smooth by the passage of many feet. “Fawn slew a malice. She shared a death. She’s…different.”
“I know you think so. Thing is, everyone thinks their own situation was special, too. Which it was, to them. If the rules aren’t for everyone, a system for finishing arguments turns into a morass of argument that never ends. And we don’t have the time.”
Dag looked away from Fairbolt’s stern gaze and into the orange disk of the sun, now being gnawed by the black-silhouetted trees across the lake. “I don’t know what Dar imagines he can make me do. I made an oath in my ground.”
“Aye,” said Fairbolt dryly, “in conflict with your prior duty and known responsibilities. You sure did. I swear you look like a man trying to stunt-ride two horses, standing with one foot on the back of each. Fine if he can keep ’em together, but if they gallop up two separate paths, he has to choose, fall, or be torn apart.”
“I meant—mean—to keep my duties yoked. If I can.”
“And if you can’t? Where will you fall?”
Dag shook his head.
Fairbolt frowned at the shimmering water, gone luminous in the twilight to match the sky. A few last swallows swooped and wheeled, then made away for their nests. “The rules issue cuts another way. If it’s seen that even so notable a patroller as Dag Redwing can’t evade discipline, it makes it that much easier to block the next besotted idiot.”
“Am I notable?”
Fairbolt cast him a peculiar look. “Yes.”
“Dag Bluefield,” Dag corrected belatedly.
“Mm.”
Dag sighed and shifted to another tack. “You know the council. Will they cooperate with Dar? How much has he put to them privately already? Was his talk today a first probing threat, or my final chance?”
Fairbolt shrugged. “I know he’s been talking to folks. How fast would you think he’ll move?”
Dag shook his head once more. “He hates disputes. Hates getting his knife-work interrupted. It takes all his concentration, I know. By choice, I don’t think he’d involve himself at all, but if he has to, he’ll try to get it all over with as quickly as possible. So he can get back to work. He’ll be furious—not so much with me, but about that. He’ll push.”
“I read him that way as well.”
“Has he spoken to you? Fairbolt, don’t let me get blindsided, here.”
This won another fishy look. “And would you have me repeat my confidential talks with you to him?”
“Um.” Dag trusted the fading light concealed his flush. He leaned his back, which was beginning to ache, against a dock post. “Another question, then. Is anyone but Dar like to try to bring this to a head?”
“Formally, with the council? I can think of a few. They’ll leave it to your family if they can, but if the Redwing clan fails in its task, they might be moved to step forward.”
“So even if I smooth down Dar, it won’t be over. Another challenge and another will pop up. Like malices.”
Fairbolt raised his eyebrows at this comparison, but said nothing.
Dag continued slowly, “That suggests the road to go down is to settle it, publicly and soon. Once the council has ruled, the same charge can’t be brought again. Stop ’em all.” One way or another. He grimaced in distaste.
“You and your brother are more alike than you seem,” said Fairbolt, turning wry.
“Dar doesn’t think so,” Dag said shortly. He added after a thoughtful pause, “He hasn’t been out in the world as much as I have. I wonder if banishment seems a more frightening fate to him?”
Fairbolt rubbed his lips. “How’s the arm?”
“Much better.” Dag flexed his hand. “Splints have been off near a week. Hoharie says I can start weapons practice again.”
Fairbolt leaned back. “I’m planning to send Mari’s patrol back out soon. A lot of time lost at Glassforge to make up, plus her patrol isn’t the only one that’s run late this season. When will you be ready to ride again?”
Dag shifted, unfolding his legs to disguise his unease. “Actually, I was thinking of taking some of my unused camp time, till Fawn’s more settled in.”
“So when will that be? Leaving aside the matter of the council.”
Dag shrugged. “For her part alone, not long. I don’t think there’s a camp task she can’t do, if she’s properly taught. I have no doubt in her.” His hesitation this time stretched out uncomfortably. “I have doubt in us.”
“Oh?”
He said quietly, “Betrayal cuts two ways as well, Fairbolt. Sure, when you go out on patrol you worry for your family in camp—sickness, the accidents of daily life, maybe even a malice attack—there’s a residue of danger, but not, not…untrust. But once you start to wonder, it spreads like a stain. Who can I trust to stand by my wife in her need, and who will fold and leave her to take the brunt alone? My mother, my brother? Clearly not. Cattagus, Sarri? Cattagus is weak and ill, and Sarri has her own troubles. You?” He stared hard at Fairbolt.
To Fairbolt’s credit, he did not drop his gaze. “I suppose the only way you’ll find out is to test it.”
“Yeah, but it won’t exactly be a test of Fawn, now, will it.”
“You’ll have to sooner or later. Unless you mean to quit the patrol.” The look that went with this remark reminded Dag of Hoharie’s surgical knives.
Dag sighed. “There’s soon and there’s too soon. You can cripple a young horse, which would have done fine with another year to let its bones grow into themselves, by loading it too soon. Young patrollers, too.” And young wives?
Fairbolt, after a long pause, gave a nod at this. “So when is not-too-soon, Dag? I need to know where I can put your peg. And when.”
“You do,” Dag conceded. “Can you give me a bit more time to answer? Because I don’t think I can leave the council aside.”
Fairbolt nodded again.
“Mind, I can only answer for myself and Fawn. I don’t control the acts of anyone else.”
“You can persuade,” said Fairbolt. “You can shape. You can, dare I suggest, not be a stubborn fool.”
Too late for that. This man, Dag was reminded, had six hundred other patrollers to track. Enough for tonight. The frogs were starting their serenade, the mosquitoes were out in companies, and the fat double-winged dragonflies darting over the lake were giving way to the night patrol of flitting bats. He levered himself to his feet, bade Fairbolt a polite good evening, and walked into the gathering dark.
8
T hey were making ready to lie down in their bedroll before Dag reported his conversations with his brother and Fairbolt to Fawn. From the brevity of his descriptions, compared to the time he’d been gone, Fawn suspected he was leaving a good bit out; more than these clipped essentials had cast him into his dark mood. Brothers can do that. But his explanation of the camp council was frightening enough.
In the light of their candle stub atop Dag’s trunk, which did for their bedside table, Fawn sat cross-legged, and said, “Seven people can just vote you—us—to be banished? Just like that?”
“Not quite. They have to sit and hear arguments from both sides. And they’ll each speak with other folks around their islands, gather opinions, before delivering a ruling of this…this gravity.”
“Huh.” She frowned. “Somehow I thought your people not liking me being here would take the form of…I don’t know. Leaving dead rotten animals outside our door to step on in the morning, nasty tricks like that. Fellows in masks setting fire to our tent, or sneaking from the bushes and beating you up, or shaving my head, or something.”
Dag raised quizzical brows. “Is that the form it would take in farmer country?”
“Sometimes.” Sometimes worse, from tales she’d heard.
“A mask won’t hide who you are from groundsense. Anyone wants to do something that ugly around here, they sure can’t do it in secret.”
“That would slow ’em up some, I guess,” allowed Fawn.
“Yes, and…this isn’t a matter for boys’ tricks. Our marriage cords, if nothing else, draw it up to another level altogether. Serious dilemmas take serious thought from serious folks.”
“Shouldn’t we be making a push to talk to those serious folks, too? Dar shouldn’t have it all his own way, seems to me.”
“Yes—no…blight Dar,” he added, in a burst of aggravation. “This shoves me into exactly the worst actions to ease you in here smoothly. Drawing attention, forcing folks to choose sides. I wanted to lie low, and while everyone was waiting for someone else to do something, let the time for choosing just slip on by. I figured a year would do it.”
Fawn blinked in astonishment at his timetable. Perhaps a year didn’t seem like such a long time to him? “This isn’t exactly your favorite sort of arguin’, is it?”
He snorted. “Not hardly. It’s the wrong thing at the wrong time, and…and I’m not very smooth at it, anyway. Fairbolt is. Twenty minutes talking with him, and your head’s turned around. Good camp captain. But he’s made it clear this is my own bed to lie in.” He added in a lower voice, “And I hate begging for favors. Figured I used up a life’s supply long before this.” A slight thump of his left arm on the bedroll indicated what favors he was thinking of, which made Fawn huff in turn. Whatever special treatment had won him his arm harness and let him back on patrol must, it seemed to her, have been paid back in full a good long time ago.
Nevertheless, Dag began the next morning to show their presence more openly by taking Fawn out in the narrow boat for plunkin delivery duty. The first step was to paddle out to a gathering raft, which over the season had worked its way nearly to the end of their arm of the lake and would shortly start back up the other side. A dozen Lakewalkers of various ages, sexes, and states of undress manned the ten-foot-square lashing of tree trunks, which seemed to be munching its way down a long stretch of water lilies. This variety had big, almost leathery leaves that stuck up out of the water like curled fans, and small, simple, unappealing yellow flowers, which also stood up on stalks. The crew worked steadily to dig, then trim and separate the stems, roots, and ears, and then replant. Churned-up mud and plant bits left a messy trail in the raft’s inching wake.
Dag saluted an older woman who seemed to be in charge. A couple of naked boys rolled a load of plunkins into the narrow boat that made it ride alarmingly low in the water, and after polite farewells, Dag and Fawn paddled off again, a good bit more sluggishly. Fawn was intensely conscious of the stares following them.
Delivery consisted of coasting along the lakeshore, pulling up to each campsite in turn, and tossing plunkins into big baskets affixed to the ends of their docks, which at least showed Fawn where their daily plunkins had been coming from all this time. She hated the way the boat wobbled as she scrambled around at this task, and was terrified of dropping a plunkin overboard and having to go after it, especially in water over her head, but at length they’d emptied their boat out again. And then went back for another load and did it all over again, twice.
Dag waved or called a how de’ to folks in other boats or along the shore, seemingly the custom here, and exchanged short greetings with anyone working on the docks as their boat pulled up, introducing Fawn to enough new folks that she quickly lost track of the names. No one was spiteful, though some looked bemused; but few of the return stares or greetings seemed really warm to her. After a while she thought she would have preferred rude, or at least blunt, questions to this silent appraisal. But the little ordeal came to an end at noon, when they climbed wearily back up the bank to Tent Bluefield. Where lunch, Fawn reflected glumly, would be plunkin.
They repeated the exercise on the next four mornings, until the raft-folk and dock-folk stopped looking at them in surprise. In the afternoons, Fawn began to help Sarri with the task of spinning up her new plunkin flax, and, for more novelty, aid Cattagus with his rope-braiding, one of his several sitting-down camp chores that did not strain his laboring lungs. His breathing, he explained between wheezes, was permanent damage left from a bad bout of lung fever a few years back that had nearly led him to share, and had forced him finally to give up patrolling and grow, he claimed, fat.
Fawn found she liked working with Cattagus more than with any other of the campsite’s denizens. Sarri was stiff and wary, or distracted by her children, and Mari wryly dubious, but Cattagus seemed to regard Dag’s farmer girl with grim amusement. It was daunting to reflect that his detachment might stem from how close he stood to death—Mari, for one, was very worried about leaving him come bad weather—but Fawn finally decided that he’d likely always had a rude sense of humor. Further, though not as patient a teacher as Dag, he was nearly as willing, introducing her to the mysteries of arrow-making. He produced arrows not only for his patroller wife, but for Razi and Utau as well. It was very much a two-handed chore; Dar, it seemed, had used to make Dag’s for him, in his spare time. It didn’t need, nor did Cattagus make, any comment that Dag now needed a new source. Fawn found in herself a knack for balance and a sure and steady hand at fletching, and shortly grew conversant with the advantages and disadvantages of turkey, hawk, and crow quills.
Dag trudged off several times to, as he said, scout the territory, returni
ng looking variously worried, pleased, or head-down furious. Fawn and Cattagus were sitting beneath a walnut tree having a fletching session when he stalked back from one of the latter sort, ducked into the tent without a word, returned with his bow and quiver, grabbed a plunkin from the basket by the tent flap, and set it up on a stump in the walnut grove. Within fifteen minutes he had reduced the plunkin to something resembling a porcupine smashed by a boulder and was breathing almost steadily again as he tried to unwedge his deeply buried near misses from the tree behind the stump. There were no wider misses to retrieve from the grove beyond.
“That one sure ain’t gettin’ away,” Cattagus observed, with a nod at the remains of the plunkin. “Anybody I know?”
Dag, treading over to them, smiled a bit sheepishly. “Doesn’t matter now.” He sat down with a sigh, unlatched and set aside his short bow, then picked up one of the new arrows and examined it with a judicious eye. “Better and better, Spark.”
She decided this was deliberate diversion. “You know, you keep saying I shouldn’t come with you so’s folks’ll talk frank and free, but it seems to me you might get further with some if they were to talk a little less frank and free.”
“That’s a point,” he conceded. “Maybe tomorrow.”
But the next morning ended up being dedicated to some overdue weapons practice, with an eye to the fact that Mari’s patrol would be going out again soon. Saun turned up, invited by Razi and Utau, and Fawn grew conscious for the first time of how few visitors had come to the campsite. If she and Dag were indeed a wonder of the lake, she would have thought curiosity, if not friendliness, should have brought a steady stream of neighbors making excuses to get a peek at her. She wasn’t sure how to interpret their absence: politeness, or shunning? But Saun was as nice to her as ever.
The session began with archery, and Fawn, fascinated, made herself useful trotting into the walnut grove after misses, or tossing plunkin rinds up into the air for moving targets. Her arrows seemed to work as well as her mentor’s, she saw with satisfaction. Cattagus sat on a stump and appraised the archers’ skills as freely as his breathlessness would allow. Saun was inclined to be daunted by him, but Mari gave him back as good as she got; Dag just smiled. The five patrollers moved on to blade practice with wooden knives and swords. Mari was clever and fast, but outmatched in strength and endurance, not a surprise in a woman of seventy-five, and soon promoted herself to a seat beside Cattagus to shrewdly critique the others.