how.”
Dag’s smile deepened. “My tent-brother Whit, who I grant has a mouth on him that’s going to get his teeth busted one of these days, once said he didn’t know if I was robbin’ cradles or if Fawn was robbin’ graves. I think it was the second. I’d pretty much lain down in mine just waiting for someone to come along and throw the dirt in on top. Instead, she came along and yanked me out of it. I will say, sir, it was a lot more restful than what I’ve been doing since, but it was pinching narrow. I don’t hanker to go back in.”
Fawn’s heart lifted.
Arkady just shook his head. He turned toward the door, took two steps, then turned back. “Oh, Dag?” He held up both his hands.
Fawn saw it only by reflection, but well enough at that; Barr and Remo looked startled and impressed and Dag-Dag’s face lit right up.
Arkady has ghost hands, too!
“We’ll have to see what we can do about your little asymmetry problem, later,” said Arkady. “Among other things.” He jerked his chin at Remo. “Come along, patroller boy. I’ll show you where to take your horses.”
5
Dag’s apprenticeship began sooner than he or, he guessed, even Arkady expected. They were all at the table finishing breakfast from a basket sent to sustain the enlarged household-bread, plunkin, and hard-boiled eggs, with more tea-when after the briefest knock at the door, a breathless boy burst in and blurted, “Maker Arkady, sir! Maker Challa says to tell you they’re bringing in a hurt patroller, an’ if you would be pleased to step ’round.”
“Very well,” said Arkady calmly. “Tell her I’ll be right along.”
The boy nodded and departed as abruptly as he’d arrived.
Arkady swallowed his tea. Dag said uneasily, “Shouldn’t we go at once? ”
“If the patroller’s condition were that dire, I doubt he’d have lived to arrive,” said Arkady. “You have time to finish your drink.” He set down his mug, rose without haste, and added, “For the real emergencies, Challa rings a big bell she has up on a post in front of the medicine tent. Two rings and three. All the makers’ tents are within earshot, one direction or another. Then, we run.”
Now, evidently, they strolled. Dag gave Fawn a hug good-bye, nodded thanks at her whisper of “Good luck!,” shrugged on his jacket, and followed Arkady out. The morning was not young; weary from their thirty-mile trudge, Barr, Remo, and Fawn had all slept in, although even so they were up before their host. Dag had wakened at first light, with all of the uncertainties that had chased one another around in his head last night ready for more laps.
After taking Remo to settle the horses yesterday afternoon, Arkady, evidently deciding that Dag cleaned up well enough to be displayed, had escorted him to the medicine tent for introductions. To his surprise, Dag had learned that Arkady was not New Moon Cutoff’s chief medicine maker; that post was held by a much older woman, saggy, baggy, and cheerful. Maker Challa had eyed Dag shrewdly and shown him around her domain, introducing him in turn to the herb-lore master and his two apprentices, and to her own partner, a woman more nearly Dag’s age. They didn’t ask Dag as many questions as he’d feared; it was plain that Arkady had discussed his odd stray with them already. Provisionally accepted. But just what were the provisions?
A five-minute walk along the shore road brought the medicine tent within sight. It was a rambling gray structure like Arkady’s house, and not much larger. At the railing out front was a rig Dag recognized from patrol procedure, two saddled horses fore and aft of a makeshift litter of cut sapling poles. Challa and a lean, brown- haired patroller were just lifting a more heavily built, gray-haired patroller to his feet, drawing his arms over their shoulders and aiming him inside. At every step, the older patroller mumbled, “Ow. Ow. Ow…”
“Well, Tapp,” said Arkady with callous cheerfulness as they came up even with the group. “And what have you done to yourself? ”
“Nothing, blight it!” snapped the gray-haired man, whose plait was coming undone. “All I did was fling my saddlebags up on my horse, just like I’ve done ten thousand times before. I swear! A fellow’s insides shouldn’t come popping out just from saddling his blighted horse.
Ow. Ow!”
Arkady opened the door for them. The lean patroller bent to undo his partner’s boots, then maneuvered him through the first room, crammed with shelves devoted to records, into a bright chamber with glass windows overlooking the lake. All four of them helped lift the hurting man onto the narrow bed at table height that stood out in the center of the room. Tapp was clammy and gasping with pain, but he still eyed Dag, and his left arm, curiously.
Arkady and Tapp’s partner between them shucked him out of his trousers, and Challa briskly rolled down his drawers to groin level, raised her white eyebrows, and pointed at a reddened bulge at the side of his abdomen.
“Yep,” said Arkady. “Come over here, Dag, and tell me what you sense.”
Tapp watched Dag uneasily. “Who the blight is he? ”
“Clean up your mouth, Tapp,” chided Challa.
“If a fellow can’t swear at a time like this, when can he? ” Tapp complained.
“Not in my tent,” said Challa firmly.
Tapp snorted, then winced. “Yes, ma’am, Maker-ma’am.” His wandering gaze returned to Dag. “Aren’t you a patroller? ” he asked querulously.
“Not one of ours. Courier? ”
“I was, once,” said Dag. “Now, um…”
Arkady waited with cool interest to see how Dag would explain himself.
“You know how we exchange young patrollers to other camps in the hope that someone else will have better luck knocking sense into them? ” said Dag.
“Yes? ” said Tapp.
“You can think of me as an exchange maker. On trial.” Dag cleared his throat and added, “It’s only my first day, see.”
“Arkady, Challa, no!” cried Tapp. “You always turn your hamhanded novices loose on me…!”
Arkady grinned. “Calm yourself, Tapp. Dag here’s just observing.”
He lifted a suddenly sharp coppery gaze to Dag. “And what do you observe?”
Dag cupped his right hand above the bulge and, reluctantly, opened himself. “His sudden move lifting his bags likely split open a weak place in his belly muscles, and a piece of his gut has worked through, and has got itself twisted around pretty bad. It’s all hot and swollen, which doesn’t help a thing. I’d guess he tried to tough it out too bli-”-Dag glanced at Challa, watching him as closely as Arkady-“too long-I don’t need a litter, I can ride-”
The partner barked a laugh. “The very words!” Tapp glared at him.
“And made it worse getting here,” Dag went on. “How far out was your patrol? ”
“A two-day ride,” the partner said. “We were up northwest almost to the banks of the Gray.”
“Sometime on the ride his gut got knotted back on itself like this, and the hole swelled tight, and now he’s in a bad way and no mistake. I’m thinking he’s lucky it wasn’t a three-day ride.”
Arkady tilted his head in reluctant respect. “Very good. And what would you do about it? ”
Dag said cautiously, “I knew a fellow up in… a place I once patrolled, had something like this. The makers stuffed his gut back inside somehow, persuaded the hole shut, and put him on camp rest till it finished healing. I don’t rightly know how the gut-stuffing part was done.”
“If there’s no torsion, and the rip in the muscle sheet is large enough, you can actually do it pressing with your fingers,” said Arkady.
“I did it that way five times on the way here,” Tapp complained, “but my gut kept falling out again, till it all swelled shut.”
Challa winced.
Arkady sighed. “And I suppose you insisted you could eat, too? ”
“Not after the first day,” Tapp said in a smaller voice.
