“You don’t have to be.”
Remo chewed a bite of stew, swallowed. “Huh.”
–-
It seemed to Fawn that word of Dag’s new, or old, fame spread around New Moon Cutoff Camp at an unsettlingly fast clip. She supposed twenty-five gossiping patrollers dispersed to twenty-five tents added up, atop all the folks who’d met them both in the medicine tent by now.
Dag wasn’t just Arkady’s peculiar project anymore, but a man of, apparently, more than local fame. It made her wonder just what all else was in those ballads Neeta had been passing along-Fawn had only ever heard the one, back in Oleana, and it had named no names.
Dag hated it, she could tell. But as the longest-tempered man Fawn had ever met, he endured politely, mostly. Well, he did give pretty daunting shrift to the merely curious, unless it was a patient he was doing groundwork on, when he turned the questions more gently. Children got straight, if brief, answers out of him, but no one else could.
For the first time since they’d arrived, Dag began to get invitations to visit tents around the camp for something other than Arkady’s medicine walks. Any that didn’t include Fawn he refused bluntly. Any that did, he took pains to point out to the issuer that Fawn was confined to Arkady’s place and the medicine tent by camp council order.
Then came an invitation that could not be refused.
“Dinner at the camp captain’s tent?” Dag said in confusion that Fawn shared: New Moon patrol’s captain was a member of the council. “Both of us? ”
“All of us. Your patroller boys and me, as well,” Arkady told him. “I expect most of the camp council will be there.”
Dag blinked. “You think we should go? ”
“Of course you should go. This could be your chance.”
“Chance to do what? ”
Arkady paused. “Fit in better,” he said at last.
“I thought we were fittin’ in fairly good. For practical purposes.”
“Yes, well,” said Arkady vaguely.
They went.
It was a pig roast, all outside at the tent-house, really-of the camp captain, making it seem to Fawn quite like Hickory Lake for a change.
Captain Antan Bullrush and his maker wife were older folks, their children grown, but there was still a crowd for dinner: three tent-heads, all mature women who were council members this season; spouses and families and grandchildren; and, since one of the council women was aunt to Tavia, both partners. Neeta looked especially pleased. The cookout could almost have been a farmer clan picnic, with different women bringing their dishes to share. But when everyone was stuffed, and the children gone off to play along the lakeside, and lanterns hung in the trees, a more select group gathered on a circle of upturned stumps. And began to interrogate Dag.
They asked about Captain Dag Wolverine of the Wolf War. What they got told about was Captain Dag Bluefield of the Raintree malice outbreak, with a side order of Greenspring. The Wolf War was ruthlessly relegated to background, though it had to come in a little to help explain how Dag’s company had been able to go through the Raintree malice like, in Fawn’s informed view, a hot knife through butter. But if the alternate tale was meant to turn aside interest in Dag’s patrolcaptaining career, Fawn didn’t think it was working all that well.
Arkady chewed his thumb and said little, watching his protege getting turned on this spit, and sometimes spitting back. He studied the faces of the council quorum, and only winced now and then. It was plain that he wished Dag would take a more compromising tone. It was plain to Fawn that Dag wasn’t going to waste such a captive audience.
He sure didn’t sound like he had a mouth full of pebbles tonight.
At length, the circle broke up to seek desserts. And, judging from the bent heads, to exchange franker opinions privately.
Dag murmured to Arkady, “Any objection if Fawn and I slip away early? ”
Arkady pursed his lips. “No, in fact. That would be fine. I need to stay awhile and talk to some folks.”
Dag nodded. Fawn refused to go without thanking Missus Bullrush properly, but once that duty was done, she allowed him to lead her off.
They stopped by patrol headquarters to check on their horses, idling in the paddock there eating New Moon’s fodder since their arrival, then continued down the shore road in the darkening chill.
“So,” Fawn said hesitantly. “What was that all about? ”
Dag scratched his head gently with his hook. “I’m not just sure. We were being inspected, right enough. You’d think they could come to the medicine tent for that.”
“Do you think they’re deciding whether to let us stay for your two years? ”
“Maybe.” He chewed his lip. “Maybe more.”
“Dag Bluefield New Moon Cutoff? ” She shaped the name in her mouth. Camp names didn’t just tell your place of residence. If you bore one, it marked you a member of some greater whole, and even after the better part of a year trailing after Dag, Fawn didn’t know all the subtleties that implied. “Is that… something you would like? ”
“Strange,” he sighed. “At the end of last summer, that could have been the sum of my ambitions. It was exactly what I wanted from Hoharie. Train up as a medicine maker together with you, serve in camp. Let my tired feet rest from patrolling. But Hoharie choked on you, and that was the end of it. I think I’ve made it clear enough to these New Moon folks that we come as partners or not at all-they won’t make her mistake.”
“I wonder what mistake they will make? ”
He snorted. “Hard to say, Spark.” His strong, dry hand found hers, and her cold little fingers stole warmth from it gratefully. “I do know Arkady’s not keen on spending two years of his time training me up as a groundsetter just to have me go off north and treat farmers. If I-we- became members of this camp, we’d have to abide by camp rules and discipline.”
“We? ”
He sucked a fortifying breath through his nose. “Wouldn’t that be something to have done, though? For the first time ever, get a farmer girl accepted as a full-fledged member of a Lakewalker camp? ”
“Would they? ”
“I wouldn’t stay for less. I hope I made that plain.”
Fawn rather thought he had. Her brows scrunched. She felt rattled, and she suspected he did, too. This offer- if it got made-wasn’t anything she’d ever expected or planned on, but then, nothing about her life since she’d met Dag had been anything that she could have imagined back when she’d first fled West Blue. My whole life is an accident. But some of her accidents had been happy far beyond her dreams, and she had surely chosen to put herself in the way of both good and bad, when she’d first set foot to the road. Am I Dag’s greatest accident, too?
At Arkady’s place Dag lit a lantern against the cool gloom, smiled slowly, and observed, “Seems we have the house to ourselves.”
The gold glint in his eye wasn’t only from the lantern light. Fawn dimpled back. “That’s a nice change,” she said agreeably.
Dag had been reticent about offering lovemaking since the patroller boys had returned, only partly due to fatigue from his long training days and, now, occasional draining groundwork under Arkady’s supervision.
The partners laid their bedrolls in the main room, and there was a door to close between, but wooden walls did not much block groundsense.
Tonight Dag and Fawn had a brief gift of privacy, if they could seize it before the beer ran out at the pig roast. They took turns washing up quickly in the sink, then Dag carried the lantern to their end room.
Fawn unrolled their bedding, and helped Dag off with his shirt and arm harness. He returned the favor, folding down her blouse as though it were a flower’s petals; they stood facing on their knees, skin to skin, each leaning into the other for support and heat. They’d made love in many different moods, from merry to mournful; tonight, it seemed to Fawn, there was something almost desperate in Dag’s grip.
“Gods, Spark,” he muttered. “Help me remember who I am.”
She hugged him tight. He released his clutch in favor of a caress, long fingers gliding over her bare back,
