supplies in order-Sage asked his sweetheart to marry him and come along-we were all to start this past week, but then Sparrow got sick, and I was all distracted. I was to take the brown mare and two pack mules for my due- share, and my supplies and tools.”
Papa Bridger and Lark nodded.
“Sage has a wagon, so they’ll be going slower than a pack train. I figured to catch up when… well, I figured to leave one way or another.”
If Sparrow had died, Finch had meant to flee the farm in shame, he meant. Fawn nodded understanding. Mama Bridger sighed.
“I’m glad”-Finch glanced at Dag, took a deep breath-“that it’s not going to be like that. But I still want to catch up with Sage and the boys. What I wondered was-have you ever been on the Trace, sir? ”
Dag’s brows flicked up. “I’ve never walked it end to end all at one time. I’ve ridden or walked most sections.”
“I’ve never been north of Alligator Hat,” Finch said.
The nearest village-some fifteen miles up the Trace, Fawn had learned, charmed by the name. She’d wondered if they in fact sold alligator hats there.
“But you, sir,” Finch went on, “if you were meaning to go home after all-if you threw in with us now-you might be a sort of guide. Mightn’t you? ” He looked anxiously at Fawn.
“Of a sort,” said Dag. He, too, looked at Fawn, question in his eyes.
“I’m not the medicine maker I meant to be, yet.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip. “Before, you’d half a mind to jump into this with no training but patrol medicine.”
“Before, I was a blighted fool. A menace.”
“A mighty lucky menace, if so. And it’s not like you grew more ignorant, for our two months with Arkady.”
“It sure feels like it. Arkady opened my eyes to a whole new realm. It’s been right humbling. Maker Vayve, too-I thought I knew all about knife making from watching Dar, but Vayve’s style was quite a bit different. Between ’em, I feel like someone took my skull and shook it like a bottle of cider, and the cork’s about to pop out.”
“You don’t have to be the best medicine maker in seven hinterlands.”
Although she suspected Arkady might be. “Yeah, Arkady sets a high bar, though I wonder if some of that isn’t your mama’s voice in the back of your head. She does make you crazy, you know that, Dag. But all you really have to do is be better than what folks have now. And be there.”
Dag shook his head gloomily.
“Maybe you can find another medicine maker up in Oleana who’ll take you up on your terms. Arkady can’t be the only good teacher.”
The gloom lightened slightly. “Point, Spark.” He scrubbed his hair, studied her. “You want to go home.”
Truly, if they were going north this year, it needed to be soon. Early pregnancy was no picnic-she remembered the sickness and minddraining fatigue-but late pregnancy would be even worse for travel.
Hers, anyhow. Yeah, we need to go before I get too round to move. Dag was endearingly nervous for her health during, a concern she treasured after the frightening isolation of her first experience, but she was more nervous for what would come after. She had never been much for other people’s babies, though she’d always expected to quite like her own. Still… just how scary was it to be handed a baby you couldn’t hand back?
She didn’t need a substitute kinswoman; she had a real one now in Berry Bluefield. Best thing Whit ever did for me. If Fawn was going to end up having a baby in someone else’s house, she wanted it to be Berry’s place in Clearcreek.
Useless to try to lie to a man with groundsense, but she at least managed, “I want what you need.”
A crooked smile. “I think I need to go home, too. We need.” We-three, not we-two; she heard that, and had to smile back. Dag straightened. “Go home and get started. Arkady’s wrong about one thing; it does make a difference where you put your hand on the lever. But we’re not going anywhere without our horses. We’ll have to see what Barr and Remo- or Barr, leastways-brings us.”
–-
Barr brought Arkady.
Also Copperhead, Magpie, and two heavily loaded packhorses. Dag, strolling out onto the porch when he sensed them, stared openmouthed at the train. Barr was riding Copperhead himself, but trailed a strange horse bearing an empty saddle and his bags. Dag looked in vain for Remo, and his heart sank at that absence.
It had been two days since Captain Bullrush’s decree of expulsion.
Dag hadn’t expected Barr back before yesterday noon at the earliest. A hundred things might have delayed him, most hopefully some Barrish persuasion to reverse Antan’s ruling. The longer Dag had waited, the more his hopes had risen. But Barr surely wouldn’t have packed all that gear just for a quick return to New Moon, and for pity’s sake how had he obtained all those horses?
“What’s all this?” Dag asked, bemusedly returning Barr’s wave of greeting.
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 riderumpled 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
