safe. The safety, not the coverlet, was the true source of her comfort, she realized. And the comfort of all the folks with them, too, so nearly lost to one another, sleeping close in blanketed lumps around the fire tonight for more than warmth. She cuddled in harder and, for all her hurts and wobbling thoughts, slept.
23
Dag woke in gray light to the sort of drowned lethargy that generally followed great struggles. Yeah, I’ve been here before. He wasn’t so weary that he didn’t reach out to reassure himself that Fawn was still in their bedroll, warm and asleep under his hand as she should be. His hazy mind shuddered over all the might-have-beens that he’d forbidden her to dwell on last night, and it struck him anew how very little interest he had in saving a world that didn’t have her in it.
Well, and Berry and Whit and the rest of Tent Bluefield. And their friends, and they needed their neighbors, he supposed, and the tangle widened ever outward and he was back to where he’d started.
Maybe a fellow didn’t have to love the whole world-Grouse’s voice, raised in complaint about something across the clearing, grated on his ear-maybe just one short heartening person would do. Dag stared up through new beech leaves at the pale blue sky. It would be a clear, warm day once the valley mist burned off.
Fawn stirred and sat up, looking dauntingly perky, all things considered.
After supporting his hobble to the woods to take care of the morning necessities, she parked him back on the blanket with his purple foot prominently displayed, which served admirably to fend off any other demands upon him. Was it malingering, when you really couldn’t hardly stand up? He was in any case content to lie low behind this excuse and watch the others deal with the day.
A couple of stray muleteers had arrived in the night, and a few more came with the dawn, with yet more recovered mules in tow. One beast, unfortunately, had another body draped over it. In addition to the muleteers, the camp included a trio of trappers who had been captured by the malice while taking their furs south to Mutton Hash, and another family of five grown siblings and their mama who’d been snatched while heading north for homesteading. They all assembled to pay what brief respects could be devised. The gaping maw in the earth that Fawn had escaped was filled after all, which made her sober all over again.
Dag was glad for the delay when Neeta rode into the clearing, guiding a half patrol from Laurel Gap detailed to bring Pakko down off the ridge. Her shock at finding Fawn afoot was swiftly cloaked by her closing ground. She looked almost more taken aback to find Dag.
“I thought you’d still be up on the mountain with Arkady! I brought extra fellows to help carry you!”
“I came down on my own. Copperhead did the rest.” I’ll deal with you later. He couldn’t do it now, so soon after yesterday; he was too exhausted, and didn’t trust himself. At the very least, he wanted Sumac with him, for all sorts of good reasons including a check on his wits.
But the uproar that ensued when the dozen Lakewakers trailing Neeta discovered just who had taken down the fearsome flying malice that had scattered three of their patrols across the upper valley, and how, was sufficient diversion.
Dag hardly had to open his mouth. Twenty-five farmer eyewitnesses plus Fawn, Berry, and Whit were couriers enough to carry the tale.
Everyone was led around to marvel at the tattered wings, handle the walnut necklaces, see and touch the pieces of the spent sharing bolt- collected by Berry and preserved in a cloth-and be marched through all the steps of the dawn ambush, Whit brandishing his crossbow and acting it out. Dag, limping after with his stick, had to allow that farmers and Lakewalkers were sure talking to one another now. And, better still, listening.
A field medicine maker traveling with the patrol cornered Dag back on his blanket, intent on the walnut necklaces. While Dag wasn’t quite up to a live demonstration, the young maker did seem to follow his descriptions, and promised to carry them back to her camp medicine and knife makers. She was excited about unbeguilement, too. Dag attempted to show her, and at the same time relieve one of his worries, by having her put a general reinforcement against infection into Fawn’s shoulder, but the maker was so open to the farmer heroine of the hour that she didn’t leave a beguilement for Dag to clear. He considered, grimly, having Neeta work an example, but… no.
“You can pass the word amongst your makers,” he told the young woman. “Anyone who wants to learn how to unbeguile or make these shields can find me and Maker Waterbirch at Berry Bluefield’s place just outside Clearcreek, up on the Grace River. We’ll take all comers. We haven’t quite worked all the kinks out of the groundwork yet, mind… could be a few more folks chewing on the problem is just what it needs.”
In all, it was noon before the Laurel Gap patrollers cantered off again, with many backward glances, and an hour after that till Dag’s own party assembled itself for the long walk back to their wagons. Dag rode Copperhead with Owlet chirping on his lap, Fawn clinging behind, though after a time she climbed down and put Plum up instead, relieving Ash from playing pack pony. It was still light out when their straggling company arrived to find Indigo in calm possession of their abandoned goods, firewood collected and tea water on the boil, with a couple of the mules and his riding horse rounded up already.
Whit led two of the boys and one of the mules off to collect Rase and Barr out of their hidey-hole. Arriving back, they laid out Barr on the blanket next to Dag, where, Dag had to admit, Barr’s busted leg far outshone his bent ankle. The groundwork Arkady had done on the break made Dag whistle.
They’d not finished dinner when the Laurel Gap patrol came in leading their mounts, six men hand-carrying Pakko on a rigid litter, Arkady supervising. Calla ran crying and laughing for Sage and her brother, and they exchanged heartfelt hugs. Tavia strolled after, looking tired. With darkness descending, the patrollers made camp for the night beside the farmers, and there followed much swapping and repeating of tales all round. Arkady made an admirably authoritative lecturer. Dag, thinking about the fad for wash-pan hats and cook-pot helmets along the upper Grace, not to mention his unwanted new reputation for raising the dead, had no illusions about how their story would twist as it spread, but at least it would start straight.
–-
Arkady wanted to keep Pakko under his eye a little longer, so the next day was welcomed as one of rest by the Laurel Gap patrollers, who were exhausted from their own strains. Their breathless tales of the fight at the north end of the valley, with their rising realization that a routine patrol had become an emergency, then a looming disaster, felt all too recognizable to Dag. Calla and Fawn helped Arkady with caring for Pakko, whose fellow patrollers in turn helped the farmers find their scattered animals, so that all the surviving beasts were retrieved by nightfall in fine fettle from their bout of freedom.
The wait proved a benefit, for the next morning, while Arkady, the patrol leader, and the patrol medicine maker were still debating rival merits of a hand versus a horse litter for transporting a spinal fracture, Sumac and Remo arrived. They rode strange horses, and two new patrollers accompanied them.
Sumac and Arkady more or less flung themselves at each other, which raised a few eyebrows from those who’d only seen Arkady in his austere mood. Dag grinned. One of the young patrollers turned out to be Pakko’s son.
“The day after the malice scattered us, me ’n Remo hadn’t made but fifteen miles cross-country,” Sumac explained, “all frantic and footsore. We’d just found the patrol trail over the next ridge west when we ran into reinforcements on their way from Laurel Gap. So getting the word out was already a done deal, which if I’d have known… well. Anyway, we joined up with them and circled back into this valley. When we caught up with the patrols north of here, news was spreading that the malice was brought down, which we could tell from the dying mud-bats we found. Pakko’s son had been in the first relief patrol, and was pretty distraught at the tales of his papa being carried off like you were, Dag. Then the word came, which I guess Neeta brought, that his papa had been found hurt. So we volunteered to guide him here in exchange for a ride, which speeded things up considerably.” She and Arkady exchanged rather loopy smirks. Well earned, in Dag’s opinion.
The horse Remo rode was Pakko’s, recovered along with all his gear. His bonded sharing knife was indeed still in his saddlebags, but, the son confided later to Dag, he wasn’t going to let his papa have it till his mama said so. Dag and the medicine maker-and Pakko- had enjoyed, or endured, a number of practical lectures yesterday from Arkady on the subject of nerve damage, which even Dag took as guarded hope for the man’s walking again; he rather thought Pakko might well be a great-grandpapa before that meeting with his bone blade took place.
