Passage tsk-3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Did Tanner mean for their sakes, or for Hod’s? It was hard to tell.

  Truly, when they all stopped for lunch and to water and bait the horses, it seemed to Fawn that the lanky youth had little going for him. Hod’s dishwater hair was dull and limp and in need of a cut, his skin was bad, his teeth doubtful, and he moved in a habitual slouch. He was inarticulate to the point of muteness; her couple of attempts to say a friendly word to him threw him into complete confusion. He seemed outright afraid of Dag, and went wide around him. Fawn wasn’t even sure if Hod was his real name.

  Whit was taken aback when he made the discovery that grub was not provided for the drivers and loaders, but that they were expected to bring their own, a little detail of planning that had evidently escaped his notice—and Fawn’s too, in the morning’s hustle. Dag let them both flounder and recriminate for a bit before blandly fetching the provisions from his saddlebags that he’d had Sal pack up while he was shaving. He wasn’t too dry about it, but he did wait and make Whit ask, humbly, for a share before portioning it out. Just enough of a dig, Fawn thought, to make certain that neither of them were like to make a similar mistake again.

  Dag enjoyed watching Fawn and Whit take in the scenes south of Glassforge, on a road new to them both, if old to Dag. He hadn’t ridden this particular stretch for several years, though. Whit kept asking if the craggy little hills cloaked in color that now rose on both sides of them were mountains yet, and Dag had to keep disillusioning him. Although Dag’s personal definition of a mountain was anything high enough to kill you if you fell off it, and thus covered any precipice from ten to a thousand feet high, so he supposed these rucked-up slopes aspired to the name. The land grew less settled as it pinched more sharply, and the hamlets clinging to the straight road fell farther apart.

  Darkness overtook them several miles short of the village that was the teamsters’ usual stopping point on this route, a mishap that the one called Mape blamed, grumblingly, on their late start, but which the more tolerant Tanner chalked up to the shortening of the daylight. Everyone pulled out their dinner packets and drank from the roadside spring that had prompted the halt while the two men debated whether to rest the horses and continue on slowly—more slowly—by lantern light, or stop here and sleep under the wagons. No rain threatened, but the chill creeping from the hollows pushed consensus toward the lantern scheme; Whit blithely volunteered Dag to ride ahead with a lantern suspended from his hook, a suggestion that made Fawn grimace. The prospect of combining a burning and maybe drippy oil lantern with a cranky Copperhead, tired and bored from the day’s plod, made Dag say merely, “I’ll think about it.”

  Dag walked around the spring, stretched his back, and sat down against a buckeye tree, extending both his legs and his groundsense. He’d kept closed all day in the presence of strangers and their chaotic farmer grounds. His reach was out to two hundred paces tonight, maybe? He still felt half-blinded. After pulling off Copper’s bridle and loosening the girth, Dag had turned him loose to browse under light ground contact. In the deepening shadows, Dag could better hear the ripping and munching than see with his eyes, but in his groundsense the gelding was an old familiar brightness, almost brighter than the boy Hod. Hod had gone to relieve himself up in the bushes and was now circling back. Keeping to the shadows, easing up toward Copperhead…

  Dag came alert, though he did not open his eyes. Was the dimwitted boy contemplating a little attempted filching? Dag considered his responsibilities. Hod was no young patroller of Dag’s; still, if the boy was to learn a sharp lesson not to go riffling in a Lakewalker’s saddlebags, it might be better all around to be sooner than later, with Dag and not with another. It would doubtless be an embarrassing scene, but it might save Hod much worse later on. Dag withdrew his ground contact from Copperhead and settled back to let nature take its course.

  Dag was expecting Copperhead’s angry squeal, head-snake, and cow-kick. He wasn’t expecting the ugly thunk or a scream of pain so loud, sharp, and prolonged. Blight it, what—? He yanked his ground-sense wide, then recoiled as the hot flush of injury swamped back in on him. Drawing breath, he wallowed to his feet.

  The two teamsters pelted past him, with Whit on their heels crying warning for them to swing wide around the horse, who was snorting and backing. Fawn followed, having had the sense to pause and grab a lantern. Trying not to limp on his right leg, Dag stumbled after.

  Hod was lying on the ground on his back, writhing from side to side, clutching and clawing at his leg and openly bawling. His face was screwed up in pain, mottled red and pale and popping out cold sweat. And no wonder. By whatever evil chance, Copperhead’s shod hoof had scored a direct hit on the boy’s right kneecap, shattering the bone and pulping the flesh behind it. Blight it, blight it, blight it…!

  Tanner gasped. “What happened?”

  Dag said, “Horse kicked him when he went to poke in my bags for grub.” Which won him a sharp look upwards from Fawn—You knew? They would deal with that aspect later. Dag surged forward.

  To find himself blocked by the gray-haired and very solid Mape. “Don’t you touch him, Lakewalker!”

  Whit and Tanner knelt by Hod, trying unsuccessfully to soothe and still him as he beat his fists on the ground and howled.

  Dag unclenched his jaw and said to Mape, “I have some skills in field aid.”

  “Let him through,” cried Fawn, at the same moment as Whit called, “Dag, help!” Reluctantly, Mape gave way.

  “Fawn, get a fire going, for heat and light,” Dag instructed tersely.

  “We’ll need both.”

  She skittered off wordlessly. Dag knelt by Hod’s right knee, and let both hands, real and sputtering-ghostly, hover over it. Absent gods, I shouldn’t be attempting this. A quick ground match, to slow the internal bleeding—the joint was already swollen tight against the fabric of Hod’s trousers—to dull the blazing nerves…Dag’s right knee screamed in sympathy. He gritted his teeth and ignored the ground-echo. Hod stopped howling and just gasped, staring up wild-eyed at Dag.

  In a few minutes that seemed much longer, the men had Hod laid out on a blanket and his trousers off, an operation he tried to resist and that made him cry some more, though whether from pain or shame Dag was not sure. He apparently owned no underdrawers; Tanner dropped a blanket over his nether parts. All four wagon-lanterns and the new fire, bless Fawn, laid golden light on the unpleasant sight of the ruined joint, bulging, mottled, and already dark with blood beneath the shiny skin. Shards of bone pressed against the skin from the inside, and each of Hod’s shudders threatened to push one through.

  “Can you do anything, Lakewalker?” asked Tanner.

  “’Course he can!” asserted Whit valiantly. “I’ve seen him mend broken glass!”

  “This is bad,” said Dag. “The kneecap’s floating in about six pieces, and one tendon is nearly torn through. This needs a lot more than splinting and rest.” I shouldn’t even be thinking about this without another medicine maker to guard me from groundlock, or worse. There’s good reasons they work in pairs. Forty miles to the closest other Lakewalkers tonight, down the road to the ferry camp at Pearl Riffle. Eighty miles round-trip. Not even Copperhead could do it, even if a real medicine maker would come out for an injured farmer, an event so unlikely that it would make some kind of history.

  “Is he gonna cut off my leg?” sobbed Hod. “Don’ let him go cuttin’ on me! Can’t work, nobody’ll give me money, can’t go back, Hopper’ll beat me again if I go back…”

  Hopper? Oh, Hod’s tent-brother—brother-in-law, Dag corrected himself. Some tent-brother.

  “Hurts,” wept Hod. No one doubted him.

  “Dag…?” said Fawn in a small, uncertain voice. “Can you…do anything?” She made a little gesture toward his left arm. “Any groundwork?”

  A simple ground reinforcement was not going to be enough here, and Dag had, absent gods knew, no prior affinity with this boy the way he did with Fawn to give him subtle routes into his body and g
round. He looked into Fawn’s huge, dark, scared, trusting eyes. Swallowed. And said, “I can try.”

  He settled down cross-legged by Hod’s right knee, stretched his back, which popped, and bent again. Tanner and Mape, kneeling on either side of the boy, looked at him fearfully. “How hard should we hold him down?” asked Tanner, and “Should he have a leather strap to bite?” asked Mape.

  This isn’t some farmer bonesetter’s bloody amputation, blight it! Dag shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.” If it was going to work at all, that is. He brought his right hand and left…the sight of his useless hook suddenly irritated him immensely, and he undid the straps of its harness and cast it aside. Try again. Right hand hovering over left…stump. Come on, come on you blighted ghost thing, come out, get in there. Hod was whimpering, staring up at him in overwhelming horror. His terror beat on Dag in hot waves. I have to open to this ungodly mess of a child. One breath, two, three—Hod’s breath slowed and Dag’s sped, until their chests rose and fell in synchrony. Right hand over left, stroking, coaxing…and then it was there, invisible ground projection, sinking down slowly past Hod’s skin into the broken flesh and its swirling, agitated ground.

  Dag grasped the ground of the shattered bone fragments. His fleshly hand darted to the uninjured knee, to test and trace the song of its wholeness. Like that. Just like that. Sing it so. Dag began a low humming under his breath, far from musical, but he could feel the power in it. Fragments shifted, moved beneath the tight skin…

  This was nothing like so simple as welding a glass bowl back together, amorphous and uniform; these structures hid more structures inside them, going down and down and in and in. But this little edge might hook again to that, that to the other, this torn blood vessel find its mated end, and gently, so delicately, kiss and make up. Minute after minute, fragment after fragment. His groundsense was wholly concentrated on the puzzle before him; the world outside both their skins could have cracked open wide with the roar of a thousand thunders and Dag would not have noticed. This vessel and that splinter and that one and that one…This was why medicine makers worked with partners for deep healing. Somebody anchored outside had to be able to break into the fascination. Lest you keep spiraling down and in and down and in and not ever come up and out again.

  I can’t do it all. I have to stop before I spend myself broke. Patch and tie, and let it heal the rest of the way itself—even real medicine makers do it that way. Get out, old patroller, while you still can. He’d thought nothing could be harder than matching his ground with Hod’s, until he came to unmatch it again. He sensed Hod’s chest rise, and deliberately broke the rhythm of his breath with the boy’s. Let go, old patroller. Get out of here before you hurt your fool self. Let go.

  He blinked his eyes open on firelight and lantern light, and knew himself sinfully lucky not to be groundlocked. I overdid it, oh, I sure did. Dag drew a long, long breath, and awareness of his own body returned to him at last.

  Unfortunately.

  Except that Fawn had three blankets wrapped around his shoulders before the second shuddering shiver shook him, and a basin thrust in his lap before his stomach heaved, and a cup of hot water held steadily to lips like cold clay. He took several grateful gulps, only spilling a little in his ague-like shakes. The hot liquid met his ascending dinner and forced it back down, and his stomach didn’t try again. “Guh,” said Dag.

  “Don’t try to talk,” said Fawn, and explained over her shoulder to someone, “This happened the last time. He goes all cold and sick for a while, but then he comes out of it.” Her worried eyes added to him, I hope.

  Dag found his voice at last, and mumbled, “Fawn, Whit, find two strong slats and some ties of some kind, cloth strips or whatever. Make Hod splints down each side of his leg like a bonesetter’s. Tie above and below the knee, firm but not tight. Keep it straight and still. It’s still going to be swollen up, and it has a lot of mending yet to do on its own. Blankets, something, get him warm, keep him warm. He can’t walk on it yet.”

  “He’s going to walk?” said someone, in a voice caught between awe and disbelief.

  “Not tonight, he’s not. And he’d better be carried to the wagon in the morning. He can use my stick later on, I guess.” But not tomorrow, because Dag was going to need it himself…He leaned toward the blurred, flickering orange light, and added plaintively, “More heat?”

  Logs dropped onto the flames, which spewed sparks and danced higher, so some delinquent god had heard his prayer, apparently. It was about ten minutes before he stopped shivering.

  “Should you lie down?” asked Fawn anxiously, kneeling beside him. “Eat a bite more?”

  Dag shook his head. “Not yet. Not done. There’s something else wrong. I felt it, when I was in there.”

  Her brows drew in, but she said nothing as Dag leaned forward and pulled the blanket a little down from Hod’s belly. The boy’s eyes widened, and he made a slight whimpering noise, but kept his hands clenched to his sides. Dag let his stump circle above the taut skin, just…there.

  “Did Copper kick him in the belly, too?” asked Fawn. “I don’t see any mark…”

  Dag gave another brief headshake. “No. Older trouble. The boy’s carrying a nasty monster of a tapeworm, inside him there.”

  Fawn recoiled, making an appalled face. “Eew!”

  Dag had dealt with mosquitoes, bedbugs, and lice, but the closest thing to an internal parasite he’d routed routinely was chiggers. All could be repelled with mere persuasion, or an even simpler bounce. They were nothing like this. “It’s got quite a grip in there.” He eyed Hod. “You, boy, have you been having crampy bellyaches?”

  Hod nodded fearfully, then looked around as if afraid to have admitted anything. Tanner and Mape had wandered near and stood watching and listening.

  “Yeah?” said Dag. “And bleeding? You bleed when you crap, sometimes?”

  Another reluctant nod.

  “Ever tell anyone?”

  Hod shook his head more vigorously.

  “Why not?”

  A long silence. “Dunno.”

  “Scared?” Dag asked more gently.

  Reluctant pause. Nod. And a whisper, “Who’d I tell, anyways?”

  Dag’s brows twitched up. “Hungry all the time even with plenty of food to eat, weak and tired, bleeding…y’know, it doesn’t take a Lakewalker medicine maker to diagnose a tapeworm. It just takes someone noticin’.”

  “Not shiftless,” said Fawn. “Starving.”

  Tanner looked a bit sick, and Mape, curiously, looked even sicker.

  Dag’s arm circled again. “From the signs, I’d guess he’s been feeding this pet for a year or more. How long have you been feeling poorly, Hod?”

  Hod shrugged. “I always feel poorly, but usually it’s my nose. Belly’s been aching off and on since this time last year, I guess.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Dag.

  “Can you get rid of it?” asked Fawn. “Oh, please! It’s so horrid!”

  “Maybe. Give me a minute to think.”

  Ground-ripping the vile thing was right out. It was much larger than any mosquito, and besides just the idea of taking in tapeworm-ground was revolting, even if his own ground would convert it eventually. Dag essayed a trifle of persuasion, to no effect; the worm was not normally mobile. Besides, you wouldn’t just want it out; you’d want it safely dead, to keep it from spreading.

  So if smoothing and reinforcing disrupted ground caused flesh to heal, disrupting ground might…? The blighted thing was large compared to its constricted intestinal world, but in absolute terms, small. Just a tiny ground disruption. Squeeze it, roll it, twist it—turn it inside out—there. He felt the head of the creature pop, and a spurt of blood from its anchorage as it tore away. He pinched off the little vessels in Hod’s gut, aiding the wound to clot. Then recaptured the thin worm-body and went right down the line to destroy each segment. In a weird way, it felt a bit like spinning thread. With his ground-hand, inside someone else’s bod
y…I don’t think I want to think about what I’m doing, here. But the worm was dying, and he managed to keep its roiling, writhing ground from sticking to his own.

  Hod made a wary noise, and his hands twitched; Fawn caught one, to keep it at his side, and gave him a big happy reassuring smile. Whit bit his lip, possibly on a bark of laughter, but Hod offered a confused half-smile to Fawn in return, as who could help doing so? And made no further move to fight off Dag.

  “Done,” Dag whispered at last, and sat up, folding his left arm inside his right. His exhausted ground projection petered out, as if his ghost hand were evaporating into mist, into nothing. Absent gods, I feel sick. His groundsense range seemed down to ten paces, or maybe ten inches. But at least he hadn’t groundlocked himself to the blighted worm. Count your blessings. One…

  Next time, he would hold out for a medicine shop and some simple dose of vermifuge, a course of treatment he suspected even a Lakewalker medicine maker would prefer. Dag had a vague notion that senior makers saved their costly groundsetting skills for serious dangers, like tumors. More than ever, he regretted turning down Hoharie’s offer of real maker’s training; then he’d know what to do, instead of having to blunder around by guess. But Hoharie’d had no use for his farmer bride. Blood over the dam.

  Tanner and Whit settled Hod for the night. Dag dragged his bedroll around to the other side of the fire, away from the sight of his unappetizing patient. Victim. Whatever. He would’ve liked to retreat farther than that, but hated to give up the heat. Hod, exhausted by the shock and limp from the passing of his pain, dropped to sleep fairly soon. Dag, equally exhausted, did not.

  While Fawn, Tanner, and Whit went off to see to the horses, Mape came and squatted on his haunches beside Dag’s bedroll. After a while, he said, “I never guessed he was sick. Just thought he was lazy.”

  “I didn’t catch on either, at first.” Dag had been led down a false trail by Tanner’s talk, yes, but he’d only to open his groundsense to learn better.