There was little work to getting Dag’s war kit ready, as he planned to be gone for mere hours, not weeks. Fawn had thought they were done with these partings in the dark when he’d quit the patrol; the returning memories unnerved her. But the crowd of river men assembled on the bank was encouraging in its numbers and bristle. Dag had set Barr and Remo and some of the Raintree hunters out ahead as scouts. The rest tramped away over the hill by the light of a few lanterns, doubtless noisier than a company of stealthy Lakewalker patrollers, but with determination enough.
Sleep was out of the question. Fawn and Berry turned to assembling on the kitchen table what bandages and medicines the Fetch offered, in readiness for the men’s return—at dawn, Dag had guessed. Fawn hoped there would be no need to break out any of Berry’s stock of Tripoint shovels for burial duty, at least not of folks on their side. It was likely much too optimistic a hope, but she had to fight the bleak chill of this night somehow. With nearly everyone gone off, the row of boats tied along the bank of the feeder creek seemed much too quiet.
Hawthorn had disappeared up amongst the nearby trees for a while, most likely to cry himself out in privacy. When he returned, he lay down in his bunk with his back to the room. As his hands loosened in deep sleep, the kit escaped his grip and went to hide in the stores. Bo went out to take a walk up and down the row of boats and talk with the few other men, some older like himself, one with a broken arm, left to watch over them. Hod, detailed as Bo’s supporter as well as boat guard, tagged along.
Alder’s head came up from an uncomfortable doze. He didn’t look crisp and handsome anymore, sitting on a stool with his back to his hitching post, just strained and exhausted. Fawn wondered if he’d often been sent out on decoy duty because his clean looks and glib tongue reassured folks. His eyes shifted in the lantern light, a furtive gleam, then focused on Berry.
“I couldn’t escape,” he said. “You don’t know what Crane does to deserters.”
Berry stared across at him from her place at the table, but said nothing. Fawn ceased fiddling uselessly with her sewing kit and wondering if she would have to sew up live skin and flesh with it, and turned in her chair to watch them both. “Just what does this Crane do to deserters?” she asked at last, when Berry didn’t.
“He’s clever, horrible clever. One or two he’s killed outright in arguments, but mostly, if a fellow or a couple of fellows demand to leave his gang, he pretends to let them. He lets ’em load up with their pick of goods, their share, the lightest and most valuable, then trails after ’em in secret. You can’t get away from his groundsense. Ambushes ’em, kills ’em, hides the goods for himself. Nobody back at camp even knows. You can’t get out alive.”
It seemed almost inadvertent justice to Fawn. With a few hitches. She glanced up, wondering if Berry spotted them, too. “If it’s so secret, how do you know? ’Cause it seems to me Crane wouldn’t be doing all this ambushin’ and buryin’ by himself.”
Alder shot her a glance of dislike.
“How come there’s any bandits left?” Fawn went on. “Or is that Crane’s plan, to be the last one left at the end?”
“Men drift in. Like the Drum brothers. Sometimes he recruits from captives. Like Skink.”
And like Alder? Fawn wondered if she wanted to ask how in front of Berry. Maybe not. She suspected Bo already knew, from that earlier interrogation that had left the men all so grim. And there would likely be other witnesses taken alive to tell the tale tomorrow.
“I tried to save you,” Alder went on, looking longingly at Berry. “Out there today, I tried everything I could think of to get you to go on. I always tried to save as many as I could, when I was put on catching duty. Boats with families, women or children, I waved them on.”
Likely they were also the poorer boats, Fawn suspected. “Bed boats?” she inquired.
Alder flinched. “We never got any of those,” he mumbled. Berry’s gaze flicked up.
If Crane was as clever and evil as Alder said, more likely he let the women in to ply their trade, loaded them up with presents, and disposed of them on their exit just like his deserters. Or else word of the lucrative Cavern Tavern would have trickled out in at least some channels before this, and Berry had not overlooked the bed boats in her inquiries. But it was undoubtedly true that Alder had tried frantically to convince Berry to go on.
His voice grew lower, more desperately persuasive. “But we could get away now, you and me. When I saw you, it was like I woke up from a yearlong nightmare. I was so afraid for you—I would never have let Crane have you. I never imagined you’d rescue me. But see, I know where some of Crane’s caches are. If we slipped away now, tonight, while the others are busy, we could both go back to Clearcreek rich and never have to go on the river no more. I never want to see the river again; it’s been the ruination of me. We could wipe all this out like a bad dream and start over.”
“Is that what you was plannin’ to bring back to me?” said Berry in a scraped voice, staring down at her clenched hands. “Bags of coin soaked in murdered folks’ blood?”
Alder shook his head. “Crane owes you death payment for the Rose at least, I figure.”
“Why, if it sank in a storm?” Fawn inquired, lifting her eyebrows. His return glare was nearly lethal.
Alder recovered himself and went on. “It’s all that Lakewalker sorcerer’s fault. He messes with folks’ minds, puts them in thrall to him. Destroys good men—delights in it. You saw Skink. He was just an ordinary boatman, not a speck different from your papa’s hands on the Rose, before Crane caught him and turned him. That’s why I could never get away. Gods, I hate Crane!”
That last had the ring of truth. Berry looked up at him, and for a moment, Fawn thought she saw her hard-pressed resolution waver, if that wasn’t just the water in her reddened eyes.
“If Crane beguiled you,” said Fawn, “then you’re still beguiled right now, and it isn’t safe to let you go, because you’d just run right back to him. You couldn’t help it, see, just like you couldn’t help the other.”
Alder’s lips began to move, then stopped in confusion. Did he see the dilemma he’d backed himself into?
Berry spoke at last. “’Course if you ain’t beguiled, it’s hard to see how it was you couldn’t get away before this. Seems to me a man who just wanted to escape, and didn’t care about no treasure, could’ve swum out in the night and set himself on a bit of wrack and floated away most anytime this past summer. Come to the first camp or hamlet past the Wrist in about a day and gone ashore for help, and gave warning what nasty things was hiding up in the Elbow. And this would all have been over long before now. If you wasn’t beguiled. So which is it, Alder? Make up your mind.”
Alder’s mouth opened and shut. He finally settled on, “That Lakewalker. He’s sorcelled me all up. I can’t hardly think, these days.”
“Then I daren’t let you loose, huh?” said Berry, and rose to her feet. “Come on, Fawn. There’s ain’t no sleeping in here. Let’s go set to the roof. The air’s cleaner up there, I expect.”
“I expect it is,” said Fawn, and followed her out the back hatch into the chill dark.
The night sky was clear and starry over the river valley. A half-moon was rising above the eastern shore. They sat cross-legged on the roof, looking around at the black bulk of the bluff, the few dim lights leaking from the boat windows down the row. The creek water gurgled in the stillness, giving itself to the Grace. Fawn heard no shouts or cries of commencing battle, but from three miles away on the other side of a hill, she didn’t expect to.
“Alder was a good man all his life, up in Clearcreek,” said Berry at last.
Fawn said nothing.
“The river really did ruin him.”
Fawn offered, “Maybe he just never met such hard temptations, before.” And after a little, “Spare me from ever doing so.”
“Aye,” breathed Berry. No insect songs enlivened the frosty night; their breath made faint fogs in the starlight. She said at l
ast, “So, is Alder beguiled or not? Did Dag say?”
Fawn swallowed. It wasn’t as if there would ever be a better time or place to tell Berry the truth. “He said not.”
A long inhalation. “I sort of realized it must be that way, after a while. Or Dag would’ve released him along with Skink.” Cold haze trickled from her lips. “I can’t think which way is worse. Ain’t neither is better.”
“No,” agreed Fawn.
“I don’t see no good way out of this.”
“No,” agreed Fawn.
They huddled together in silence for a long time, waiting for light or word, but the cold drove them inside before either came.
20
Dag braced one knee on a fallen log, checked the seating of his bow in his wrist cuff, and locked the clamp. He opened himself for another quick cast around, cursing, not for the first time, his ground-sense’s inability to penetrate more than a hand’s breadth into solid rock. Barr and two of Chicory’s bowmen had reached their position on the opposite side of the cave mouth. Remo and another Raintree hunter were creeping up on the opening in the cave roof, through which a trickle of wood smoke, steel-gray in the light from the rising half-moon, made its escape. It would be Remo’s job to see that nothing else escaped by that route. Lastly, Dag checked on Whit, clutching his own bow at Dag’s side. Whit’s face, striped by the shadows from the bare tree branches, was nearly as pale and stony as the moon, entirely drained of all his wearing humor. The effect was not as much of an improvement as Dag would have thought.
He choked back anger, not only at the cruelty of the bandits, but at finding them here, now, in the middle of the journey he’d intended as Fawn’s belated wedding gift. She’d been terrorized once by the bandits at Glassforge, and he’d sworn that no such horror would touch her again. Granted, she hadn’t seemed terrified tonight, just tense and resolute. He would keep the ugliness well away from her this time, if he could. He tried not to think about the fact that her monthly fertile days were starting up, a lovely sparkle in her ground, normally the signal for them to switch to subtler Lakewalker bed customs. Far from bandits of any sort. Don’t dwell on that threat, old patroller, you’ll just make yourself crazy. Crazier. But he was determined that none should escape this cave trap to trouble her, or Berry, or anyone else. He bit his lip in frustration, unable to make a count of targets through the shielding rock walls.
Wonder of wonders, the two trampling gangs of boatmen, one led around the upstream side by Chicory, the other around the downstream side by Boss Wain, nearly joined again by the entrance to the cave before the guard there woke from his drunken stupor and yelled alarm. Too late, thought Dag in satisfaction. His groundsense flexed open and shut, wavering between picking up events and blocking the flares of the targets’ injuries. All his fooling around with medicine making seemed to have left him much more sensitive to such…he cringed, taking in the sizzle of a knife cut, the explosive flash of a thump with a cudgel, still searching for his true target.
Where was this Crane, blight it? They must have caught the Lakewalker leader asleep inside, just as Dag had hoped, or else the boatmen would never have crept this close before being spotted. Because none of the Fetch’s Lakewalkers had bumped grounds with him outside, not within a mile.
Cries, crashes, and screams sounded from the cave mouth, borne outward in the orange flickering from torch fire and wildly wavering lantern light. A bandit trying to lift himself out the smoke hole was knocked back in by Remo’s partner, like a man hammering down a peg. Remo followed, disappearing from both view and groundsense. Good, Dag had at least one scout inside to help the rivermen deal with the renegade. He ruthlessly stifled worry for Remo’s inexperience as a group of five bellowing bandits clumped together and fought their way out the cave mouth past Wain’s men, breaking and running toward Dag and Whit.
“See ’em?” said Dag, raising his bow and drawing hard.
“Yep,” said Whit through dry lips, and mimicked him. Both steel-tipped arrows flew together; both found targets.
“Great shot!” said Dag. Beginner’s luck, more likely. Dag’s second arrow was on its way before Whit’s shaking hands could nock his next. It wasn’t a disabling hit, lodging in the bandit’s thigh; the man was not felled but only slowed. This bunch must realize how little mercy they could expect from their boatmen prey-turned-hunters. The three still on their feet turned back and began running, or limping, the other way, around the cave mouth and up onto Barr’s position. None made it past.
Dag waited a few more minutes, but no more fugitives broke free. Archers’ task accomplished, he eased forward and led Whit down the slope, more anxious now to reach the cave than to keep Whit away from it. One of their victims lay dead, an arrow through his eye. The other whimpered and shuddered in the fallen leaves, clutching a shaft that was lodged deep in his gut.
“Should we—?” Whit began uncertainly.
“Leave him for now. He won’t be running off,” murmured Dag. He would worry about men due to be hanged in the morning only after he had tended to the injured on their own side. If there was time or any of himself left over for the task.
“But I—which one did I hit?” Whit stared back over his shoulder.
“Yours was that brain-shot. Clean, very quick.”
“Oh.”
Whit’s expression teetered between triumph and revulsion, and Dag realized it wasn’t just Barr and Remo he ought to meet with when this was all over, to check for damage due to leaks from targets. And who will check my ground? Never mind, first things first. Reeling, disarmed bandits were already being passed out through a gauntlet of boatmen and tied to trees. Dag trusted the rivermen knew their knots.
The inside of the cave was arrested chaos. Benches and crates lay knocked over, bedrolls kicked around. Goods of all kinds were strewn across the floor, including an inordinate number of bottles and jugs, broken and whole. The cave seemed to be composed of two chambers, one behind the other, each about twenty feet high and forty across. The fire beneath the smoke hole spouted up around a broken keg, emitting a glaring light. Burning oil from a broken lantern spread and sputtered, but already a boatman was stamping it out. Some men lay groaning on the ground, others were being tied up; there seemed to be at least two boatmen standing for every live bandit left—good. Dag winced, trying to hold his groundsense open long enough to get an accurate head-count. He still couldn’t find the Lakewalker leader. Was Crane ground-veiled and hidden amongst the others? No…Remo was upright and uninjured, though, better still.
Bearbait sprang up at his elbow and grabbed him by the arm; Dag controlled a reflexive strike at him. “Lakewalker, quick! You have to help!”
He jerked Dag toward the cave wall, a little out of the way of the noisy mob. Two boatmen lay there on hastily tossed-down blankets. A kneeling friend held his hands frantically to the neck of one of them; blood spurted between his tight fingers. The other was Chicory, lying stunned, breathing irregularly, his face the color of cold lard. Oh, no! Dag let his groundsense lick out. The Raintree hunter had taken a cudgel blow on the left side of his skull, fracturing it just above the ear. Bad…
Bearbait wet his lips and said, “He’d took on two with his spear, see, when a third one got him from behind. I wasn’t quick enough…”
The one with the cut to the neck was now or never. Dag dropped to his knees, unlocked and tossed his bow aside, and let his hands real and ghostly slide over those of the frightened friend, one of the Silver Shoals fellows. “Don’t move,” he murmured. “Keep holding tight, just like that.” The man gulped and obeyed.
The jugular vein was only nicked, not sliced in two; this might not be impossible…The uproar of the cave faded from Dag’s senses as he descended, down and in. Felt with his ground projection, caught up the cut edges of the big vessel, and mated them one to another once more. A shaped ground reinforcement, not large, but dense and tight…would it hold against internal pressure, external jostling? Had the pallid young man already spent too
much blood to recover? The soil beneath Dag’s knees was soaked in red, sticky and caking. He drew breath and backed out, evading groundlock, staring around in disorientation at the dire scene in the cave, unholy noises, men’s shadows leaping in the wavering torchlight.
Dag shook his head and swallowed, chilled and shaking. “You can let up now,” he told the bloody-handed friend, removing his own hand and wrist cuff from above. “Get blankets around him, get him warmed up any way you can. But don’t bump him, or that big vein will bust open again. That surface cut needs stitches, if you have anyone with a real light hand to do it. Not right away, but in a bit.” The jagged, ugly gash across the victim’s neck still gaped, but blood only oozed now, instead of flowing like some terrible spring. “Don’t try to move him yet.” Later, the Shoals lad would need as much drink as they could get into him, but he daren’t be made to swallow while still out cold. Choking could kill him.
Dag tried to remember what he’d been doing. Medicine making and captaining didn’t mix well, it seemed; each took all of a man’s attention. Chicory, yes, oh gods. He didn’t want to lose Chicory, and not just for his affable humor. He was exactly the sort of natural leader who could go home and make a difference in his village, and amongst a widespread array of friends, if he could be convinced to see things Dag’s way. If he lives.
Dag lurched half up and over to Chicory’s side, and knelt again. Watched closely by the fearful Bearbait, he cradled the hunter’s head in his spread fingers. The skull was cracked in spider-web-like rings around the blow, pushed inward, but no sharp shards had pierced the brain beneath. But atop that strange thin skin that overlay brains in the smooth goblets of their skulls, a pocket of blood was collecting, actually pushing the skull dent out again. But also pressing into the delicate tissue beneath, like a grinding fist. I’m pretty sure that’s not good. A real medicine maker or a farmer bonesetter might drill into the skull to let the bad blood out. At any rate, he was sure he’d seen such drills amongst Hoharie’s tools. Dag’s medicine kit included a fine knife, tweezers, needles and threads of gut and cotton, fluid to clean wounds, bandages, herbs, and powders. No drills. Do I really need one?
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