Legacy tsk-2

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The sweat-soaked and filthy combatants then took a swim in the lake, emerging smelling no worse than usual, and assembled in the clearing to munch plunkin and try, without success, to persuade Cattagus to uncork one of his last carefully hoarded jugs of elderberry wine from the prior fall. Dag, slouched against a stump and smiling at the banter, suddenly frowned and sat up, his head turning toward the road.

  “What is it?” Fawn, sitting beside him, asked quietly.

  “Fairbolt. Not happy about something.”

  She lowered her voice further. “Think it’s our summons from the camp council, finally?” She had lived in increasing dread of the threat.

  “Could be…no. I’m not sure.” Dag’s eyes narrowed.

  By the time Fairbolt’s trotting horse swung into the clearing, all the patrollers had quieted and were sitting up watching him. He was riding bareback, and his face was as grim as Fawn had ever seen. She found her heart beating faster, even though she was sitting still.

  Fairbolt pulled up his horse and gave them all a vague sort of salute. “Good, you’re all here. I’m looking for Saun, first.”

  Saun, startled, stood up from his stump. “Me, sir?”

  “Yep. Courier just rode in from Raintree.”

  Saun’s home hinterland. Bad news from there? Saun’s face drained, and Fawn could imagine his thoughts suddenly racing down a roster of family and friends.

  “They’ve got themselves a bad malice outbreak north of Farmer’s Flats, and are calling for help.”

  Everyone straightened in shock at this. Even Fawn knew by now that to call for aid outside one’s own hinterland was a sign of things going very badly indeed.

  “Seems the blighted thing came up practically under a farmer town, and grew like crazy before it was spotted,” Fairbolt said.

  Saun’s gnawed plunkin rind fell from his hand. “I’ll ride—I have to get home at once!” he said, and lurched forward. He caught himself, breathless, and looked beseechingly at Fairbolt. “Sir, may I have leave to go?”

  “No.”

  Saun flushed, but before he could speak, Fairbolt went on, “I want you to ride with the rest tomorrow morning as pathfinder.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” Saun subsided, but stayed on his flexing feet, like a dog straining on the end of a chain.

  “Being the high season, almost three-quarters of our patrols are out right now,” Fairbolt continued, his gaze sweeping over the suddenly grave patrollers in front of him. “For our first answer, I figure I can pull up the next three patrols due to go out. Which includes yours, Mari.”

  Mari nodded. Cattagus scowled unhappily, his right hand rubbing on his knee, but he said nothing.

  “Being out of the hinterland, it’s on a volunteer basis as usual—you folks all in?”

  “Of course,” murmured Mari. Razi and Utau, after a glance at each other, nodded as well. Fawn hardly dared move. Her breath felt constricted. Dag said nothing, his face oddly blank.

  Saun wheeled to him. “You’ll come, won’t you, Dag? I know you meant to sit out our next patrol in camp, and you’ve earned some time off your feet, but, but—!”

  “I want to speak to Dag private-like,” said Fairbolt, watching him. “The rest of you can start to collect your gear. I figure to send the first company west at dawn.”

  “Couldn’t we start tonight? If everyone pulled themselves together?” said Saun earnestly. “Time—you never know how much difference a little time could make.”

  Dag grimaced at that one, not, Fawn thought, in disagreement.

  Fairbolt shook his head, although his glance was sympathetic. “Folks are spread all over the lake right now. It’ll take all afternoon just to get the word out. You can’t outpace the company you’re leading, pathfinder.”

  Saun gulped and nodded.

  Fairbolt gave a gesture of dismissal, and everyone scattered, Razi and Utau for their tent, where Sarri had come to the awning post with her little boy on her hip, staring hard at the scene, Mari and Cattagus to theirs. Saun waved and started jogging up the road back to his own campsite on the island’s other end.

  Fairbolt slid down from his horse and left it to trail its reins and browse. Dag motioned toward Tent Bluefield, sheltered in the orchard, and Fairbolt nodded. Fawn hurried after their matched patrollers’ strides. Fairbolt eyed her, neither inviting nor excluding, so when each man took a seat on an upended log in the shade of her tent flap, she did, too. Dag gave her an acknowledging nod before turning his full attention on his commander.

  “With three patrols sent out in a bunch, they’re going to need an experienced company captain,” Fairbolt began.

  “Rig Crow. Or Iwassa Muskrat,” said Dag, watching him warily.

  “My first two choices exactly,” Fairbolt said. “If they weren’t both a hundred and fifty miles away right now.”

  “Ah.” Dag hesitated. “Surely you’re not looking to me for this.”

  “You’ve been a company captain. Further, you’re the only patroller in camp right now who’s been in on a real large-group action.”

  “And so successfully, too,” murmured Dag sourly. “Just ask the survivors. Oh, that’s right—there weren’t any. That’ll give folks lots of confidence in my leadership, sure enough.”

  Fairbolt made an impatient chopping motion. “Your habit of picking up extra duty means you’ve worked, at one time or another, with almost every other patroller in camp. No problem with unfamiliar grounds, or not knowing your people pretty much through and through. Weaknesses, strengths, who can be relied on for what.”

  Dag’s slow blink didn’t deny this.

  Fairbolt lowered his voice. “Another angle. I shouldn’t be saying this, but your summons to stand before the camp council is due out in a very few more days. But they can’t set a hearing if you’re not here to receive the order. You wanted delay? Here’s your chance. Do a good job on this, and if you’re still called to stand before the council, you’ll do so with that much more clout.”

  “And if I do badly?” Dag inquired, his voice very dry.

  Fairbolt scratched his nose and grinned without humor. “Then we are all going to be having much more pressing problems than one patroller’s personal lapses.”

  “And if I’m killed in the field, the problem goes away, too,” said Dag with false brightness.

  “Now you’re thinking like a captain,” said Fairbolt affably. “Knew you could.”

  Dag huffed a very short laugh.

  Patroller humor, Fawn realized. Yeep.

  Fairbolt sat back more seriously. “Not my first pick of solutions, though. Dag, when it comes to malices you’re known as about the most volunteerin’ fellow in camp. This is your chance to show ’em all nothing’s changed.”

  Dag shook his head. “I don’t know what’s changed. Changing. More than…I sometimes think.” His hand touched his left arm, and while Fairbolt might take it to mean his marriage cord, Fawn wondered how much the gesture was for his ghost hand.

  Fairbolt glanced at Fawn. “Aye, it’s a hard thing to ask a patroller newly string-bound to go out in the field under any circumstances. But this one’s bad, Dag. I didn’t want to give more details in front of Saun right off, but word from the courier is that they’ve already lost hundreds of people, farmers and Lakewalkers both. The malice has shifted from its first lair under that poor farmer town to attack Bonemarsh Camp. Most everyone got away, but there’s no question the malice captured some. Once our first company is dispatched, I’m going to start scraping up a second—absent gods know from where—because I have an ugly hunch they’ll be wanted.”

  Dag rubbed his brow. “Raintree folks will be off-balance, then. Focusing on the wrong things, defense and refugees and the wounded. People will get frantic for each other, and lose sight of the main chance. Get a knife in the malice. Everything else is a distraction.”

  “An outsider might be better at keeping his head,” said Fairbolt suggestively.

  “Not necessarily. It’s been thirty y
ears since I patrolled in north Raintree, but I still remember friends.”

  “And the terrain?”

  “Some,” Dag admitted reluctantly.

  “Exactly. Never been out that way, myself. I figured, by the by, that I’ll pair Saun as pathfinder with the company captain.”

  Dag did not respond directly to this, but touched his throat. “I don’t have a primed knife right now. First time I’ve walked bare in decades. I usually carried two, sometimes three. You wondered how I took out so many malices, besides the extra patrolling? Folks gave me more knives. It was that simple.”

  “Not the captain’s job to place the knife. It’s his job to place the knife-wielders.”

  “I know,” Dag sighed.

  “And I know you know. So.” Fairbolt stood up. “I’m going to finish passing the word up this side of the island. I’ll ride back this way. You can give me your answer then.” He didn’t say Talk it over with each other, but the invitation was plain. He stared a moment at Fawn, as if thinking of making some plea to her, but then just shook his head. His horse came wandering over in a way that she suspected was not by chance, and he stepped up on his log seat and swung his leg over. He was back on the road in moments, setting the animal into a lope.

  Dag had risen when Fairbolt had; he stood staring after him, but his face was drawn and inward-looking, as if contemplating quite another view. Her own face feeling as stiff and congealed as cold dough, Fawn rose too, and went to him. They walked into each other’s arms and held on tight.

  “Too soon,” whispered Dag. He set her a little from him, looking down in anxiety. Fawn wondered whatever was the use of putting on a brave face when he could see right through to whatever wild roil her ground was in right now. She stiffened her spine anyhow, fighting to keep her breathing even and her lips firm.

  “Fairbolt’s right about the experience, though,” he continued, his voice finding its volume again. “This sort of thing is different from hunting sessiles, or even from that mess we had near Glassforge. I run down the patrol lists in my head and think, They don’t know. Especially the youngsters. How far north of Farmer’s Flats was that town, anyway? Farmer settlements aren’t supposed to be allowed above the old cleared line…” He shook his head abruptly, and grasped her hands. His gold eyes glittered with an expression she’d never seen in them before; she thought it might be frantic.

  She swallowed, and said, “You did this once. So the question isn’t, Can you do it? but, Can you do it better than someone doing it for the first time ever?”

  “No—yes—maybe…It’s been a while. Still—if not me, who am I condemning to go in my place? Someone has to—”

  She reached up and pressed her fingers to his lips, which stilled. She said simply, “Who are you arguin’ with, Dag?”

  He was silent for the space of several heartbeats, though at length a faint wry smile turned his mouth, just a little.

  Fawn took a deeper breath. “When I married a patroller instead of a farmer, I figured I must be signing up for something like this. You for the leaving…me for the being left.” His hand found her shoulder, and tightened. “It’s come on sooner than we thought, but…there has to be a first time.” She raised her arms to catch his beloved cheekbones between her hands, pressing hard, and gave his head a stern little shake. “Just you make sure it’s not the last, you hear?”

  He gathered her in. She could feel his heartbeat slow. The scent of him, as she turned and buried her face in his shirt, overwhelmed her: sweat and summer and sun and just plain Dag. She opened her mouth and widened her nostrils as though she could breathe him in and store him up. Forever. And a day. Well, there wasn’t any forever. Then I’ll take the day.

  “You’re not afraid to be left alone here?” he murmured into her curls.

  “On the list of things I’m afraid of, that one’s just dropped down. Quite a ways.”

  She could feel his smile. “You have to grant, I’ve always come back so far.”

  “Yeah, the other patrollers in Glassforge said you were like a cat, that way.” But they all went out looking for you anyhow. “Papa used to say to me, when I got all upset about one of our barn cats that had got its fool self in a fix and was crying all woeful, Lovie, you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?”

  That deep chuckle she so loved, too seldom felt lately, rumbled through his chest. They stood there wrapped in each other until the unwelcome sound of trotting hoofbeats echoed from the road. “Right, then,” muttered Fawn. She backed off and stared up.

  He was looking down with a curious smile. He returned her nod. Squeezed and released her, all but her hand. Turned to face Fairbolt, looking down from his horse.

  Fairbolt didn’t speak, merely raising his brows in question.

  “I’ll want to talk to that courier,” said Dag. “And have a fresh look at whatever large-scale maps we have of the northern Raintree region.”

  Fairbolt accepted this with no more comment than a short jerk of his chin. “Get up behind me, then. I’ll give you a lift to headquarters.” He kneed his horse around, and Dag stepped up on a stump and slid aboard. The burdened beast took to the road again at a rapid walk.

  Fawn’s eyes were hot but dry. Mostly. Blinking, she ducked inside her tent flap to see what she could do to help get Dag’s saddlebags in order.

  9

  I t was midnight before Dag returned to Tent Bluefield. Fawn raised her head at the sound of his steps, falling slower than usual out of the dark, and poked up their campfire coals with a stick, lighting their candle stub from it. In the weak flare of golden light his lips gave her a smile, but his eyes seemed abstracted.

  “I was wonderin’ if you were going to get any chance to sleep,” she said quietly, rising.

  “Some. Not much. We’ll be saddling the horses just before dawn.”

  “That’s no way to start out, all tired. Should I stay awake to get you up?” It wouldn’t be that many more hours at this point.

  “No. Someone will come for me. I’ll try to go out quiet.”

  “Don’t you dare go sneaking off without waking me,” she said, a little fiercely, and led him inside, where the contents of his saddlebags were laid out in neat stacks. His bow lay next to them, its quiver stuffed with arrows. “I was going to pack up your gear, but then I thought I’d better have you check first, see if I got everything right.”

  He nodded, knelt, and began handing her stacks, briefly inspected; she tucked them into the bags as tidily as she could. The only thing he set aside was his tambourine in its leather case. Fawn wanted to ask Won’t you need that to celebrate the kill? but then thought perhaps he wanted to protect it, this riding-out being out of the routine. The other possibilities she refused to contemplate. She closed the flaps, buckled them, and turned to pick up the last item, laid out on the trunk beside the flickering stub.

  “You’ve got no sharing knife. You want to take this one?” She held her—their—knife out to him, tentatively.

  His face grew grave. Still kneeling, he took it from her and drew it from its sheath, frowning at the faded writing on the bone blade. “Dar thinks it won’t work,” he said at last.

  “I wasn’t thinking of it for your first pick. Only to keep by you just…just in case. If there were no other choices.”

  “There will be a dozen and more other knives among my company.”

  “How many patrollers are going?”

  “Seventy.”

  “Will it be enough?”

  “Who knows? One is enough, but it can take all the rest to get that one to the right place at the right time. Fairbolt will hold all the regular patrols going out, and fold in the ones coming home, but he has to think not only of sending help, but of defense.”

  “I’d think sending help would be the best defense.”

  “To a point. Things might go badly in Raintree, but also another malice could pop up here in Oleana. Since this commotion will put everyone behind schedule—again—it’s just that more likely. That’s the
problem with malices emerging so randomly. Nice when we go months and months at a time without one, but when they come up in a bunch, we can get overwhelmed.” His brows drew in; slowly, he resheathed the knife, handing it back to her with a somewhat apologetic grimace. “Better not. I have an old bad habit of jumping into things feetfirst, and that’s not my job this time.”

  She accepted his words, and the knife, with a little nod, although her heart ached.

  “I have some ideas,” he went on, his mind clearly elsewhere. Or perhaps several elsewheres. “But I’m going to need more recent news than what that courier brought. She near rode her horse to death, but she was still two days getting here. Part of what went wrong at Wolf Ridge was due to, hm, not so much bad, as old information. Though for whatever consolation, I’m not sure but what we’d have done just the same if we had known what was coming down on us. If we’d spared a few more to the ridge, it would just have been that many more dead. And a few was all we had.” His mouth set in irony. “The help from out of the hinterland not having arrived yet.”

  Fawn didn’t think Dag’s company would be dawdling on their road tomorrow.

  There seemed so little she could do for him. Socks. Arrows. Packing. It all felt so trivial. All things he had accomplished perfectly well for himself for years before she’d come along to so disrupt his life. She might help by putting him to bed and sitting on him, maybe; it was clear his body needed its rest, and equally clear his mind would scarcely allow it. She raised her hands and began tenderly unbuttoning his shirt. As her wrist moved, her eye was caught by the gold beads of her marriage cord. He needs to be thinking about his task, not about me. But time was growing desperately short.

  “Dag…”