The Sharing Knife Book Four: Horizon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Dag smiled wearily. “I sort of figured that out for myself, sir. Well . . . Fawn and I did. After a bit.”

  “A properly supervised apprentice,” said Arkady, somewhat through his teeth, “would never have been permitted to contaminate himself with such dreadful experiments!”

  “Groundsetter’s apprentice, you mean? ”

  “Of course,” said Arkady impatiently. “No one else would be capable of the idiocy.”

  Dag scratched his stubbled chin, and said mildly, “Then he wouldn’t ever have been able to discover unbeguilement. Would he. Might be a good thing I started out unsupervised.”

  “Is it still? ” asked Arkady.

  Dag lost his glint of humor. “No,” he admitted. “Because then came Crane.”

  Arkady, leaning forward to vent something irate, sat back more slowly. In a suddenly neutral voice, he said, “Tell me about Crane.”

  “The boys were there for that one,” Dag said, with a tired nod at Barr and Remo.

  Remo said, “Crane was a real Lakewalker renegade. Nastiest piece of work I ever did see. Which is why, sir, you shouldn’t ought to call Dag one.” Awed till now by the groundsetter, quiet Remo flashed genuine anger with this; Arkady’s head went back a fraction.

  Barr put in, “Crane was an Oleana man, banished from a camp up there for theft and, um, keeping a farmer woman. He’d set himself up as leader to this bandit gang on the lower Grace River, taking and burning boats and murdering their crews—horrible stuff. If it wasn’t for us Lakewalkers being aboard, our flatboat would have been tricked like the others, I think.”

  Remo went on, “Dag set us to gathering all the other boats and men that came down the river that day to make an attack on the camp and clean it out. Which we did. Dag, um, captured Crane himself. Barr and I were up the hill dealing with another bandit just then, so I didn’t exactly witness . . .” He trailed off with a beseeching look at Dag.

  Dag said, in an expressionless voice, “I dropped him by ground-ripping a slice out of his spinal cord, just below the neck. Once saw a man fall from a horse and break his neck about there, so I had a pretty good guess what it would do.”

  “That . . . seems extreme,” said Arkady, in a nearly matching voice.

  He regarded Dag steadily.

  “He was holding a knife to my throat at the time,” Fawn put in, nervous lest Arkady go picturing Dag as some cold-blooded killer, “and his men were about to get away with our boat. I don’t think Dag had much choice.”

  “If I had it to do over,” said Dag, “ . . . well, if I had it all to do over, I’d leave more men to guard the boats, regardless of how shorthanded it made us at the cave. But if it were all the same again, I’d do it again. I don’t regret it. But it left me stuck with this last mess in my ground . . .”

  A general gesture at his torso.

  Arkady frowned judiciously. “I see.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell about the sharing knife? ” said Remo anxiously.

  “Oh.” Dag shrugged. “We found an unprimed sharing knife in the bandits’ spoils, that they’d apparently taken off a murdered Lakewalker woman. Crane was due to be hanged with the rest, so I gave him the choice of sharing, instead. Which he chose. Surprised me, a little. I boiled the old bonding off the knife and reset the involution, and bonded it to Crane. And used it to execute him, which was dodgy, but everything else about the man was dodgy, so I figured it fit. First knife I ever made. I’d like to have your camp’s knife maker look it over for soundness, if I get a chance, though I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as a half-made knife. It either primes or it doesn’t.”

  “And,” said Arkady, “you thought you could do this . . . why? ”

  Dag shrugged once more. “My brother is a knife maker at Hickory Lake, so I’ve been around the process off and on. But mostly I learned how from taking apart the groundwork of my knife at Bonemarsh.”

  “And, ah . . .” Arkady said, “the other kind of why? ”

  What gave Dag the right, does he mean? Fawn wondered.

  Dag regarded him steadily back. “I needed a knife. I hate walking bare.”

  A little silence fell, all around the table.

  “You know, Dag,” said Fawn slowly, “we’ve spent since last spring being knocked from pillar to post so bad it’s a wonder we’ve had time to breathe. But when you lay it all out in a row like this . . . don’t you see a kind of pattern to things? ”

  “No,” said Dag.

  She looked up at Arkady. “Do you, sir? ”

  She thought his face said yes, but he pushed back his chair instead of answering. He said, “You folks look as though you all slept in a ditch last night.”

  “Pretty near,” Fawn admitted. Infested with scary swamp lizards, at that.

  “I’d think you’d all enjoy a hot bath, then,” said Arkady.

  This won blank looks from all three patrollers. Fawn, appalled by a vision of heating pots and pots of water on the hearth, said hastily, “Oh, we couldn’t put you to so much trouble, sir!”

  “It’s no trouble. I’ll show you.”

  A little . . . smugly? Arkady led them outside and down some stairs from the lakeside porch to an area of flagged pavement. At the far side was a remarkable setup: a shower bucket with a pull rope on a post, made private by a cloth-hung screen, and a big barrel, its bottom lined with copper, over a fire pit. Coals still glowed underneath.

  “You can take the path down to the lake to get more water, all you want”—Arkady pointed to a pair of buckets on a yoke—“and heat it in the barrel. More wood’s in the stack behind those forsythia bushes. Put the hot water in the shower bucket, soap up and rinse down, soak in the barrel after. Take your time. I need to go talk with some folks, but I’ll be back in a while.” He paused and studied Dag. “Er . . . do you shave? ”

  “Now and then,” said Dag dryly.

  “Now, then.”

  Arkady went back in, popped out a few moments later with a stack of towels and a new cake of soap, and disappeared again, this time for good. Fawn stared after him, bewildered by this turn, though not ungrateful.

  “Do we stink that bad? ” asked Remo, sniffing his shirt. Barr was too busy delightedly examining the mechanism of the shower to answer.

  “We aren’t too pretty, compared to Arkady,” Fawn allowed.

  “And this keeps us occupied here for as long as he wants to talk to . . . folks. How many folks, I wonder? ” said Dag, sounding less impressed.

  Oh. Of course. Fawn’s gratitude faded in new worry. How many people in the camp had more authority than this groundsetter, that he needed to consult them? It answered Dag’s question, if in an unsettling fashion: not many.

  But Dag assisted Fawn to take the first turn, and then took one himself with apparent enjoyment. She thought Barr very gallant to volunteer for the last turn, till he refused to come out again. Granted, soaking in the barrel, which steamed in the chill air, was blissful. He was still pickling in there when Arkady returned, to find the rest of them dressed and clustered around the hearth drying their hair. Dag’s system was to run a towel over his head once, but Remo fussed more over his than Fawn did over hers.

  Arkady put his hands on his hips and looked Dag over. “Better,” he allowed. “I can’t have you following me around the camp looking like some starveling vagabond, after all.”

  “Am I to do so? ” asked Dag warily. “Why? ”

  “It’s how apprenticing is done, normally.”

  Fawn almost whooped with joy, but Dag merely rubbed his newshaved chin. “I take your offer kindly, sir, but I’m not sure how long we can stay. My work is up north, not down here.” He glanced at Fawn.

  Arkady answered the question beneath the question. “You can all stay here at my place for the moment. Including your farmer bride, though it’s asked that she not wander around the camp unescorted.”

  Fawn nodded glad acceptance of the rule, though Dag frowned a trifle, which made Fawn wonder belatedly, Asked by who?


  “You’ll just be watching and listening at first, you understand,” said Arkady, “at least till I can figure out some way to cleanse your dirty ground. If I can.”

  Dag flicked an eyebrow upward. “I’m good at listenin’. So am I to be your apprentice—or your patient? ”

  “A bit of both,” Arkady admitted. “You asked—no, she asked,” he corrected under his breath, “if I saw a pattern in your tale. I did. I saw a man coming late and abruptly into groundsetter powers, totally unsupervised, making the wildest mess of himself.”

  “You know, sir, you don’t sound too approving, but my two top notions were that I was going mad, or that I was turning into a malice. I like your version better.”

  Arkady snorted. “Normally, the development you’ve experienced would have unfolded over five or six years, not five or six months. Naturally you found it confusing. And—how old are you? Mid-fifties? ”

  Dag nodded.

  “Well, your talent’s around fifteen years late showing, to boot. I don’t know what you were doing all that time—”

  “Patrolling,” said Dag briefly.

  “Or why it’s all released now,” Arkady continued.

  Dag smiled across at Fawn.

  “Do you think your farmer girl has something to do with it? ” demanded Arkady. “I admit, I don’t see how.”

  Dag’s smile deepened. “My tent-brother Whit, who I grant has a mouth on him that’s going to get his teeth busted one of these days, once said he didn’t know if I was robbin’ cradles or if Fawn was robbin’ graves. I think it was the second. I’d pretty much lain down in mine just waiting for someone to come along and throw the dirt in on top. Instead, she came along and yanked me out of it. I will say, sir, it was a lot more restful than what I’ve been doing since, but it was pinching narrow. I don’t hanker to go back in.”

  Fawn’s heart lifted.

  Arkady just shook his head. He turned toward the door, took two steps, then turned back. “Oh, Dag?” He held up both his hands.

  Fawn saw it only by reflection, but well enough at that; Barr and Remo looked startled and impressed and Dag—Dag’s face lit right up.

  Arkady has ghost hands, too!

  “We’ll have to see what we can do about your little asymmetry problem, later,” said Arkady. “Among other things.” He jerked his chin at Remo. “Come along, patroller boy. I’ll show you where to take your horses.”

  5

  Dag’s apprenticeship began sooner than he or, he guessed, even Arkady expected. They were all at the table finishing breakfast from a basket sent to sustain the enlarged household—bread, plunkin, and hard-boiled eggs, with more tea—when after the briefest knock at the door, a breathless boy burst in and blurted, “Maker Arkady, sir! Maker Challa says to tell you they’re bringing in a hurt patroller, an’ if you would be pleased to step ’round.”

  “Very well,” said Arkady calmly. “Tell her I’ll be right along.”

  The boy nodded and departed as abruptly as he’d arrived.

  Arkady swallowed his tea. Dag said uneasily, “Shouldn’t we go at once? ”

  “If the patroller’s condition were that dire, I doubt he’d have lived to arrive,” said Arkady. “You have time to finish your drink.” He set down his mug, rose without haste, and added, “For the real emergencies, Challa rings a big bell she has up on a post in front of the medicine tent. Two rings and three. All the makers’ tents are within earshot, one direction or another. Then, we run.”

  Now, evidently, they strolled. Dag gave Fawn a hug good-bye, nodded thanks at her whisper of “Good luck!,” shrugged on his jacket, and followed Arkady out. The morning was not young; weary from their thirty-mile trudge, Barr, Remo, and Fawn had all slept in, although even so they were up before their host. Dag had wakened at first light, with all of the uncertainties that had chased one another around in his head last night ready for more laps.

  After taking Remo to settle the horses yesterday afternoon, Arkady, evidently deciding that Dag cleaned up well enough to be displayed, had escorted him to the medicine tent for introductions. To his surprise, Dag had learned that Arkady was not New Moon Cutoff’s chief medicine maker; that post was held by a much older woman, saggy, baggy, and cheerful. Maker Challa had eyed Dag shrewdly and shown him around her domain, introducing him in turn to the herb-lore master and his two apprentices, and to her own partner, a woman more nearly Dag’s age. They didn’t ask Dag as many questions as he’d feared; it was plain that Arkady had discussed his odd stray with them already. Provisionally accepted. But just what were the provisions?

  A five-minute walk along the shore road brought the medicine tent within sight. It was a rambling gray structure like Arkady’s house, and not much larger. At the railing out front was a rig Dag recognized from patrol procedure, two saddled horses fore and aft of a makeshift litter of cut sapling poles. Challa and a lean, brown-haired patroller were just lifting a more heavily built, gray-haired patroller to his feet, drawing his arms over their shoulders and aiming him inside. At every step, the older patroller mumbled, “Ow. Ow. Ow . . .”

  “Well, Tapp,” said Arkady with callous cheerfulness as they came up even with the group. “And what have you done to yourself? ”

  “Nothing, blight it!” snapped the gray-haired man, whose plait was coming undone. “All I did was fling my saddlebags up on my horse, just like I’ve done ten thousand times before. I swear! A fellow’s insides shouldn’t come popping out just from saddling his blighted horse.

  Ow. Ow!”

  Arkady opened the door for them. The lean patroller bent to undo his partner’s boots, then maneuvered him through the first room, crammed with shelves devoted to records, into a bright chamber with glass windows overlooking the lake. All four of them helped lift the hurting man onto the narrow bed at table height that stood out in the center of the room. Tapp was clammy and gasping with pain, but he still eyed Dag, and his left arm, curiously.

  Arkady and Tapp’s partner between them shucked him out of his trousers, and Challa briskly rolled down his drawers to groin level, raised her white eyebrows, and pointed at a reddened bulge at the side of his abdomen.

  “Yep,” said Arkady. “Come over here, Dag, and tell me what you sense.”

  Tapp watched Dag uneasily. “Who the blight is he? ”

  “Clean up your mouth, Tapp,” chided Challa.

  “If a fellow can’t swear at a time like this, when can he? ” Tapp complained.

  “Not in my tent,” said Challa firmly.

  Tapp snorted, then winced. “Yes, ma’am, Maker-ma’am.” His wandering gaze returned to Dag. “Aren’t you a patroller? ” he asked querulously.

  “Not one of ours. Courier? ”

  “I was, once,” said Dag. “Now, um . . .”

  Arkady waited with cool interest to see how Dag would explain himself.

  “You know how we exchange young patrollers to other camps in the hope that someone else will have better luck knocking sense into them? ” said Dag.

  “Yes? ” said Tapp.

  “You can think of me as an exchange maker. On trial.” Dag cleared his throat and added, “It’s only my first day, see.”

  “Arkady, Challa, no!” cried Tapp. “You always turn your hamhanded novices loose on me . . . !”

  Arkady grinned. “Calm yourself, Tapp. Dag here’s just observing.”

  He lifted a suddenly sharp coppery gaze to Dag. “And what do you observe?”

  Dag cupped his right hand above the bulge and, reluctantly, opened himself. “His sudden move lifting his bags likely split open a weak place in his belly muscles, and a piece of his gut has worked through, and has got itself twisted around pretty bad. It’s all hot and swollen, which doesn’t help a thing. I’d guess he tried to tough it out too bli—”—Dag glanced at Challa, watching him as closely as Arkady—“too long—I don’t need a litter, I can ride—”

  The partner barked a laugh. “The very words!” Tapp glared at him.

  “And made
it worse getting here,” Dag went on. “How far out was your patrol? ”

  “A two-day ride,” the partner said. “We were up northwest almost to the banks of the Gray.”

  “Sometime on the ride his gut got knotted back on itself like this, and the hole swelled tight, and now he’s in a bad way and no mistake. I’m thinking he’s lucky it wasn’t a three-day ride.”

  Arkady tilted his head in reluctant respect. “Very good. And what would you do about it? ”

  Dag said cautiously, “I knew a fellow up in . . . a place I once patrolled, had something like this. The makers stuffed his gut back inside somehow, persuaded the hole shut, and put him on camp rest till it finished healing. I don’t rightly know how the gut-stuffing part was done.”

  “If there’s no torsion, and the rip in the muscle sheet is large enough, you can actually do it pressing with your fingers,” said Arkady.

  “I did it that way five times on the way here,” Tapp complained, “but my gut kept falling out again, till it all swelled shut.”

  Challa winced.

  Arkady sighed. “And I suppose you insisted you could eat, too? ”

  “Not after the first day,” Tapp said in a smaller voice.

  Arkady rolled his eyes, and muttered, “Patrollers!” He drew breath and turned again to Dag. “Twisted and tight as this is now, it’s going to take some careful groundsetting to restore the gut without rupturing it and spilling blood and rotting food into the abdominal cavity, which is a recipe for infection.”

  Dag nodded understanding. “Like a knife wound to the belly.”

  “Correct. Challa, if I may trouble you to dump a dense ground reinforcement into the inflamed area, we’ll see if we can relieve the tightness a bit before attempting to manipulate anything.”

  Challa nodded, laid her hands on the lump, and closed her eyes. Dag sensed the flow of her unshaped ground-gifting into Tapp’s unhappy flesh. The extra ground would support and speed the body’s own attempts to heal, and so ease the swelling and pain. The simplest of procedures; any number of patrollers learned at least that much groundwork, even the younger Dag. The focus of Challa’s groundwork was much finer, however, and its density impressive.