The Sharing Knife Book Four: Horizon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Well, sure, I suppose so.” Fawn looked around. “Would over by the trees be private enough? ”

  “Yes, anything.” His hand stretched and clenched, as if he wanted to grab her arm and hurry her along, but didn’t quite dare. They came to a halt at the fringe of the woods, in sight of the market but out of earshot.

  Not out of groundsense range, naturally, but she doubted groundsense could make anything more of the agitated farm youth than she did.

  Finch’s tense face was damp with perspiration and flushed with exertion, making his blue eyes look incongruously bright.

  “Is your husband still of a mind to treat farmers? ” he asked abruptly.

  He watched her mouth with painful intensity, as if expecting his heart’s salvation to issue from her lips.

  “Well . . . in the north, in due course, sure. But he’s just an apprentice here. He’s not allowed.”

  His hand swept this aside as if he barely heard her. His words fell out in a breathless tumble. “It’s my nephew Sparrow. My brother’s little boy. He’s barely five. He’s got the lockjaw. And it’s all my fault! I let him run barefoot in the barn. There was this nail, went halfway though his poor little foot. I was supposed to be watching him! He cries and cries, when he can. The fever came on first. The straining started last night. The screams are bad, but the silences are worse, oh gods.”

  “Yeah, I know lockjaw,” said Fawn slowly. “Violet Stonecrop’s little brother died of it, oh, years back. They were neighbors of ours, when I was growing up in West Blue. I didn’t see, but Violet told me all about it, later.” Horrifying descriptions.

  “Can he come? Can your Lakewalker husband help? ” Finch clutched her sleeve. “Can you ask—him, whatever his name is? Please? My sisterin- law cries, and Mama’s so mad she won’t even look at me. Please, can you ask him?” The clutch became a shaking grip, painful. “It’s all so awful!”

  “Dag,” said Fawn, answering his least question while trying desperately to think. “Dag Bluefield. He insisted on taking my name when we were wed, the way Lakewalkers do. Took a farmer name to be more Lakewalker. ’S funny.” She would have to catch Dag alone, not in front of everyone in the medicine tent. She glanced at the sun. Near noon— he might be back to the house for lunch.

  Or she could spare Dag the decision. Because this one was going to be hard no matter what way it played out, though with a youngster involved, she didn’t have a lot of doubt which way Dag would jump. She knew the camp rules as well as he did. She could send Finch packing, back to his daylight nightmare, and never share the dilemma. It wasn’t a good time for Dag. He’d seemed so strained since the pig roast. Constantly looking at her, as if wondering—what? As if regretting how his farmer bride divided him from his people?

  Out in the wide world, there were any number of folks sick or dying right this minute, and what was one more? Arkady would surely forbid it, if he caught even a whiff of the plan. Fawn wasn’t even sure Lakewalkers could do anything for lockjaw; she hadn’t seen a case since she’d started work in the medicine tent. This could cost Dag his training. And how much would that cost others, down the line?

  She let out her breath in a slow trickle, knowing her choice was no choice at all. “I can’t promise he’ll come. But I can ask him. Come along.”

  Finch exhaled in a long huff, nodded, seemed to realize at last that his grip was hurting her, and let her go. She looked up and gave a wave to Cerie and Nola, watching her dubiously across the grass, which didn’t explain a thing but at least made it look like she wasn’t sneaking. There was a path over the wooded ridge that went nearly straight to Arkady’s place, much quicker than going around by the gate. The camp’s perimeter, she had learned, wasn’t as tightly guarded as that gate made it appear.

  Nevertheless, she’d better not push their luck. When they were almost in sight of the water, she told Finch, “Stay here, down in this little hollow. Arkady’s place is just a couple hundred paces farther on. I’ll bring back Dag, or . . . or his word. I might be a little while.”

  He nodded silently and hunkered down on a fallen log below the earthen banks, turning his face up to a dapple of sunlight, eyes squeezing shut. Fawn hurried down the path.

  She found Dag and Arkady just finishing lunch, packing up the basket.

  The Oleana boys had gone off somewhere, good.

  “Fawn!” said Dag, rising from the table in surprise. “I thought you’d be at the market. Are you hungry? ”

  She gave her head a quick shake.

  He hesitated, giving her that uncomfortable penetrating Daggish look. Groundsense, gods, her skin might as well be glass. “Are you all right? ”

  “Something’s come up,” she told him, not glancing at Arkady. “Can I talk to you private? ”

  “Ah, hm,” said Arkady, his brows lifting inexplicably. “Perhaps it’s as well. I’ll walk on back to the medicine tent, Dag. You take all the time you need.” With a benign wave, he took the basket with him, setting it outside the front door. Well, this was easier than she’d expected. So far. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing. Fawn waited till she could no longer hear his footsteps going up the path.

  “Fawn,” Dag began slowly, “there’s something—” but she overrode him, saying, “Oh, Dag, it’s so horrible!”

  “Huh? ” he said warily. “No, Spark, it won’t be that bad, I’ll be with you every—”

  “It’s Finch Bridger’s nephew, poor tyke. He stepped on a nail and got the lockjaw. Oh, Dag, I know Arkady won’t like it, but can we go to him? He’s only five years old!”

  Dag blinked. Paused. Blinked again. “Who? ”

  Rapidly, Fawn related what Finch had told her. “Can we go to him? Do we dare? Can Lakewalker medicine makers even treat lockjaw? ”

  Dag replied, with agonizing slowness, “I’ve read up on it in Arkady’s casebooks. They do groundwork on the nerves, and try to get enough water and food down between the spasms to keep the patient alive till the worst passes. I’ve only run across two cases. One was a woman at Hickory Lake came down with it—after childbirth, gods, there’s another!—Hoharie brought her through somehow. Didn’t see that one, only heard about it—tent gossip. Another was a patroller caught way out on the big summer wilderness sweep up in Luthlia. The treatment failed. He shared. Not right away—when he and his patrol couldn’t bear it anymore.”

  “Do you think you could do that nerve work? Despite not having seen it? ”

  Dag vented a long sigh, scratched his head. “How old did you say this youngster was, again? ”

  “Rising five, Finch says.”

  “Absent gods,” Dag muttered.

  “The Bridger farm is about ten miles off. Finch has a cart. Do you think we could get there and back before Arkady . . . um, no, likely not.”

  Dag shook his head. “It can take days to pull someone through lockjaw. Or . . . not.”

  “I can pack up what we need for some overnights in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “I’d really rather you stayed here.”

  “And face Arkady alone? ” She shook her head vigorously. “Don’t you dare leave me to him! He’d make mincemeat of me. It’s going to be bad enough when we get back. Anyhow, it would be madness to send you into an upset farmer household without me to ease them along. To know what Lakewalkerish things need explaining to them, and how.”

  “That is unquestionably true.” He stared at her unnervingly. “Well . . . it’s not a very contagious sort of disease, in the usual course of things. You might be safe around it.”

  “Well, of course!”

  “If you didn’t get too close.”

  She stared back at him, perplexed. What was he going on about, here? Never mind. Once they got to the Bridgers’, she would deal with things as they needed to be dealt with, same as always. She wet her lips.

  Marshaled what had to be said. “Now—you sure, Dag? Because if you’re not, I can go tell Finch no myself.” That much, at least, she could spare him. “This could c
ost you Arkady.”

  He smiled wryly down at her, traced his thumb across her warm cheek. “If it does . . . then his price is too high, and I’m too poor an old patroller to afford him.”

  She gave a short nod, swallowing the lump in her throat. “We’d best bustle about, then.”

  She went to their room to pack a sack, and he went to Arkady’s work chamber to borrow a few items of equipment he thought he might need. Quite without permission, and Fawn suspected that wasn’t going to go down too well with Arkady either. She returned to the main room to find him writing Arkady a brief, truthful note.

  Well . . . it said he’d been asked away to treat a sick youngster, and not to expect them back at any particular time. If he left out the word farmer in front of youngster, it wasn’t a lie. Nor even, in all probability, a concealment.

  She led Dag back to the sun-speckled hollow to find Finch sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped around his knees, his head bent.

  When he heard them approaching he scrambled to his feet, wiping his sleeve across his wet face.

  He stared in shock at Dag, looking back and forth—or up and down—between them. “Uh . . .”

  “This is Dag,” said Fawn, grabbing his left arm in a possessive hug.

  Snapping eyes daring Finch to say boo, defying him to stare at the hook, and if he blurted one word about how short and young she was, or how old Dag was . . .

  Dag nodded politely. “Finch.”

  “Sir!” Finch gulped. “You’re, um . . .” He peered sideways. And up.

  And back to Fawn’s tense face. “ . . . not what I expected.”

  “Generally not, but folks get over it,” said Fawn rather tartly, then controlled her prickliness. Finch had enough troubles; he didn’t need to know what they might be sacrificing in his cause. “I’ve been thinking. It might be more discreet if we were to circle around and meet your cart at the end of the road, out of sight of the market.”

  “I don’t think it’ll make much difference in the end, Spark,” said Dag.

  “Still, there’s no point in going fishing for questions and arguments and delay.”

  Since Finch nodded vigorously, this plan was adopted. A quick walk through the open woods brought them to the head of the road not long after the cart arrived, and Dag helped her swing their sacks up into the back. She sat next to Finch, and Dag took the rear-facing seat behind them, folding in his long legs with a sigh. Finch slapped the reins across his mare’s back, urging her into as fast a trot as the roads would allow.

  ———

  To Dag’s eye, the Bridger farm looked not so snug and rich as Fawn’s family place in West Blue, being more crowded and cluttered, its flat yard still full of churned mud from the winter rains. But it seemed to have all the essentials: a big barn, a large woodlot, outbuildings in varied states of repair, fences penning cows, pigs, and chickens, if not their smell. The unpainted wooden farmhouse was two stories high and foursquare.

  Dag followed Finch into the dim center hall feeling they were a noisy invasion; for a moment, the hush seemed deathly, and he thought, Too late!, not knowing whether to be grieved or relieved. But a moan from above-stairs, and a woman’s sob, cured that impression as fast as did his reaching groundsense.

  They clumped up the stairs into a crowded corner room. On a bed that seemed far too big for him, a small boy writhed in pain. His lips were drawn back in the distinctive near-grin of his disease, his neck rigid, his breath whistling through his tight little teeth. A young woman, clearly his frantic mother, was patting and stroking him as if she could coax his straining muscles to relax. His grim grandmother sat on the bed’s other side, holding his clutching hand and looking exhausted.

  Both stood and stared at the apparition of Dag, eyes filling with fear and desperate hope. A few days earlier, Dag thought, it would likely have just been fear. Dag swallowed and drew Fawn in front of him like a human shield. His own ground seemed to center itself, drawn like a lodestone to the agony in the bed. “Fawn,” he muttered, “deal with them. I need to see to this.”

  He released his grip on her right shoulder, and she stepped forward, her motion catching the women’s eyes. Smiling, Fawn gave her little knee dip, and said brightly, “How de’! I’m Fawn Bluefield and this is my husband, Dag Bluefield. I guess Finch has told you how he met me in the New Moon farmer’s market. Dag here’s training up to be a Lakewalker medicine maker.”

  Good of her to get that training up in right away, to stop them from expecting such miracles as Arkady could no doubt produce. Names were offered in return in thin voices: Cherry Bridger, the mama, Missus Bridger, the grandmama. Finch’s mother stared at her careless son who had produced this Lakewalker prodigy, new doubt sapping old anger.

  “Now,” Fawn went on briskly, “the first thing Dag needs to do with little Sparrow here is take a look at him in his ground, and then we can see how to go on from there. So if you could just let him by, ma’am . . .” She pursed her lips and picked the grandmother to draw out of Dag’s way.

  “Take off my arm harness first, Spark. I doubt I’ll need it for anything here.” Fawn nodded, folded up his left sleeve, and went to work on his buckles. He bent his head toward her, but watched the others out of the corner of his eye. This ritual, with sweet-faced Fawn making short work of the ugly, threatening hook, always seemed to have a soothing effect on farmer patients. Dag wasn’t sure if it was pure distraction, or his display of vulnerability, or a signal, or just a show: You’ve all seen a man rolling up his sleeves to get down to work? Well, watch this!

  Dag rubbed the red marks left by the leather straps on his arm, and slipped past the wide-eyed women. He abandoned his attempt to marshal a greeting for a frightened five-year-old when it became obvious the boy was too gripped by his spasms to hear or understand. He muttered in Fawn’s ear, “Now, if it looks like I’ve gone in too deep or am staying too long, slap me on the side of the head the way you saw Arkady do. Hard as you have to. Can you do that? ”

  She nodded firmly. Dag sank to his knees at the bedside, the visible world already fading from his senses, the swirl of its true substance rising to the fore. Behind him, he could hear Fawn’s cheerful voice raised in the beginner lecture: Now, let me tell you all something about Lakewalker groundsense . . .

  The child’s ground was roiling. Down and in. The flare of fever was familiar by now, not good but not the main problem. The deep puncture in the foot hadn’t been cleaned out properly, and was hot and dirty and poisonous inside despite its deceptively healed surface skin. But it was indeed the frenzied noise along the nerves that drove the relentless muscle spasms. Dag sent soothing groundwork twisting down their branches like releasing dye into a stream, and felt the frenzy slacken.

  He fought his way up and out before groundlock set in, and came back blinking to a room that seemed awfully quiet. He sat back on his heels. Looked around vaguely, found Fawn. “How long was I in? ”

  “ ’Bout ten minutes. Dag, it was amazing! You could just see his poor little muscles give way, one by one!”

  A new figure had arrived, clearly Finch’s older brother, staring hard at the scene. He held Sparrow’s mother tightly around the shoulders.

  “Is he better? Is he well? ” she choked.

  “Not yet, ma’am,” Dag told her regretfully. “Just a temporary respite. I’m going to have to go back in again when this wears off. But each treatment buys some time. First, we have to get as much drink and food into him as the little fellow can hold, to keep the disease from killing him of starvation. And we need to go in and do a better job cleaning out that puncture. We’ll need boiled water—Fawn, can you see to it? And some sort of soft, rich food, but easy to keep down—I don’t know—”

  Fawn nodded. “I expect oatmeal boiled up with cream and honey would do for a start.”

  “Perfect.”

  The women, anxious for something effective to do at last, clattered out in a body. The boy’s father—what had they said his name was?—Lark Bridge
r, that was it—took the chair formerly held by the grandmother.

  Finch leaned his forehead against the tall bedpost and closed his eyes.

  “Papa? Uncle Finch?” A weak little voice.

  Lark took up the boy’s hand. “Hey, chirping Sparrow!” His voice was hoarse, seeming unaccustomed to such softness. “Good to hear from you at last! Your uncle Finch has brought this Lakewalker fellow here to help you out.”

  “He’s funny-looking,” said Finch, “but he’s all right.”

  The boy’s head turned. Grave young eyes found Dag, squinted. Sparrow must have agreed with his uncle’s assessment, because he didn’t recoil, but said the first thing a child, whether Lakewalker or farmer, inevitably asked: “What happened to your hand? ”

  Dag ignored the embarrassed rustle from the grown-ups, and gave the child a straight answer: “Wolf bit it off.”

  “Oh!” said Sparrow, sounding impressed as only a five-year-old could; but then, more unusually, blinked sympathetic tears. “Did it hurt? ”

  “Yes, but it was a long time ago. It’s fine now. Hey, now, it’s all right, don’t cry for me. We still have some work to do healing you, do you know? ”

  Blinks. Suspicion. “What kind o’ work? ”

  “I know you won’t feel like it, but you have to drink and eat as much as you can—all your mama and Fawn bring you. Your muscles are working harder than plowing a forty-acre field, see, and you need your food. Then Fawn and I—she’s my wife, that real pretty girl you just saw—are going to clean out your foot a bit more.”

  In a way, Dag was grateful for this task; it would be visible to farmer eyes, comprehensible, reassuring. Though on second thought, he wasn’t sure he wanted Fawn so closely involved with the wound. He made Finch wash his hands in preparation to help, instead.

  “I hurt all over . . .” Sparrow moaned to his papa.

  I’ll bet.

  Dag’s initial groundwork was already wearing off by the time Fawn came back with the boiled water, the boy beginning to twitch and spasm. As she set up their supplies, Dag went in again. It was easier this time in that he had some idea what he was doing, but he could feel the drain on his ground, and he began to dread the long night to come.