———
Later that night, Fawn rolled over on clean sheets atop a yielding feather mattress and snuggled up to Dag. The bedside lamp cast a gentle glow over their quiet room. Slow spring rain sounded through the real glass windows, open just enough for a cool breeze to stir the cloth curtains.
Just being inside when the rain was outside seemed pleasure enough for any sensible woman, but she had plenty more blessings to count. Her fingers reached up to flick over his quizzical eyebrows, one, two, comb through his unruly hair, three. This tally might take a while . . .
“Will it be enough? ” she murmured. “Those patrollers tonight? Seems to me they listened to us better than any Lakewalkers yet. Or is this just another stone in the sea? ”
Dag’s lips softened in a smile. “The world’s a pretty big sea. For all our travels, we’ve only seen a slice of it. Enough . . . no, not yet. But it’s a start. And this time, our rocks will make ripples.” He leaned into her hand to kiss it in passing. “Best part is, I don’t have to go around like a stump speaker trying to talk folks into being nicer to each other, one by one. Which really would be like throwing pebbles into the sea.”
He stretched over and picked up her spent walnut necklace from where it lay by the lamp, turning it thoughtfully in his hand. “These will bring folks to us, for their own reasons, and I don’t even have to know what all the reasons are. Send enough farmers out with enough Lakewalker patrols, and they will learn all about Lakewalkers, and bring their true tales home.”
“Well,” said Fawn, “only if the Lakewalkers can resist trying out patroller humor on them.”
His lips twitched. “I’d think any fellow raised on a diet of Bo stories would be able to sort it out . . . Maybe not on the first day.”
Fawn giggled. “Those river boys should do well on patrol, then. That learning won’t be all one way, I expect.”
“Indeed, I’m counting on that.” He held up the necklace, squinting at it. “I do wonder about what Whit and Bo said, back on your birthday when I first showed this off . . . that it wouldn’t be a day, after I set something like this loose in the world, before someone figured out how to misuse it.”
“I’m afraid that’s true.” Fawn sighed. “But if there’s enough folks . . . Those river bandits we ran into were awful, sure, but most of the rivermen were good enough fellows. The river has a reputation, but that doesn’t stop folks from going on it anyhow, and getting plenty of good from it, too. If there’s enough grease, some grit won’t stop the whole wheel from turning.”
“I hope that’s so, Spark.” He set the necklace back and found a better use for his hand, stroking over her shoulder, which made the skin of her arm stand up in happy goose bumps. “I guess we’ll find out.”
She eased back onto her pillow, and his warm palm traced over her belly in a flatteringly interested fashion. She raised her head and squinted over her torso, frowning impatiently. Her waist was still disappointingly slim down there. Six months from now she’d likely be wondering why she’d been in such a hurry to expand, but still. “Is Nattie-Mari all right in there? ”
“Seems to be happy so far. Despite all her adventures with her mama.” He tried to keep his voice light, but just a tinge of remembered desperation leaked through.
She drew a breath, then stopped to consider just how to phrase this so’s he wouldn’t take it wrong. “It’s been a pretty amazing wedding trip. Most fellows only claim they want to give their sweethearts the world. You really did.”
This won a trail of light kisses from her temple to her chin, which was very agreeable, but she couldn’t let herself be distracted yet. She caught his head between her hands before he could work down farther and rob her of words. “So don’t take this as any sort of complaint, but can we try staying home for a while? ”
He laughed. “I’d say you took your turn traveling with a patroller. It’s my turn to stay put with a farmer.” He sobered a little, though not too much, good. “It’ll be a fine, fresh new thing for me, staying home. I’ve never done that before.”
“I’ll try to see you don’t faint from the excitement of it all.”
Being kissed through a grin was good, too. His lips drifted down her throat and struck south, and they gave up talking for a warmer exchange.
———
After a few more days of rest in Blackwater Mills, Arkady pronounced Barr able to ride again, suitably splinted and at a careful plod, on a mildeyed mare borrowed from Whit. Dag, remembering his own much less severe broken arm last year, figured Barr was still in a quelling amount of pain, confirmed by the boy’s wan smile and lack of complaint about the restrictions. Well, a quelled Barr was not altogether a bad thing.
Even at their gentle amble, the straight road north brought them all too soon to their next parting. Barr, Remo, and Rase were to ride on to Pearl Riffle. There Rase would play guest, observe a northern ferry camp in operation, and not least add his testimony to the tale of their malice kills back on the Trace, until Sumac caught up with him again.
Finch and Ash, too, planned to cross the Grace at the Pearl Riffle ferry; they carried a stack of fat letters to West Blue that would guarantee them room and board for quite a while, with lots of sound advice for homesteaders thrown in, most likely.
Sumac’s own plan was to ride with Arkady to Clearcreek, ostensibly to see him safely settled—but given the glitter in her ground, Dag would have bet cash money the couple had more intimate reasons for sticking to each other like burs for the next few days. Sumac herself was vague on whether she meant to leave Arkady at Berry’s and come back to fetch him in a few weeks after presenting Rase, and her resignation, at Hickory Lake Camp, or take him with her straightaway to exhibit to her parents, rather like a hunter returning home with a spectacular bag of game—Dag kept trying not to grin—or have a string-binding on the spot with her uncle Dag doing the blessing and tying, just to make sure, before exposing her husband to his new tent-kin. Dag was happy to stay entirely out of that decision.
Remo turned in his saddle and stared up the shade-dappled road toward his home, his brow clouded with doubt.
“Your kin and camp will be glad to see you,” Dag told him, not entirely recklessly. “Word of how you two helped put down the bandits at Crooked Elbow had to have reached the Riffle months ago, and if a patrol circular about the Trace malices hasn’t got ahead of you already, it’ll be along soon. Grab your forgiveness while the excitement is still high, and you’ll do fine.”
Fawn, atop Magpie, raised an eyebrow at him. “Speaking from experience, Dag? ”
He touched one finger to his temple in wry acknowledgment. “Just don’t try to pull the returning-son trick too often, is all. It does wear out with repetition.”
Barr eased his horse forward and observed, “With this leg of mine, we can each take credit for getting the other home. I guarantee to hobble and yelp a lot. You’ll look good.”
“Home camp’s not going to look the same, I promise you,” said Dag.
Both of you.
“Neither does the view in my shaving mirror,” Barr muttered, and maybe it wasn’t just the leg making him sober. He turned his head and said seriously to Dag, “I’ve learned a lot, since that night in the rain when I first caught up with the Fetch, so mad and cold I could hardly stutter. Thank you.”
Dag’s head cocked back in surprise. And, he had to admit, sneaking gratification.
“Yeah, Dag has a way, that way,” said Whit. “I daresay he’s been teaching me new things ever since that first night my sister dragged him into the kitchen at West Blue. Did I ever say, Good work, Sis? ”
“It was luck, mostly,” said Fawn. “That, and grabbing onto my luck with both hands and not letting go again.”
Or even one hand. Dag nudged Copperhead around next to Magpie.
Sumac, by now well acquainted with Remo’s darker moods and listening with some amusement, put in, “It’ll be fine, Remo. And if it’s not—Fairbolt’s always looking for healthy young
patrollers. He’ll need at least two to replace me, I figure. I’ll put in a word there if you should need it.”
Remo brightened slightly at this prospect of an honorable bolt hole if his return went ill, which Dag thought profoundly unlikely. In any case, when Barr shook his reins and started off, Remo followed. Finch and Ash called their good-byes and fell in behind, pack animals trailing.
Dag watched them out of earshot before he said to Sumac, “You really intend to inflict that pair on Fairbolt? ”
“Fairbolt has nothing to do with it. I promised the Crow girls when I exchanged last fall that I would bring them back some cute men. As it seems Rase is bespoke already, I have to make my word good somehow.”
Dag considered Fairbolt and Massape’s array of black-haired granddaughters, lovely one by one, formidable in a mob.
“There’s enough of them, one’s bound to like a gloomy boy and another a flitter-wit,” Sumac went on cheerfully. “Feed them to the Crows, I say.”
“What a fate,” murmured Dag, brows rising at this riveting vision.
“Just so’s the girls don’t get them switched the wrong way around,” said Fawn. “Again.”
“I trust Massape,” said Sumac.
———
Berry was by this time wildly anxious for Clearcreek, so they picked up the pace.
“I hope the place is still standing,” she said, kicking her horse along between Copperhead and Magpie. “Papa leaves—left—two of his cousins to look after it—aunts, I call them, ’cause they’re older than me, one’s a widow and one’s never married. The widow has a son who comes around a couple of times in the week to help with the heavy work.”
Fawn pictured a Clearcreek version of Ash Tanner, and nodded encouragement.
“I wrote two letters—Whit helped me—one after Crooked Elbow and one after we was married in Graymouth, and sent them upriver with keeler friends. Bad news and good. I hope they got there.” She added after a reflective moment, “In the right order.”
“If Clearcreek’s as much of a river town as you say, the word about Crooked Elbow will have got there one way or another ages ago,” Fawn pointed out. “They’ll have had months to get over the bad news. If the good news only arrives when you do, well, that’ll likely be all right.”
Berry nodded, and slowed good-naturedly when Fawn complained that if they did any more trotting, either she or Nattie-Mari was going to start hiccupping.
Nevertheless, Clearcreek came into view over the lip of a steep wooded climb the next afternoon, with two hours to spare till sunset.
The valley spread out in gold-green splendor before Fawn’s eager eyes, with long blue shadows growing from the western hills. Off to the left, the broad Grace River gleamed beyond the feeder-creek’s mouth. A tidy village . . . homesteads scattered up the vale with evening cook fires sending up gilded threads of smoke . . . and a stream, Fawn saw as they descended the long slope and clopped across it on a timber span, that earned its name. Fawn stood in her stirrups and gazed out under the flat of her hand as Berry eagerly pointed out landmarks of her childhood.
Even Sumac and Arkady, riding behind engrossed mainly in each other, closed up to listen.
They rode along a split-rail fence enclosing a narrow pasture, with a craggy, tree-clad hill rising behind. “Look, there’s the pond!” Fawn said in delight. And a placid-looking cow, a few goats, and some chickens.
They rounded a stand of chestnut trees into a short lane also lined with split rails, and the house spilled into view.
It was an unpainted warren, looking as if a hive of flatboat carpenters had worked on it for years. Instead of having its stories neatly stacked, like the house in West Blue, it was as if a load of crates had been tossed down the hill, connected by chance one to another. Half a dozen chimneys stuck up here and there. It must have held a much larger family a few generations ago, and looked as if it hoped to again. What a splendid place to grow up in. For all its rambling oddity, it had quite a proper front porch, long and railed and roofed, and if it looked a little like a boat deck, well, that was all right.
Hawthorn whooped and galloped ahead. Hod stuck close to Bo, looking shy and hopeful. Fawn could only think that Berry’s letters must have got here in the right order, because two stout women ran out onto the porch, both looking excited but not surprised, and waved vigorously. Hawthorn jumped from his horse and bounded up the steps, and one of the women dried her hands on her apron, hugged him, and made universal signs to head and hip and heart, My, how you’ve grown!
The other shaded her eyes; Berry grinned fit to split her face and pointed emphatically at Whit, This one’s the husband!
The aunt in the apron clasped her hands over her head and shook them in a gesture of shared, if not downright lewd, female triumph that actually made Whit blush. As they rode close enough at last for voices to carry, she cupped her hands to her mouth and called, “Welcome home!”
Fawn glanced at Dag, who was looking very bemused and a little bit wary—just like a Lakewalker dropped down among strange farmers.
Welcome home to a place we’ve never seen before. But if a place was home because it held your past, wasn’t it equally so if it held your future?
She stretched out her hand to him; he shifted his reins to his hook and grasped it in a swift squeeze.
In the sunset light, his gold eyes glinted like fire.
Epilogue
Footsteps clumped on the stoop; at the knock on the kitchen door, Fawn grabbed a cloth, pulled her pot on its iron hook away from the hearth fire, and hurried to answer. She hoped it wasn’t another emergency. But the door swung open onto a damp and chilly afternoon, and Barr. He wore patroller togs, smelled of horse and the outdoors, and walked without a stick. Mist beaded in his dun-blond hair, gleaming in the watery light.
“Hey, Fawn!”
“Well! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes! Come in, come in!”
He shouldered through into the pungent warmth, staring around.
Fawn spared a look-see out at the sodden brown landscape. Warmer air had moved up the valley of the Grace last night, breathing wisps of lowlying fog across the sad streaks of dirty snow. The gray tailings wouldn’t be lasting much longer. If not quite spring, this was definitely the tag end of winter. No other riders were waiting in the yard, nor approaching on the part of the road she could see from here. She shut the door and turned to her unexpected guest.
Barr rubbed chapped red hands and moved gratefully toward the fire, reminding her of the very first time she’d ever met him. He was much less wet and cold and distraught this time, happily. He sniffed the air. “What are you cooking? ”
“Medicine.”
“Oh, whew! I thought it was dinner, and was worried.”
Fawn laughed, and pointed to the volume propped open on the kitchen table. “Remember that blank book Hawthorn ’n Hod gave me back on my nineteenth birthday in Graymouth? I used it to write down all the recipes for the remedies they were making up in the medicine tent at New Moon Cutoff, and drew pictures of the plants and made notes about the herb maker’s groundwork, too. It came with me in my saddlebags when we went north, you bet. Arkady was so surprised when I pulled it out. He hadn’t realized how much I had in there. ”
Barr eased out of his deerskin jacket and hung it over the back of a chair to dry. “Yeah, I ran into Sumac when I went to put my horse away in your barn. She looked downright cheerful. And, um, bulky. Floating around like those boats we saw down on the sea.” He made hand gestures to indicate a bellying sail.
“It’s the feather quilt I padded her coat with, when Arkady got to fretting about how much time she spends out with the horses in the cold. She’s less alarming out of it. It won’t be long till their baby comes, though.” She smiled. “It would make you laugh how much Arkady fusses for her, if you didn’t know his history. Instead it’s sort of sad and hopeful all at once. I must say, I suspect it’s no bad thing for a man to wait till he’s older to have his children. He seems to
appreciate things more.”
Barr smiled briefly. Bleakly . . . ? Fawn shook off the odd fancy and went on: “Fortunately, Sumac doesn’t much put up with his coddling. A lot like her mother Omba, I’d say. She’s pretty much taken over all our horses, and manages the barn the way Omba used to run Mare Island. Or still runs it, I guess. Did you see my Grace’s filly Dancer when you were out there? Isn’t she a sweetheart? ”
“Yep, Sumac made sure to show her off first thing.”
Fawn swung her pot back closer to the coals. “Are you out with a patrol?” The valley of the Clear Creek lay at the easternmost edge of Pearl Riffle Camp’s patrol territory. She wondered if she should offer the barn loft for bedrolls, except that Sumac would surely have beaten her to it. “Or are you courierin’? ”
“No, I’m on my own. A private visit. Came to see Dag. And you.”
“Leg troubling you? ”
“No, it’s—oh!” Starting to drag a chair noisily toward the hearth, he spotted the big basket tucked in the room’s corner and lifted instead, setting the legs down two by two with exaggerated care. In a whisper, he said, “Is that Nattie-Mari, then? Asleep—will my talking wake her up? ”
“Likely not, as long as you don’t yell or drop things. She just fed, so she’s for dreamland for a bit yet. It won’t matter if she does wake up— she sleeps better through the night if I don’t let her nap all day.” Fawn yawned. “And so do I. There’s so much to do, though, it’s tempting to let her sleep too much.”
The Sharing Knife Book Four: Horizon Page 41
