“You never know,” said Berry. “If they weren’t busted to pieces when they went under the towhead, sometimes they come up again all waterlogged and get picked up downstream by folks. What was your cargo?”
“Barrel staves, mostly, and bear and pig hides. Kegs of bear grease and lard. I don’t care for the staves, but I regret the other. A passel of bears and pigs, those were, and not easily come by.” He glanced at his ash spear, leaning in a corner.
“Your staves would likely be too warped to be anything but firewood, later, and the hides, well, it’ll depend on how long they soak, and if they can be dried again without going moldy. Some of your kegs might make it, if they’re good and tight.”
Chicory brightened at this news; his partner Bearbait looked less enthusiastic.
Fawn finished washing and drying the wounds, then traded places with Dag, who bent in for a close inspection with both eye and ground-sense. Dag reported, “You’re well gouged and scraped, and your joints are wrenched sore, but nothing’s dislocated or broken. Bleed pretty freely last night, did you?”
“He was a sight,” confirmed Bearbait. “I was ready to bust him in the jaw for laughing like that while looking like that.”
“But the bleeding’s mostly stopped on its own, now.” Dag gently worked out a few deep splinters with his ghost hand and tweezers. “The rips are too ragged to make stitching you up worthwhile, I think.” He fingered a hanging ribbon of skin, considered whether to detach it with knife or scissors, then, on impulse, ripped its ground crossways in a slice as thin as paper. The strip fell away into his hand; he pitched it into the fire. “Did that hurt?”
“What?” said Chicory, trying to crane his sore neck to see over his shoulder.
The tiny bit of the Raintree man’s ground in his own felt little different than a normal ground reinforcement; not even as odd as a mosquito or an oat. Dag removed the other two bad strips the same way, trying for as fine a slice as he could. They did not bleed. Better stop here and think about this one, eh? “You’re going to have scars there.”
Chicory snorted indifference. “I’ve done worse to myself.”
Dag didn’t doubt it. “Give me your say-so, and I’ll put a little Lakewalker-style ground reinforcement in the deepest gouges to fight infection, which is the biggest danger left. Then have Fawn put some ointment on and wrap them up so the scabs don’t crack when you move. In a few days, a clean shirt should be enough to protect them while they finish healing.”
Chicory’s brows arched wryly. “If I had a shirt, I could wash it, sure, if I had a bucket. And soap.” He hesitated. “What’s that thing you say you want to put in me?”
Fawn translated, “A touch of Lakewalker magic healing.”
“Oh.” Chicory looked both impressed and alarmed. “That’d be a new start, for sure. All right…” He craned suspiciously as Dag laid in lines of ground, but his lips parted as his hurts eased. “How de’! That’s a strange thing. Never had a Lakewalker offer me anything like that before!”
“I aim to be a medicine maker to farmers, once I learn more of the trade,” Dag explained. “It isn’t anything anyone’s done before.”
“Mighty strange place, this big river,” sighed Chicory.
Plans were made to deliver the boatwrecked men to a town two days down the river, where Chicory hoped to find an old friend who would help them to shoes, clothes, and enough gear to commence walking home. Meanwhile, Berry undertook to watch for signs of their lost boats. The exhausted men slept in piles and didn’t wake again until the Fetch tied to the bank for the night and Fawn had to clear the decks of her kitchen to start supper.
Dag wasn’t sure if he wanted to wrap a cloak of husbandly protection around Fawn, or clutch her to him like a talisman against such a concentration of strange farmers. Just who was supposed to be protecting whom? But with fifteen people crammed aboard the Fetch, privacy—not to mention private conversation—was out of the question.
Dag quickly learned that Chicory’s crew were mainly his friends and neighbors from a small town on a feeder creek to the lower Beargrass, southwest of Farmer’s Flats and so not in the direct path of last summer’s horrors, news both Dag and Fawn took in with relief—his covert, hers warmly expressed. Chicory had acquired his tag of Captain by getting up a troop of local volunteers to go help out when the troubles began, when the malice had grown advanced enough to kidnap and mind-slave Raintree farmers, marching them to attack other settlements in turn. By the looks they exchanged, Barr and Remo were inclined to mock this self-appointed rank; Dag, the more he listened, was not.
Ford Chicory proved to be an excellent tale-teller. He was no blowhard like Boss Wain; his place at the center of his tales was as often as the butt of the joke as the hero, but he had a knack for holding his listeners in thrall either way. After dinner, aware of his audience and perhaps in return for the boat’s hospitality, he even told a creepy ghost story that had both Hawthorn and Hod bug-eyed and half of the crew pretending not to be.
Tales now being as readily exchanged as coins in a dice game, everyone clustered around the hearth as Chicory and his crew learned in turn about Berry’s quest, Dag and Fawn’s West Blue marriage, and—inevitably, Dag supposed—Dag’s place in the campaign against the Raintree malice. Dag did not willingly volunteer his words, but with Fawn, Whit, the crew of the Fetch, and once in a while even Barr and Remo chiming in, he didn’t need to do much more than adjust their Dag-tales for overenthusiasm. As the Raintree men’s picture of him shifted from itinerant medicine maker to ex-patrol captain, they grew warier—Dag could not decide if this was a relief or an annoyance—but Chicory’s attention sharpened.
“I’d seen old blight bogle lairs when I was out hunting, from time to time,” Chicory told Dag. Dag wondered how often the man had ventured into forbidden territory above the old cleared line, but now did not seem the time to ask. Chicory went on, “Gray patches, all nasty and dead. It didn’t take no high-nosed patrollers to convince me to stay off ’em, no sir!”
Dag let his groundsense flick out. A successful hunter like Chicory might well possess a rudimentary groundsense like Aunt Nattie’s, if some passing Lakewalker had climbed his family tree a few generations back. It was impolite to inquire, though, and since Chicory seemed to have led an irregular wandering life far from his birth kin, he might not know himself.
The Raintree man continued, “I’ve met your patrols, run across your camps—they never invited me in, mind, more like invited me to move along—but I’d never seen Lakewalkers run before.”
“They went streaming past us like rabbits, when we got up north of the Flats,” said a crewman in a faintly scornful tone.
“Now, that was the women and their young shavers, mostly,” said Chicory in a fair-minded way.
“Malices snatch the youngsters first, by preference,” Dag said. “When a malice goes on the move, Lakewalkers have learned to get the little ones out of the path as fast as they can, with the rest—off-duty patrollers, other adults—for rearguard. Likely you didn’t get far enough north to meet the rearguard, or the malice might have taken you, too.”
“We met plenty of them mud-men,” Bearbait put in, face darkening in memory. “Both before and after they lost their wits. Ugly mugs, they were.”
“The malice makes them up out of animals it catches, you know,” Fawn said. “By groundwork.” She went on to describe the grotesqueries of the mud-man nursery she’d seen at Bonemarsh Camp, with such simple directness that she seemed unaware of how thoroughly she was topping Chicory’s ghost story for keeping folks awake in their bedrolls later.
Upon reflection, Dag was not surprised to learn that Chicory’s troop had acquitted itself well upon the mud-men—hunting and killing bears and wild pigs would have trained them in both methods and daring. But Chicory’s face grew graver when he remarked, “Ugly as they was, they didn’t bother me near as much as those bogle-maddened farmers we met up with. Because they weren’t driven witless. It took you a little t
o realize they weren’t right in the head, because they walked and talked as if what they was doing was sensible, and they looked just like anybody else, too. You couldn’t hardly tell who was on what side, till they jumped on you, and then it could be too late. What we did find, though”—he rubbed his chin and frowned at Dag in the lantern glow and firelight—“was that if we rode in and grabbed up a few, and took ’em back south far enough, they’d come to their senses. We first found that out trying to capture one to make him talk. Got him far enough away and he talked, all right—not that you could make much sense of it through the crying. After that, we tried to catch as many as we could, and carry ’em away till they found their lost minds again. Wouldn’t any of them join us to go fight, after, though.”
Dag’s brows rose in increased respect. “I didn’t realize farmers could do that, on the edge of a malice war. Huh. That would be…good. Draw down the malice’s forces.”
“You took a chance,” said Remo in disapproval. “If you’d got too close to the malice, it might have caught your minds in turn, and then the malice’s forces would have been up, not down.”
Chicory said stiffly, “Seems to me such a chance would’ve overtaken a man sitting still, just the same.” He eyed Dag sidelong, and added, “I was never too fond of Lakewalkers, and the ones I’ve met have pretty much returned the favor—but I do admit, after last summer I don’t like blight bogles a whole lot more.”
The lead-in could not be spurned; Dag set Fawn to describing Greenspring again, as he did not think he could bear to. Fawn and Whit together managed a creditable explanation of groundsense and sharing knives. Barr and Remo listened with troubled faces to these deep Lakewalker secrets being bandied around; the boatmen, with expressions ranging from disturbed to disbelieving. Chicory, though, just grew quiet and intent.
Chicory seemed a village leader of sorts—if a terrible boatman—with initiative and wits enough on dry land to persuade friends and kin to follow him into discernible danger, for a good cause. His words, as well as the slices of his ground, gave Dag much to digest as he retreated with Fawn to their curtained nook. The bits of ground were converting far more readily than those of the mosquito or even the oats, nearly indistinguishable from an ordinary supporting or healing ground reinforcement. As with malices, it seemed people made the best food. Lakewalker cannibals, indeed. Neither Chicory’s ghost tales nor his war stories had unnerved Dag, but as Fawn cuddled into the curve of his body and drifted into sleep, that last reflection kept him awake for a long time.
The Fetch didn’t handle any worse for its added passengers, but neither did it handle any better, Dag noted the next morning as he took his turn on the roof. Hod was on the opposite oar and Whit at the rudder, very proud to be permitted to steer all on his own down this straight stretch. Berry would be coming up shortly to take over, as, she said, the next bend would bring them to one of the trickiest passages on the river. Berry had allowed a few of the Raintree flatties to volunteer for oar duty, but only one at a time and under her or Bo’s close supervision. The rest seemed willing to help out with the increased scullery chores their presence as inadvertent guests had caused, so except for the unavoidable crowding and the friction on the Lakewalkers’ groundsenses, a day more of their company seemed likely to pass pleasantly enough.
Since a chill wind funneled up the valley, with sunshine intermittent between the scudding blue-gray clouds, most everyone stayed inside near the hearth or curled up in nests amongst the stores. As Dag studied the river, two men in a skiff put out from a feeder creek beneath a bluff, rowing in their direction. When they pulled to within shouting distance, the older one rose up on one knee from his bench and hailed them, waving his hat.
“Hallo the boat!”
“How de’!” Whit called cheerfully in return. “What can we do for you fellows?”
“Well, it’s more like what we can do for you. That last flood messed up the channels all through Crooked Elbow something fierce! I’ll undertake to pilot you through safe.”
This was a common way all along the river for local men to earn a bit of coin. Berry, now that she’d come to trust her Lakewalker crew’s groundsenses, usually turned down such offers politely, though she did enjoy the exchange of river gossip that went with. Sometimes, the rowboats also brought out fresh food or other goods to sell or trade.
“I’m not the boat boss,” Whit called back, “but what do you charge?”
“Just ten copper crays to the Elbow. Twenty to the Wrist.”
A nominal sum, well worth it to the average boat given the time—or worse—that could be lost to an accident. Dag opened his ground, furled to block out the uproar of the crowd on the Fetch. And paused in his sculling.
“Huh,” he said to Hod and Whit. “That’s funny. One of those fellows is as beguiled as all get-out.”
“By a malice?” said Whit in alarm. Hod gaped curiously.
“No, there’s not a touch of blight-sign. He must have had some encounter with a Lakewalker, lately.” Dag stared as the men rowed nearer.
The beguiled man was middle-aged, shabby, rough-looking, a typical tough riverman. He hardly seemed the sort to have attracted the attention of some female Lakewalker lover. Perhaps he had less visible attractions, but his ground was certainly no brighter than the rest of him. He hadn’t been healed of any obvious injury lately. The other, Dag could imagine drawing a female eye: well built, young, open-faced, with crisp brown hair, and cleanly in his dress and bearing. But no beguilement distorted his ground, for all that it was furrowed by old stress. It was a puzzle.
“You can come up and talk to our boss, I guess,” Whit called down as the skiff came alongside. “I don’t think we need a pilot, but we have some things to trade, if you’re interested. Some real fine Glassforge window glass, to start.”
The skiff men waved apparent understanding. Hod shipped his oar and swung down to the bow to help them tie their boat and clamber up past the chicken pen. They both gazed around with interest. The pilot could have been watching his prospective customers approach for the past ten miles from a vantage on that bluff, Dag realized.
“Hey, Boss!” Hod called through the front hatch. “More visitors!”
Dag locked his oar and walked forward to the roof edge. He looked down to see the top of Berry’s blond head bob through. She stopped as if stone-struck; the tin cup in her hand fell to the deck with a clank and rolled disregarded, spilling a last mouthful of tea.
The handsome young man looked up at her with recognition in his gray eyes and, Dag would swear, a flash of horror.
“Alder!” Berry shrieked, and flung herself forward to wrap around the startled fellow nearly from top to toe. His arms hesitated in the air, then closed around her to return the hug. “Alder, Alder!” Berry repeated joyously, her face muffled in his shoulder. “You’re alive!”
19
Berry’s radiant joy seemed to light up the air around her; in contrast, Alder’s roiling ground darkened in consternation. Dag set his feet apart and stared down, hand on his jaw, fingers spread hard across his lips. What is this? Hod grinned uncertainly. Whit abandoned his steering oar and came to Dag’s side to peer over, his eyes widening in a suddenly set face.
“Hawthorn, Bo! Fawn, come on out here! I’ve found Alder!” Berry called.
Alder’s hand made a futile gesture and fell to his side; he stretched his mouth in a smile as Hawthorn came bolting out of the hatch with a yell of glee. The boy might have hugged Alder if Berry hadn’t already held that space with no sign of giving it up; as it was, he danced around the pair, whooping. Fawn and Bo followed at a less violent pace. A curious Remo dodged the crowd by hoisting himself up from the back deck and strolling forward to watch.
As the cries of greeting swirled around Alder, his skiff mate looked up and spotted Remo. “Alder!” he gasped. “There’s a Lakewalker on this here boat! We have to leave off. You know Crane don’t want us to mess with no Lakewalkers.”
Alder stared up at the ro
w of spectators lining the edge of the cabin roof. He drew a short breath. “No, Skink—there’s two. That tall one’s haircut fooled me at a distance.”
Berry grinned widely at him. “Three, actually. Dag and Remo’ve been in my crew since Pearl Riffle, and Barr, um, signed on later. They’re all real tame, though—you don’t have to be scared of ’em.”
Alder gulped. “No, not scared, but—I guess you won’t be needing a pilot, huh?”
“No,” agreed Skink loudly. “These folks don’t need us. Come on away, Alder.”
Alder swung to his companion. “No, you don’t understand. This girl here”—he waved at Berry—“she’s my betrothed. Was. Is. From back at Clearcreek. Did you come all the—no, yes, of course you came from Clearcreek. Had to have. We can’t… hire on this boat, Skink.”
Skink said uneasily, “Right, that’s what I said. What you want t’ do, then?”
Hawthorn interrupted urgently, “Alder, where were you? Where’s Papa and Buckthorn and the Briar Rose? Where’s the other boat hands that was with you?”
Berry stood a little away from Alder, wrenched unwillingly from her elation by these harder questions. “Oh, Alder, why didn’t you come home? Or write, or send word up the river with someone? It’s coming on eleven months since you left. We’ve been worried sick about you all!”
Passage Page 31
