Passage

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Dag…” she said reproachfully.

  “I know! I know.” He sighed. “No matter what, first we have to capture the bandits. We need to get through that with a single mind. Argue after, when it’s safe to.”

  Her lips twisted in doubt.

  He held her, bent his face to her hair, and murmured into it, “I thought when I quit the patrol this sort of work would all be behind me, and I could turn my whole heart and ground to fixing folks instead of killing them.” And even lower-voiced: “And once I’d fixed as many as I’d ever killed, I’d be square. And then start to get ahead.”

  “Does it work like that?”

  “I don’t know, Spark. I’m just hoping.”

  She gave him a hug for support and turned her face up. “Can’t you at least unbeguile Alder, before you boys go off tonight? It’ll be horrible for Berry to watch him fall to pieces like that Skink fellow, but at least he mightn’t be so dangerous.”

  “I can’t unbeguile Alder.”

  “Why not? You did the other. It’s not like ground-gifting, is it, where you can only give so much before you collapse yourself? Or is it like that piece of pie, too much at once?”

  “No,” he said in slow reluctance. “I can’t unbeguile Alder because he’s not beguiled in the first place.”

  A silence. “Oh,” said Fawn at last. Oh, gods. Poor Berry… “Just when were you planning to mention this to her?”

  “I don’t know. I have way too much tumbling through my head right now to trust my judgment on that. Get the bandits, first. And their leader Crane especially. I know that much. It may well be the only thing in the world I know for sure, right this minute.”

  It seemed old-patroller thinking to her: Get the malice first. Everything else after. She didn’t think he was wrong. But after was starting to loom in a worrisome way. She settled on reaching up to give a heartening shake to his shoulders and say, “You get those bandits good, then.”

  He gifted her back a grateful smile and a jerky nod.

  In the afternoon, another flatboat arrived, but it proved to hold a family. The papa and the eldest son volunteered, along with two boat hands, to the dismay and fright of the mama who was left with four youngsters and a grandpa. No one expected arrivals after nightfall, when most sensible boats tied to the banks, but at the last glimmering of dusk one more keelboat came, almost slipping past in the shadows. Its crew of tough-looking Silver Shoals men, when the awful litany of deceit, murders, and boat-burnings was recited yet again, made no bones about joining up. Then there was nothing to do but feed folks, talk over plans in more detail, and keep the men quiet and sober till midnight.

  There was little work to getting Dag’s war kit ready, as he planned to be gone for mere hours, not weeks. Fawn had thought they were done with these partings in the dark when he’d quit the patrol; the returning memories unnerved her. But the crowd of river men assembled on the bank was encouraging in its numbers and bristle. Dag had set Barr and Remo and some of the Raintree hunters out ahead as scouts. The rest tramped away over the hill by the light of a few lanterns, doubtless noisier than a company of stealthy Lakewalker patrollers, but with determination enough.

  Sleep was out of the question. Fawn and Berry turned to assembling on the kitchen table what bandages and medicines the Fetch offered, in readiness for the men’s return—at dawn, Dag had guessed. Fawn hoped there would be no need to break out any of Berry’s stock of Tripoint shovels for burial duty, at least not of folks on their side. It was likely much too optimistic a hope, but she had to fight the bleak chill of this night somehow. With nearly everyone gone off, the row of boats tied along the bank of the feeder creek seemed much too quiet.

  Hawthorn had disappeared up amongst the nearby trees for a while, most likely to cry himself out in privacy. When he returned, he lay down in his bunk with his back to the room. As his hands loosened in deep sleep, the kit escaped his grip and went to hide in the stores. Bo went out to take a walk up and down the row of boats and talk with the few other men, some older like himself, one with a broken arm, left to watch over them. Hod, detailed as Bo’s supporter as well as boat guard, tagged along.

  Alder’s head came up from an uncomfortable doze. He didn’t look crisp and handsome anymore, sitting on a stool with his back to his hitching post, just strained and exhausted. Fawn wondered if he’d often been sent out on decoy duty because his clean looks and glib tongue reassured folks. His eyes shifted in the lantern light, a furtive gleam, then focused on Berry.

  “I couldn’t escape,” he said. “You don’t know what Crane does to deserters.”

  Berry stared across at him from her place at the table, but said nothing. Fawn ceased fiddling uselessly with her sewing kit and wondering if she would have to sew up live skin and flesh with it, and turned in her chair to watch them both. “Just what does this Crane do to deserters?” she asked at last, when Berry didn’t.

  “He’s clever, horrible clever. One or two he’s killed outright in arguments, but mostly, if a fellow or a couple of fellows demand to leave his gang, he pretends to let them. He lets ’em load up with their pick of goods, their share, the lightest and most valuable, then trails after ’em in secret. You can’t get away from his groundsense. Ambushes ’em, kills ’em, hides the goods for himself. Nobody back at camp even knows. You can’t get out alive.”

  It seemed almost inadvertent justice to Fawn. With a few hitches. She glanced up, wondering if Berry spotted them, too. “If it’s so secret, how do you know? ’Cause it seems to me Crane wouldn’t be doing all this ambushin’ and buryin’ by himself.”

  Alder shot her a glance of dislike.

  “How come there’s any bandits left?” Fawn went on. “Or is that Crane’s plan, to be the last one left at the end?”

  “Men drift in. Like the Drum brothers. Sometimes he recruits from captives. Like Skink.”

  And like Alder? Fawn wondered if she wanted to ask how in front of Berry. Maybe not. She suspected Bo already knew, from that earlier interrogation that had left the men all so grim. And there would likely be other witnesses taken alive to tell the tale tomorrow.

  “I tried to save you,” Alder went on, looking longingly at Berry. “Out there today, I tried everything I could think of to get you to go on. I always tried to save as many as I could, when I was put on catching duty. Boats with families, women or children, I waved them on.”

  Likely they were also the poorer boats, Fawn suspected. “Bed boats?” she inquired.

  Alder flinched. “We never got any of those,” he mumbled. Berry’s gaze flicked up.

  If Crane was as clever and evil as Alder said, more likely he let the women in to ply their trade, loaded them up with presents, and disposed of them on their exit just like his deserters. Or else word of the lucrative Cavern Tavern would have trickled out in at least some channels before this, and Berry had not overlooked the bed boats in her inquiries. But it was undoubtedly true that Alder had tried frantically to convince Berry to go on.

  His voice grew lower, more desperately persuasive. “But we could get away now, you and me. When I saw you, it was like I woke up from a yearlong nightmare. I was so afraid for you—I would never have let Crane have you. I never imagined you’d rescue me. But see, I know where some of Crane’s caches are. If we slipped away now, tonight, while the others are busy, we could both go back to Clearcreek rich and never have to go on the river no more. I never want to see the river again; it’s been the ruination of me. We could wipe all this out like a bad dream and start over.”

  “Is that what you was plannin’ to bring back to me?” said Berry in a scraped voice, staring down at her clenched hands. “Bags of coin soaked in murdered folks’ blood?”

  Alder shook his head. “Crane owes you death payment for the Rose at least, I figure.”

  “Why, if it sank in a storm?” Fawn inquired, lifting her eyebrows. His return glare was nearly lethal.

  Alder recovered himself and went on. “It’s all that Lakewalker sorcere
r’s fault. He messes with folks’ minds, puts them in thrall to him. Destroys good men—delights in it. You saw Skink. He was just an ordinary boatman, not a speck different from your papa’s hands on the Rose, before Crane caught him and turned him. That’s why I could never get away. Gods, I hate Crane!”

  That last had the ring of truth. Berry looked up at him, and for a moment, Fawn thought she saw her hard-pressed resolution waver, if that wasn’t just the water in her reddened eyes.

  “If Crane beguiled you,” said Fawn, “then you’re still beguiled right now, and it isn’t safe to let you go, because you’d just run right back to him. You couldn’t help it, see, just like you couldn’t help the other.”

  Alder’s lips began to move, then stopped in confusion. Did he see the dilemma he’d backed himself into?

  Berry spoke at last. “’Course if you ain’t beguiled, it’s hard to see how it was you couldn’t get away before this. Seems to me a man who just wanted to escape, and didn’t care about no treasure, could’ve swum out in the night and set himself on a bit of wrack and floated away most anytime this past summer. Come to the first camp or hamlet past the Wrist in about a day and gone ashore for help, and gave warning what nasty things was hiding up in the Elbow. And this would all have been over long before now. If you wasn’t beguiled. So which is it, Alder? Make up your mind.”

  Alder’s mouth opened and shut. He finally settled on, “That Lakewalker. He’s sorcelled me all up. I can’t hardly think, these days.”

  “Then I daren’t let you loose, huh?” said Berry, and rose to her feet. “Come on, Fawn. There’s ain’t no sleeping in here. Let’s go set to the roof. The air’s cleaner up there, I expect.”

  “I expect it is,” said Fawn, and followed her out the back hatch into the chill dark.

  The night sky was clear and starry over the river valley. A half-moon was rising above the eastern shore. They sat cross-legged on the roof, looking around at the black bulk of the bluff, the few dim lights leaking from the boat windows down the row. The creek water gurgled in the stillness, giving itself to the Grace. Fawn heard no shouts or cries of commencing battle, but from three miles away on the other side of a hill, she didn’t expect to.

  “Alder was a good man all his life, up in Clearcreek,” said Berry at last.

  Fawn said nothing.

  “The river really did ruin him.”

  Fawn offered, “Maybe he just never met such hard temptations, before.” And after a little, “Spare me from ever doing so.”

  “Aye,” breathed Berry. No insect songs enlivened the frosty night; their breath made faint fogs in the starlight. She said at last, “So, is Alder beguiled or not? Did Dag say?”

  Fawn swallowed. It wasn’t as if there would ever be a better time or place to tell Berry the truth. “He said not.”

  A long inhalation. “I sort of realized it must be that way, after a while. Or Dag would’ve released him along with Skink.” Cold haze trickled from her lips. “I can’t think which way is worse. Ain’t neither is better.”

  “No,” agreed Fawn.

  “I don’t see no good way out of this.”

  “No,” agreed Fawn.

  They huddled together in silence for a long time, waiting for light or word, but the cold drove them inside before either came.

  20

  Dag braced one knee on a fallen log, checked the seating of his bow in his wrist cuff, and locked the clamp. He opened himself for another quick cast around, cursing, not for the first time, his ground-sense’s inability to penetrate more than a hand’s breadth into solid rock. Barr and two of Chicory’s bowmen had reached their position on the opposite side of the cave mouth. Remo and another Raintree hunter were creeping up on the opening in the cave roof, through which a trickle of wood smoke, steel-gray in the light from the rising half-moon, made its escape. It would be Remo’s job to see that nothing else escaped by that route. Lastly, Dag checked on Whit, clutching his own bow at Dag’s side. Whit’s face, striped by the shadows from the bare tree branches, was nearly as pale and stony as the moon, entirely drained of all his wearing humor. The effect was not as much of an improvement as Dag would have thought.

  He choked back anger, not only at the cruelty of the bandits, but at finding them here, now, in the middle of the journey he’d intended as Fawn’s belated wedding gift. She’d been terrorized once by the bandits at Glassforge, and he’d sworn that no such horror would touch her again. Granted, she hadn’t seemed terrified tonight, just tense and resolute. He would keep the ugliness well away from her this time, if he could. He tried not to think about the fact that her monthly fertile days were starting up, a lovely sparkle in her ground, normally the signal for them to switch to subtler Lakewalker bed customs. Far from bandits of any sort. Don’t dwell on that threat, old patroller, you’ll just make yourself crazy. Crazier. But he was determined that none should escape this cave trap to trouble her, or Berry, or anyone else. He bit his lip in frustration, unable to make a count of targets through the shielding rock walls.

  Wonder of wonders, the two trampling gangs of boatmen, one led around the upstream side by Chicory, the other around the downstream side by Boss Wain, nearly joined again by the entrance to the cave before the guard there woke from his drunken stupor and yelled alarm. Too late, thought Dag in satisfaction. His groundsense flexed open and shut, wavering between picking up events and blocking the flares of the targets’ injuries. All his fooling around with medicine making seemed to have left him much more sensitive to such…he cringed, taking in the sizzle of a knife cut, the explosive flash of a thump with a cudgel, still searching for his true target.

  Where was this Crane, blight it? They must have caught the Lakewalker leader asleep inside, just as Dag had hoped, or else the boatmen would never have crept this close before being spotted. Because none of the Fetch’s Lakewalkers had bumped grounds with him outside, not within a mile.

  Cries, crashes, and screams sounded from the cave mouth, borne outward in the orange flickering from torch fire and wildly wavering lantern light. A bandit trying to lift himself out the smoke hole was knocked back in by Remo’s partner, like a man hammering down a peg. Remo followed, disappearing from both view and groundsense. Good, Dag had at least one scout inside to help the rivermen deal with the renegade. He ruthlessly stifled worry for Remo’s inexperience as a group of five bellowing bandits clumped together and fought their way out the cave mouth past Wain’s men, breaking and running toward Dag and Whit.

  “See ’em?” said Dag, raising his bow and drawing hard.

  “Yep,” said Whit through dry lips, and mimicked him. Both steel-tipped arrows flew together; both found targets.

  “Great shot!” said Dag. Beginner’s luck, more likely. Dag’s second arrow was on its way before Whit’s shaking hands could nock his next. It wasn’t a disabling hit, lodging in the bandit’s thigh; the man was not felled but only slowed. This bunch must realize how little mercy they could expect from their boatmen prey-turned-hunters. The three still on their feet turned back and began running, or limping, the other way, around the cave mouth and up onto Barr’s position. None made it past.

  Dag waited a few more minutes, but no more fugitives broke free. Archers’ task accomplished, he eased forward and led Whit down the slope, more anxious now to reach the cave than to keep Whit away from it. One of their victims lay dead, an arrow through his eye. The other whimpered and shuddered in the fallen leaves, clutching a shaft that was lodged deep in his gut.

  “Should we—?” Whit began uncertainly.

  “Leave him for now. He won’t be running off,” murmured Dag. He would worry about men due to be hanged in the morning only after he had tended to the injured on their own side. If there was time or any of himself left over for the task.

  “But I—which one did I hit?” Whit stared back over his shoulder.

  “Yours was that brain-shot. Clean, very quick.”

  “Oh.”

  Whit’s expression teetered between tri
umph and revulsion, and Dag realized it wasn’t just Barr and Remo he ought to meet with when this was all over, to check for damage due to leaks from targets. And who will check my ground? Never mind, first things first. Reeling, disarmed bandits were already being passed out through a gauntlet of boatmen and tied to trees. Dag trusted the rivermen knew their knots.

  The inside of the cave was arrested chaos. Benches and crates lay knocked over, bedrolls kicked around. Goods of all kinds were strewn across the floor, including an inordinate number of bottles and jugs, broken and whole. The cave seemed to be composed of two chambers, one behind the other, each about twenty feet high and forty across. The fire beneath the smoke hole spouted up around a broken keg, emitting a glaring light. Burning oil from a broken lantern spread and sputtered, but already a boatman was stamping it out. Some men lay groaning on the ground, others were being tied up; there seemed to be at least two boatmen standing for every live bandit left—good. Dag winced, trying to hold his groundsense open long enough to get an accurate head-count. He still couldn’t find the Lakewalker leader. Was Crane ground-veiled and hidden amongst the others? No…Remo was upright and uninjured, though, better still.

  Bearbait sprang up at his elbow and grabbed him by the arm; Dag controlled a reflexive strike at him. “Lakewalker, quick! You have to help!”

  He jerked Dag toward the cave wall, a little out of the way of the noisy mob. Two boatmen lay there on hastily tossed-down blankets. A kneeling friend held his hands frantically to the neck of one of them; blood spurted between his tight fingers. The other was Chicory, lying stunned, breathing irregularly, his face the color of cold lard. Oh, no! Dag let his groundsense lick out. The Raintree hunter had taken a cudgel blow on the left side of his skull, fracturing it just above the ear. Bad…

  Bearbait wet his lips and said, “He’d took on two with his spear, see, when a third one got him from behind. I wasn’t quick enough…”

  The one with the cut to the neck was now or never. Dag dropped to his knees, unlocked and tossed his bow aside, and let his hands real and ghostly slide over those of the frightened friend, one of the Silver Shoals fellows. “Don’t move,” he murmured. “Keep holding tight, just like that.” The man gulped and obeyed.