Passage

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Berry, Hod, and Bo had all been forced to kneel around the post that had lately held Alder, who was securing their wrists one to another with a length of line. He had to jerk Bo’s hand away from his stomach. Blood soaked the front of the old man’s shirt. His face had gone gray, looking worse than any hangover Fawn had ever seen on him, and he squinted as if in bewilderment, panting for air. Berry’s terrified glance jerked back and forth between him and Hawthorn, still held tight by the stranger.

  The man turned half-around. He had black brows and a craggy face shadowed with beard stubble, and his eyes gleamed darkly. Fawn wondered if they would be a different color in daylight, like Dag’s. “So what’s this?” he inquired, nodding at Fawn.

  “Two girlies!” said the man-mountain. “One for me and one for Little Drum, I figure.” He grinned, gap-toothed and sour-breathed.

  The Lakewalker said wearily, “Haven’t you two had enough fun for one night?”

  “Not the yellow-haired one!” said Alder urgently. He hesitated. “They can split the other if they want, sure.” He added after a moment, “She claims to be married to one of the Lakewalkers we surprised on this boat, but she’s really just a farmer.”

  The black stare narrowed on Fawn. What the man was thinking she could not guess. “Seems to me they surprised you, Alder,” he drawled after a moment. “What happened here?”

  “It was Skink’s fault,” said Alder, still knotting line. “We went up to check out this boat like usual, but the Lakewalkers were all inside and we didn’t spot ’em, except for the odd one that didn’t look like a Lakewalker, see. They got the drop on us. The odd one, he did something, some groundwork, and Skink began spewing like a waterspout. Told them everything about the cave, everything.”

  Alder wasn’t telling everything, Fawn realized; he’d left out how he had been recognized by all the folks from Clearcreek. Did he imagine he could lie to—this had to be the renegade Crane, yes. And the man-mountain was Big Drum. So where is Little Drum?

  “Those patrollers, they stopped every boat coming down the river and got up a gang to go jump the cave. Hours ago. They could be coming back at any time.”

  “Only if they succeeded,” murmured Crane, raising his brows. He didn’t sound terribly disturbed by the news.

  “They had sixty or seventy fellows. And that one-handed Lakewalker—he had to be at least a patroller captain. Acted like this was all in a day’s work, he did. It’s all up with us now.” Alder sounded almost relieved. “We’ve got to cut and run.” His voice went wheedling. “You told me yourself you didn’t expect the Cavern Tavern to last out the year. Those Tripoint fools was the warning, you said. Best we heed it.”

  Crane sighed. “Well, at least it seems I get a new horse out of the deal…” He paused, his head turning toward the bow. His curiously chiseled lips pinched; his eyes narrowed. Consulting his groundsense? “Aw, what’s Little Drum stirred up now?” He wheeled and, quite without expression, struck Hawthorn in the face with his knife haft hard enough to knock him across the room. Hawthorn fell in a stunned heap, breath stuttering. Berry cried out; Hod whimpered. Fawn strained uselessly against the heavy grip that held her.

  Crane drew a long breath. “We’re about to have company. Too late to get off this boat. Alder, go cast off the rear lines. Big Drum, drop the bow lines and then get yourself up on the roof and get an oar ready. You too, Alder. We’ll push out and take it down to the crook of the Elbow, instead—should give us enough of a start. Give me that spare girl.”

  Reluctantly, Big Drum handed Fawn over to his leader; Crane grasped one arm with bruising pressure and turned her in front of him. The knife blade rose to her neck and pressed there, most convincingly.

  “What about Little Drum?” Big Drum demanded.

  “That’ll depend entirely on how quick he can run. We’ll see if she can buy him time to get here, but we’re not waiting long.” Following Big Drum, Crane shoved Fawn ahead of him out onto the front deck.

  Dag’s legs jarred like hammer blows as he bounded downhill so fast it felt like falling. Fawn’s fear howled through his groundsense. He tried to make out what was happening on the Fetch through a cacophony of distress: Bo hurt bad, Hawthorn and Berry in terror, Hod distraught—Alder loose and moving. And two new grounds, both grossly knotted and distorted, the darker one half-veiled.

  On the way back from wherever they’d gone, Crane and his lieutenants must have checked their lookout point and seen the inexplicably deserted boats tied up along the creek below. Crane’s Lakewalker groundsense would have found Alder on the Fetch—not happy, but for all Crane knew, still hoodwinking the boatmen. If Alder was still duping his victims, Crane might want to support him; if a prisoner, maybe free him—but in either case the first thing Crane had to do was slip aboard and reach him, between groundsense and the dank mist eluding notice by the sleepy watchmen. And then things went bad. For both sides.

  By the time he’d barged through the last of the trees and the Fetch came into sight, Dag was so winded he had to stop and put his hands on his knees as black patterns swarmed in his vision. He raised his head as his eyes cleared. The big fellow with the knotty ground tossed the second of the two bow ropes over the side and retreated to the roof, unshipping a broad-oar. The man with the half-veiled ground shouldered through the front hatch, coming out onto the deck. He held Fawn. A knife blade gleamed against her neck; he wiggled it to make it wink and nibble into that soft flesh, and he looked up to lock Dag’s gaze, frozen not twenty feet away beyond the end of the gangplank. Whit came dashing up, his bow waving in one hand and an arrow in the other; with shaking hands, he tried to nock it.

  “Your little friend can just drop that bow,” said the man dryly, shoving Fawn in front of him for a shield and tightening the bite of the knife. Dag thought he saw a line of red spring along its edge.

  “Drop it, Whit,” said Dag, not taking his eyes off the stranger. Crane, without doubt. Whit’s lips moved in protest, but he let his bow fall to his feet. Fawn’s eyes shifted, and her feet; Dag prayed she would not try to break away. This one would slice her head off without a blink. A trio of boatmen, attracted at last by the ruckus, thumped down the creek bank toward the Fetch. Dag’s fear of no help coming gave way to terror that this help’s clumsy advance would crowd Crane into dreadful action.

  Behind this tense tableau, Alder climbed to the roof and unshipped the second oar.

  “Push off,” the leader called over his shoulder.

  “What about Little Drum?” asked the big man.

  The strange Lakewalker glanced up the hill. “Not coming.”

  Alder’s oar swept backward, although the other oarsman still hesitated. The gangplank creaked as the boat began to pull away under it. Dag lurched forward.

  “Ah!” Crane chided, lifting his knife under Fawn’s chin so she rose on her toes. “You really need to believe me.” He flicked open his ground to display his cold determination to Dag.

  It wasn’t even a decision.

  Dag raised his left arm, stretched out his ghost hand twenty feet, and ground-ripped a cross section as thick as a piece of boot leather from Crane’s spinal cord, just below his neck.

  The man’s dark eyes opened wide, astounded, as the knife dropped from his nerveless fingers. He crumpled like a blanket folding, and his head, unsupported, hit the deck with a weird double thump. He did not cry out; it was more of a questioning grunt.

  Fawn, after a gasping hesitation, leaned over, snatched up the knife, and pelted inside. The big oarsman trod forward to the edge of the roof to see what was happening. He met Whit’s arrow, released from his grabbed-up bow, square on. One hand lifted to grasp the shaft half-buried in his broad gut, but as the boat shifted, he stumbled and fell over the side with a cry and a smacking splash.

  Dag leaped for the gangplank, but not before he glimpsed Berry jump up from the stern to grab the short end of the steering oar, jump down again to swing on it like a tree branch, and bring the long end around in a mighty arc
, smashing into Alder’s hip and sweeping him over the opposite side of the roof and into the cold creek water.

  21

  What Dag most wanted to do was question Crane: Fawn knew this because, putting her back on her feet after grabbing her up in a breath-stopping hug and mumbling a lot of broken words into her hair, it was the first thing he said that she could actually make out. But after one glance at Bo he reordered his plan, dispatching the panting Whit to organize the boatmen who’d been drawn by the ruckus to fish Alder and Big Drum out of the water and secure them, preferably on some boat other than the Fetch.

  “What about Crane?” Whit demanded.

  “Just leave him lay. He’s not going anywhere.”

  Dag had the queerest look on his face as he said this, but before Fawn could figure it out, she was drafted as his hands, helping to straighten out the groaning Bo atop a blanket on a hastily cleared stretch of kitchen floor, peel away his shirt, and wash around the stab wound. Dag sat cross-legged, irritably cast off his arm harness, and fell into the healing trance that was becoming increasingly familiar to Fawn—and, she thought, to him. He was in it for a long time, while the shaken Berry, cut ropes still dangling from her wrists, tended to an even more shaken Hawthorn, who was bleeding from a broken nose and crying. Hod helped everyone as best he could.

  Whit took a long time to report back. The arrow-riddled Big Drum had been easy to capture, as he’d waded to shore and put up no fight when he got there. Alder had tried to swim away. Some boatmen chased him down in a skiff and wrestled him out of the water, beating him into submission. He’d almost drowned, and Fawn, glancing at Berry’s stiff face, thought it was a pity he hadn’t. Dragging out his existence one more miserable day seemed a great waste of time, emotion, and hemp. Both men had been tied up on the Snapping Turtle, the shaft in Big Drum’s belly cut off but left in, lest botching its removal keep him from his hanging.

  Fawn was wondering if she should shake Dag’s shoulder, or send someone to find Barr or Remo to do whatever it was Lakewalkers did to break unintended groundlocks, when he at last drew a long breath and sat up, animation returning to his face. He stared around blinking, found her, and cast her the ghost of a smile. Emerging from his task, he looked much less wild and distraught, as though the effort had recentered him somehow. Except that Fawn hadn’t seen him look so drained since Raintree.

  Bo had been conscious throughout, but silent, watching Dag with a brow furrowed as much in wonder as in pain. “Well, Lakewalker,” he breathed at last, then muffled a cough.

  “That healin’ o’ his is a thing, ain’t it?” commiserated the hunkering Hod.

  “Don’t try to talk,” whispered Dag. His dry voice cracked, and he cleared it; Fawn hustled to retuck the blanket she’d put around his shoulders and to fetch him a drink. He raised the tin cup to his lips with a trembling hand, swallowed, and went on more easily. “I’ve ground-glued together the two slices through your stomach walls where the blade punched in and out, and likewise some of the bigger blood vessels in there. Crane’s knife missed the biggest ones, or you’d have bled to death before I got here. Fawn’ll have to stitch up your skin.” Fawn nodded, carefully washing away the gory matter that Dag had drawn from the wound by ground projection. She had Dag’s medicine-kit needle already threaded, and bent to the task. Bo made little ow noises, but endured.

  Dag went on cautiously, “Biggest danger now’s infection. I expect there’ll be some. Got to wait and see how that plays out.”

  Truly. A gut-wound like this was more usually a death sentence, fever finishing what bleeding started, as Bo likely knew, because he nodded shortly. When Fawn tied off her last thread, Whit, Hod, and Berry combined to lift Bo carefully into his bunk. Dag simply lay back on the floor and stared up at the roof.

  Fawn was just wondering if they should also unite to lift Dag to his bed, when Barr and Remo clumped in to apologize for killing what they sincerely hoped had been an escaping bandit up in the woods. Fawn nipped to the front hatch to peek out, and saw a couple of saddled horses beyond the gangplank. Over one was draped the body of a skinny, red-haired fellow, his sharp, contorted face pale in death.

  Crane was still lying in a heap beside the animal pen; his chin moved and his eyes shifted to glare at her, and she flinched and fled back inside. Dag, what did you do to him? That was like no making I ever seen or heard tell of…

  In the kitchen, Barr was frowning down at Dag and asking the very question she’d longed to: “Dag, what the blight did you do to that fellow out on the front deck?”

  “Is that Crane?” Remo added, glancing toward the bow.

  “Yes,” said Dag, still staring at the roof. “I broke his neck. In effect. He won’t be getting better, in case anyone was worried about tying him up.”

  His expression glazed, Dag watched Fawn upside down as she bent and peered at him in worry. She remembered the shock in Crane’s eyes when he’d dropped the knife and collapsed like a wall falling. In effect. But not in any other way? Would the patroller boys think to follow up that little flag of truth amongst Dag’s laconic misdirection? Either Dag would explain in his own time, or she’d wait for a private moment to ask, she decided.

  Hod and Whit took tumbling turns giving a description of the events around and aboard the Fetch to the two patrollers, with an occasional corroborating moan or snort from Bo. Berry added little, still holding the sniffling Hawthorn. But as their words turned his frightening experience into a tale, he seemed to revive, uncurling from his childlike clutch in his big sister’s lap, slowly regaining the dignity of his eleven years, and finally adding a few flourishing, if gruesome, details of his own. By the time they’d finished, he mainly wanted to go off and inspect the corpse of Little Drum. Dubiously, Berry released him.

  “I about swallowed my heart when I saw that big knife at Fawn’s throat,” said Whit, “but I swear she looked more mad than scared.”

  “I was plenty scared enough,” said Fawn. And yet…Crane hadn’t been nearly as scary as the Glassforge malice, even if she might have been equally dead at either’s hands. How odd. Flying from a knife at her throat to an immediate need to pull things together for Bo’s sake, maybe she just hadn’t had time to fall apart yet.

  Some boatmen called from outside, a troop sent back from the cave to help guard the boats—a bit belatedly, Fawn thought tartly. The two young patrollers and Whit went off to help sort out things. It was full dawn. Dag sat up.

  “I have to…I can’t…let me sleep for one hour. Bo can have a few sips of water, nothing else.” He climbed to his hand and knees, then to his feet, making no protest when Fawn lent him a shoulder to help him lurch to their bed nook. She did insist on pulling off his boots. He was asleep by the time she flung a blanket over him.

  Barr, Remo, and Whit had been grimly excited, describing their victory at the bandit cave. After they’d defeated the Glassforge malice, Fawn recalled, Dag had been wildly elated despite his weariness. There was not a trace of triumph in him now, and she wondered at the difference. In the kitchen space that still reeked of the night’s terror, the floor splotched with blood, Fawn sighed and quietly started fixing breakfast.

  Fawn let Dag sleep for closer to three hours; he woke on his own when the Fetch pulled away from shore. Stumbling out to the kitchen, he ran a hand through his bent hair, and asked, “What’s been happening?”

  “Not much,” she said, passing him a mug of tea. “Everybody decided to move their boats around to the cave landing. Berry, Whit, and Hod are topside.” She gestured upward with her thumb. “I sent Hod and Remo out to clean Crane up a while back.”

  Dag’s brows bent, whether in bewilderment or disapproval she was not sure.

  She explained, “It was more for us than him. Getting paralyzed like that loosed his bowels and bladder, seemingly. He was stinkin’ up Berry’s boat. Besides…even corpses get washed before burying.”

  He nodded glumly. She ran him out onto the back deck to wash up, took his bloodied clothes to soak
in a bucket, and handed him fresh ones. The day was turning pale blue as the weak sun climbed, not so much warming up as thinning the chill. Since his hand was still shaking, she also helped him shave, a skill she’d acquired that time his arm had been broken, just before their marriage. Hot food and a cleanup were worth at least a couple hours of the sleep he hadn’t got, she figured.

  Their rattling around woke Barr from his own nap; Remo had been lying in his bunk but not sleeping, and he too rose to join them.

  “I have to question Crane,” Dag repeated. He nodded to the patrollers. “You two had best sit in. A quorum of sorts.”

  “I want to hear that tale, too,” said Fawn.

  He shook his head. “It’s like to be nasty, Spark. I would spare you if I could.”

  “But you can’t,” she pointed out, which made him wince. Feeling pressed by his dismay, she struggled to explain. “Dag…I’ll never be a fighter. I’m too little. My legs are too short to outrun most fellows. The only equal weapon I’ll ever have is my wits. But without knowing things, my wits are like a bow with no arrows. Don’t leave me disarmed.”

  After a bleak moment, he ducked his chin in assent. When he’d finished swallowing down his breakfast and his tea, they all followed him out onto the front deck. The Snapping Turtle was out ahead, approaching the crook of the Elbow, and the keelboat from Silver Shoals trailed them at some distance. The Fetch seemed very far from any shore, running down this stretch of swollen river.

  Crane was laid out—like a funeral, Fawn couldn’t help thinking—in Remo’s spare shirt, covered by a blanket and with another folded under his head. His arms lay flaccid along his sides, nerveless feet to the bow. Dag settled down cross-legged next to him. Tidying up the two men first had lent this encounter a curious formality, as though they were couriers from distant hinterlands meeting to exchange news.

  Even Crane seemed to feel it, or at least he was no longer trying to bite folks as he had when he’d first been washed. Fawn wondered if his several hours of being stepped past and ignored like a pile of old laundry had felt as weird for him as it had for everyone else. And then she wondered if Dag had arranged it that way on purpose, the way he’d left Barr without food to help tame him.