Beguilement

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Her face screwed up. “Oh. Boys do that, I know. I guess girls could do it for them, too. Do they like it?”

  “Um… generally,” he said cautiously. This unexpected turn of the conversation sped his mind, and his body was following fast. Calm yourself, old patroller. Fortunately, she could not sense the heated ripple in him. “Girls like it, too. In my experience.”

  Another long, digestive silence. “Is this some Lakewalker lady thing? Magic?”

  “There are tricks you can do with your grounds to make it better, but no. Lakewalker ladies and farmer girls are equally magical in this. Anyway, farmers have grounds too, they just can’t sense them.” Absent gods be thanked.

  Her expression now was intensely cogitative, and a stuttering swirl of arousal had started in her as well. It wasn’t, he realized suddenly, just her hurts that blocked its flow. Something that half-blood woman at Tripoint had once told him, that he’d scarcely believed, came back to him now: that some farmer women never learned how to pleasure themselves, or to find release. She’d laughed at his expression. Come, come, Dag. Boys practically trip over their own parts. Women’s are all tucked neatly up inside. They can be just as tricky for us as for the farmer boys to find. Many’s the farmwife has me to thank for providing her man with the treasure map, scandalized as she’d be to learn it. Since he’d had much to thank her for as well, he’d set about it, dismissing the ineptness of farm boys from his mind and, in a short time, from hers.

  That had been a long time ago…

  “What other things?” Fawn said.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Besides hands and tongues and mouths.”

  “Just… don’t… not… never mind.” And now his arousal had grown to serious physical discomfort. Atop a horse, of all things. There were many things not to try on a horse, even one as good-natured as this mare. He couldn’t avoid remembering several of them, which didn’t help.

  Spark couldn’t sense his ground. He could stand in front of her rigid with mind-numbing lust, and as long as he kept his trousers on, she wouldn’t know. And considering all her recent disastrous experiences, she oughtn’t to know. Bad if she laughed… no, upon reflection, good if she laughed. Bad if she was disgusted or horrified or frightened, taking him for another lout like Stupid Sunny or that poor fool he’d shot in the backside. If it grew too excruciating, he could slip off the horse and disappear into the woods for a spell, pretending to be answering a call of nature. Which he would be; no lie there. Stop it. You did this to yourself. Suffer in silence. Think of something else. You can control your body. She can’t tell.

  She sighed, rustled about, and gazed up into his face. “Your eyes change color with the light,” she observed in a tone of new interest. “In the sun they’re all bright gold like coins. In the shade they go brown like clear spice tea. In the night, they’re black like deep pools.” She added after a moment, “They’re really dark right now.”

  “Mm,” said Dag. Every breath brought her heady scent to his mouth, to his mind. He could not very well stop breathing.

  A flash of motion at treetop height caught both their eyes.

  “Look, a red-tailed hawk!” she cried. “Isn’t he beautiful!” Her head and body turned to follow the pale clean-cut shape, ruddy translucent tail feathers almost glowing against the washed blue of the sky, and her hot small hand came down to support herself. Directly on Dag’s aching erection.

  His startled recoil was so abrupt, he fell off the horse.

  He landed on his back with a breath-stealing thump. Thankfully, she landed atop him and not underneath. Her weight was soft upon him, her breath accelerated by the shock. Her pupils were too wide for this light, and, as she twisted around and thrust out one hand to support herself, her gaze grew fixed upon his mouth.

  Yes! Kiss me, do. His hand spasmed, and he laid it out flat and stiff, palm up upon the grass, lest he lunge at her. He moistened his lips. The damp of the grass and the soil began soaking into the back of his shirt and trousers. He could feel every curve of her body, pressed into his, and every curse of her ground. Absent gods, he was halfway to groundlock all by himself…

  “Are you all right?” she gasped.

  Terror shot through him, wilting his arousal, that the fall might have torn something loose inside her to start her bleeding again like the first day. It would take the better part of hour to carry her back to the farm, and in her current depleted state, she might not survive another such draining.

  She scrambled off him and plunked herself ungracefully on the ground, panting.

  “Are you all right?” he asked urgently in turn.

  “I guess so.” She winced a little, but she rubbed her elbow, not her belly.

  He sat up and ran his hand through his hair. Fool, fool, blight you, pay attention… ! You might have killed her.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I… thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but it was just a trick of the light. I didn’t mean to shy like a horse.” Which had to be the weakest excuse for an excuse he’d ever uttered.

  The mare, in fact, was less shaken than either of them. She had sidestepped as they’d gone over, but now stood peacefully a few yards off, looking at them in mild astonishment. No further excitement seeming forthcoming, she put her head down and nibbled a weed.

  “Yes, well, after that mud-man this morning, it’s no wonder you’re jumpy,” Fawn said kindly. She stared around at the woods in renewed worry, then balanced a hand on his shoulder, pushed herself up, and tried to brush the dirt off her sleeve.

  Dag took a few deep breaths, letting his pounding heart slow, then rose as well and went to recapture the mare. A fallen tree a few steps into the woods looked like an adequate mounting block; he led the horse up to it, and Fawn dutifully followed. And if they started this all over again, he feared he would disgrace himself before they ever got to Glassforge.

  “To tell the truth,” Dag lied, “my left arm was getting a bit tired. Do you think you could sit behind and hang on pillion style, for a while?”

  “Oh! I’m sorry. I was so comfortable, I didn’t think it might be awkward for you!” she apologized earnestly.

  You have no idea how awkward. He grinned to hide his guilt, and to reassure her, but he was afraid it just came out looking demented.

  Up they climbed once more. Fawn settled herself with both dainty feet to one side, and both dainty hands wrapped around his waist in a firm, warm grip.

  And all Dag’s stern resolve melted in the unbidden thought: Lower. Lower!

  He set his teeth and dug his heels into the blameless mare’s sides to urge her to a brisker walk.

  Fawn balanced herself, wondering if she laid her head to Dag’s back if she could hear his heartbeat again. She’d thought she’d been recovering well this morning, but the little accident reminded her of how tired she yet was, how quickly the least exertion stole her breath. Dag was more tired than he looked, too, it seemed, judging by his long silences.

  She was embarrassed by how close she’d come to trying to kiss him, after their clumsy fall. She’d probably landed an elbow in his gut, and he’d been too kind to say anything. He’d even grinned at her, helping her up. His teeth were a trifle crooked, but nothing to signify, strong and sound, with a fascinating little chip out of one of the front ones. His smile was too fleeting, but it was probably safer for her tattered dignity that his grin was even rarer. If he’d grinned at her so kissably while they were still flat on the grass, instead of giving her that peculiar look—maybe it had been suppressed pain?—she’d likely have disgraced herself altogether.

  The nasty name that Sunny had called her during their argument over the baby stuck in her craw. With one mocking word, Sunny had somehow turned all her love-in-intent, her breathless curiosity, her timid daring, into something ugly and vile. He’d been happy enough to kiss her and fondle her in the wheatfield in the dark, and call her his pretty thing; the slur came later. Dubious therefore, but still…
was it typical for men to despise the women who gave them the attention they claimed to want? Judging from some of the rude insults she’d heard here and there, maybe so.

  She did not want Dag to despise her, to take her for something low. But then, she would never apply the word typical to him.

  So… was Dag lonely? Or lucky?

  He didn’t seem the lucky sort, somehow.

  So how would you know? Her heart felt as if it knew him better than any man, no, any person she’d ever met. The feeling did not stand up to inspection. He could be married, for all he’d said to the contrary. He could have children. He could have children almost as old as her. Or who knew what? He hadn’t said. There was a lot he hadn’t talked of, when she thought about it.

  It was just that… what little he’d talked about had seemed so important. As though she’d been dying of thirst, and everyone else had wanted to give her piles of dry gimcrackery, and he’d offered her a cup of plain pure water. Straightforward. Welcome beyond desire or deserving. Unsettling…

  The valley they were riding down opened out, the creek ran away through broad fields, and the farm lane gave onto the straight road at last.

  Dag turned the mare left. And whatever opportunity she had just wasted was gone forever.

  The straight road was busier today, and grew more so as they neared the town. Either the removal of the bandit threat had brought more people out on the highway, or it was market day. Or both, Fawn decided. They passed sturdy brick-wagons and goods-wagons drawn by teams of big dray horses pulling hard going out, and rode alongside ones returning, not empty, but loaded with firewood or hitchhiking county folk taking produce and handcrafts to sell. She caught snatches of cheerful conversation, the girls flirting with the teamsters when no elders rode with them. Farm carts and haywains and yes, even that manure wagon she’d wished for in vain the other day. The scent of coal smoke and woodsmoke came to Fawn’s nose even before they rounded the last curve and the town came into sight.

  Nothing about this arrival was like anything she had pictured when she’d started out from home, but at least she’d got here. Something that she’d begun, finally finished. It felt like breaking a curse. Glassforge. At last.

  Chapter 9

  Fawn leaned precariously around Dag’s shoulder and gazed down the main street, lined with older buildings of wood and stone or newer ones of brick. Plank sidewalks kept people’s feet out of the churned mud of the road. A block farther on, the mud gave way to cobblestones, and beyond that, brick. A town so rich they paved the street with brick! The road curved away to follow the bend in the river, but she could just glimpse a town square busy with a day market. Most of the smokes that smudged the air seemed to be coming from farther downstream and downwind. Dag turned the mare into a side street, jerking his chin at the brick building rising to their left, blunt and blocky but softened by climbing ivy.

  “There’s our hotel. Patrols always stay there for free. It was written into the will of the owner’s father. Something about the last big malice we took out in these parts, nigh on sixty years ago. Must’ve been a scary one. Good thinking on someone’s part, because it gets the area patrolled more often.”

  “You looked for sixty years without finding another?”

  “Oh, there’ve been a couple in the interim, I believe. We just got them so small, the farmers never knew. Like, um… pulling a weed instead of chopping down a tree. Better for us, better for everyone, except harder to convince folks to chip in some payment. Farsighted man, that old innkeep.”

  They turned again under a wide brick archway and into the yard between the hotel and its stable. A horse boy polishing harness on a bench glanced up and rose to come forward. He did not reach for the mare’s makeshift bridle.

  “Sorry, mister, miss.” His nod was polite, but his look seemed to sum up the worth of the battered pair riding bareback and find it sadly short. “Hotel’s full up. You’ll have to find another place.” The twist of his lips turned slightly derisive, if not altogether without sympathy. “Doubt you could make the price of a room here anyways.”

  Only Fawn’s hand on Dag’s back felt the faint rumble of—anger? no, amusement pass through him. “Doubt I could too. Happily, Miss Bluefield, here, has made the price of all of them.”

  The boy’s face went a little blank, as he tried to work this out to anything that made sense to him. His confusion was interrupted by a pair of Lakewalkers hobbling out of the doorway into the yard, staring hard at Dag.

  These two looked more like proper patrollers, neat in leather vests, with their long hair pulled back in decorated braids. One had a face nearly as bruised as Fawn’s, with a strip of linen wrapped awkwardly around his head and under his jaw not quite hiding a line of bloody stitches. He leaned on a stick. The other had her left arm, thickened with bandages, supported in a sling. Both were dark-haired and tall, though their eyes were an almost normal sort of clear bright brown.

  “Dag Redwing Hickory… ?” said the woman cautiously.

  Dag swung his right leg over the mare’s neck and sat sideways a moment; smiling faintly, he touched his hand to his temple in a gesture of acknowledgment. “Aye. You all from Chato’s Log Hollow patrol?”

  Both patrollers stood straighter, despite their evident hurts. “Yes, sir!” said the man, while the woman hissed at the hotel servant, “Boy, take the patroller’s horse!”

  The boy jumped as though goosed and took the halter rope, his stare growing wide-eyed. Dag slid down and turned to help Fawn, who swung her legs over.

  “Ah! Don’t you dare jump,” he said sternly, and she nodded and slid off into his arm, collecting something pleasantly like a hug as he eased her feet to the ground. She stifled her longing to lean her head into his chest and just stand there for, oh, say, about a week. He turned to the other patrollers, but his left arm stayed behind her back, a solid, anchoring weight.

  “Where is everyone?” Dag asked.

  The man grinned, then winced, his hand going to his jaw. “Out looking for you, mostly.”

  “Ah, I was afraid of that.”

  “Yeah,” said the woman. “Your patrol all kept swearing you’d turn up like a cat, and then went running out again anyway without hardly stopping to eat or sleep. Looks like the cat fanciers had the right of it. There’s a fellow upstairs name of Saun’s been fretting his heart out for you. Every time we go in, he badgers for news.”

  Dag’s lips pursed in a breath of relief. “On medicine tent duty, are you?”

  “Yep,” said the man.

  “How many carrying-wounded have we got?”

  “Just two—your Saun and our Reela. She got her leg broke when some mud-men spooked her horse over a drop.”

  “Bad?”

  “Not good, but she’ll get to keep it.”

  Dag nodded. “Good enough, then.”

  The man blinked in belated realization of Dag’s stump, but he added nothing more awkward. “I don’t know how tired you are, but it would be kindly done if you could step up and put Saun’s mind at ease first thing. He really has been fretting something awful. I think he’d rest better for seeing you with his own eyes.”

  “Of course,” said Dag.

  “Ah…” said the woman, looking at Fawn and then, inquiringly, at Dag.

  “This here’s Miss Fawn Bluefield,” said Dag.

  Fawn dipped her knees. “How de’ do?”

  “And she is… ?” said the man dubiously.

  “She’s with me.” Something distinctly firm in Dag’s voice discouraged further questions, and the two patrollers, after civil if still curious nods at Fawn, led the way inside.

  Fawn had only a glimpse of the entry hall, featuring a tall wooden counter and archways leading off to some big rooms, before she followed the patrollers up a staircase with a time-polished banister, cool and smooth under her hesitant fingertips. One flight up, they turned into a hallway lined with doors on either side and a glass window set in the end for light.

  “You partner�
��s mostly lucid today, although he still keeps claiming you brought him back from the dead,” said the man over his shoulder.

  “He wasn’t dead,” said Dag.

  The man shot a look at the woman. “Told you.”

  “His heart had stopped and he’d quit breathing, was all.”

  Fawn blinked in bafflement. And, she was heartened to see, she wasn’t the only one.

  “Er…” The man stopped outside a door with a brass number 6 on it. “Pardon, sir? I’d always been taught it was too risky to match grounds with someone mortally injured, and unworkable to block the pain at speed.”

  “Likely.” Dag shrugged. “I just skipped the extras and went in and out fast.”

  “Oh,” said the woman in a voice of enlightenment that Fawn did not share.

  The man blurted, “Didn’t it hurt?”

  Dag gave him a long, slow look. Fawn was very glad it wasn’t her at the focus, because that look could surely reduce people to grease spots on the floor. Dag gave the other patroller a moment more to melt—precisely timed, she was suddenly certain—then nodded at the door. The woman hastened to open it.

  Dag passed in. If the two patrollers had been respectful before, the look they now exchanged behind his back was downright daunted. The woman glanced at Fawn doubtfully but did not attempt to exclude her as she slipped through the door in Dag’s wake.

  The room had cutwork linen curtains, pushed open and moving gently in the summer air, and flanking the window two beds with feather ticks atop straw ticks. One was empty, though it had gear and saddlebags piled on the floor at its foot. So did the other, but in it lay an—inevitably—tall young man. His hair was light brown, unbraided, and spread out upon his pillow. A rumpled sheet was pulled up to his chest, where his torso was wrapped around with bandages. He stared listlessly at the ceiling, his pale brow wrinkled. When he turned his head at the sound of steps and recognized his visitor, the pain in his face transformed to joy so fast it looked like a flash flood washing over him.