Horizon

16

Dag was able to avoid the confrontation that night only because Arkady was already asleep in his bedroll, but in consequence he and Arkady were cornered by Neeta and her little company at first light the next morning. It would be optimistic to call it sunup; it was more of a brightening fog. Water droplets beaded on blankets, gear, and in everyone’s hair, dank and chill. The crackling flames of the patroller breakfast fire, not quite out of earshot of the farmers’ wagons, seemed wan and pale, much like the people clustered around it. In this orangeand- gray light even Arkady looked unshaved, road-worn, and bleary.

“I thought we’d catch up with you before you’d reached the Barrens,” Neeta explained earnestly. “We might have, too, if only we’d been allowed an earlier start.”

Remo said to Dag, “We wasted the first five days on Antan Bullrush’s attempt to wait you out. I told him Arkady might be bluffing, but you wouldn’t be. When he finally let me ride out to the Bridger farm to check, you were already four days down the road.”

“Yes,” said Neeta, “and then we wasted another two days arguing about it all. It took the camp council to finally overrule the captain. We should have gone after you courier-style, and swapped out the horses along the way, but Antan wouldn’t even authorize that.”

“We had good luck in the road and weather,” said Dag. I pushed us along. He wished he’d had a few more days to push; the farther, the better.

“Anyway,” said Neeta, “you’ve no need now to travel another foot north. We’ve won!”

Arkady squinted curiously. Barr, lurking at his shoulder, frowned.

“I’m pledged to the north, and to my Bluefield tent-kin,” said Dag.

“And these farmer youngsters are relying on me to be their guide on this road, which is all new to them. I’ve more or less promised to see them safe to the Grace Valley, leastways.” He gave Arkady a hooded glance. “Naturally, I hope Arkady will ride on with us. I haven’t even begun to show him all the north has to offer. There’s a lot to see and learn, yet.”

Neeta said, “No, sir, you don’t understand! I mean we’ve won you everything. Dag to be let back in camp, and tent-rights despite the farmer girl, and the medicine booth at the farmer’s market! Maker Challa’s actually become very interested in that, since you’ve shown her all about your unbeguilement trick.”

Arkady blinked. So did Dag.

Barr looked around. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you all come north with us? At least for a while. We’re better’n halfway there, and I was told last fall not to come home without you, Remo. I’ve a suspicion nothing about Pearl Riffle Camp will look the same to me, but I’d like to finish up proper, before making a clean start doing… whatever else. You might, too.”

Remo shook his head. “You don’t see. I’ve found a new place for myself-a place that doesn’t think I’m dirt under its boot heels. I don’t have to go back and crawl on my belly to get a place in a good patrol. New Moon really wants me!”

Shedding his imagined sins as a snake sheds its skin, along with his past and his faultfinding family-Dag could understand the appeal of the southern camp to the boy.

“Wants isn’t the same as needs,” said Barr. “New Moon Cutoff has enough patrollers. There isn’t a camp north of the Grace that would make that claim.” He glanced meaningfully at Tavia, who touched her lips in doubt.

Neeta tossed her head. “Barr can suit himself. We were sent to escort Arkady and Dag home.” She did not, Dag noted, add Fawn to that tally. “Anyway”-she turned to Arkady-“surely you’ve had enough of living rough, sir, at your age. We can whisk you right back to your own comfortable house. It’s all being kept for you.”

Arkady rubbed his sleeve across his eyes. “Gods. I can’t think when I’m covered with trail filth.”

Dag didn’t see that Arkady was any grubbier than anyone else, but he bit his tongue on saying so. Fawn and Sumac had been collaborating on rustling up the breakfast tea. Sumac rose and wordlessly handed the first sweetened cup to Arkady. He took it with a grateful grimace, and sipped.

Sumac looked Neeta over rather coolly. “No one’s going forward or back for another day. If our animals are due for a rest, your mounts must be in worse case, from covering the same distance in two-thirds the time. Dag can’t leave his party scattered over ten miles of trail-it would be very poor patrol procedure. At the very least, we need to get everyone safely to the bottom of this pass and reorganized. There’s plenty of time to think about all this later. After breakfast.”

Dag said, “I agree.”

Arkady looked around the circle of faces and shrugged. “Dag’s the trail boss.”

Neeta doubtless sensed she was being outmaneuvered by the older woman, but couldn’t muster a reasonable objection, since it was quite true about the horses. With the reminder of breakfast, the debate broke up amongst growling stomachs, and was prevented from re-forming by the bustle of breaking camp.

“After lunch,” Dag overheard Sumac murmur to Arkady, “when we’re lower down, I’ll show you a patroller trick for finding warmer water to wash in.”

“That would help,” sighed Arkady.

It had taken a full day to get the party to the top of the pass, but only cost half that to descend the other side. It likely aided things that the cantankerous Grouse remained bedridden in his wagon, as his wife seemed the more sensible half of the couple. Ash and Indigo helped her out. They all made it to the bottom without losing any wagons over the edge of the twisty road, despite having to shift two fallen trees and a small rock slide along the way. Between the mist lifting and the lower elevation, it was a soft, warm spring afternoon by the time they’d found a new campsite in the valley. More bustle followed, to get the four southern boys and Whit fed and off back over the pass to fetch Bo, Hod, and the rest of their gear; they likely wouldn’t traipse in again till the following afternoon.

When Dag finally went to look for Arkady, he was nowhere in sight.

Nor in groundsense range.

“Did you see where Arkady went? ” he asked Fawn.

“Um…” said Fawn.

“What? ”

“Sumac took him off into the woods to find him a warm bath. She said.”

Dag raised his brows at her.

“Well, Arkady did take his scented soap and his towels and razor.”

She added after a moment, “Sumac had a blanket, which I guess you could want for a bath.” And after another, shyer moment, “Do you suppose they’ve gone to scout for squirrels? ”

Dag drew breath. “Not sure.”

Fawn eyed him uneasily. “You don’t think it’s your duty to go after them, do you? On account as Sumac is your niece? ”

“And get my other hand bitten off? No. Sumac is a woman grown. And Arkady’s… not an ineligible suitor.” Arkady’s maker bloodlines were plainly as superior as they could be, and the age gap between the pair was something Dag wouldn’t have dared remark on.

Fawn sighed relief.

A slow smile lifted Dag’s lips at a vision of Arkady and Tent Redwing tangling with each other, if he were to be dragged home as a prize by Sumac. Dag had no doubt Arkady could hold his own-blight, Dar wouldn’t last five minutes. And Cumbia-well, Arkady would doubtless be exquisitely polite to Cumbia. But she wouldn’t budge him half an inch from any course he’d chosen.

Don’t get ahead of yourself, old patroller. Arkady and Sumac were both complicated people, which might or might not help them suit. They’d not drawn each other out very deeply in front of Dag, Arkady seeming content to listen to Dag and Sumac reminisce. Concealing his vulnerable heart? A man would be wise to do so with Sumac, and Arkady was a wise man.

Still… Sumac and Rase had meant to leave the company days ago, back at the Hardboil, and be a hundred miles closer to Hickory Lake by now. Maybe the reunion with good old Uncle Dag wasn’t the sole reason for her delay?

And then had come Neeta, and the hot breath of competition, if of a rather indirect kind. Dag suspected Sumac wasn’t used to rivalry over men, seldom a thing she had to deal with when they all followed her like ducklings. Though as a patrol leader, she was trained to quick thinking and action in an emergency. And if Arkady went south tomorrow, it was unlikely they would ever cross paths again…

“Poor squirrels,” Dag murmured. “They haven’t a chance.”

Fawn grinned up at him. “Maybe we should go find some of our own. If Sumac can spot a warm creek in these woods, seems to me you could, too.”

“A fine plan, Spark.”

“I’ll fetch our soap.”

“And blanket. Which direction shall we scout? ”

“Any but northwest. I think the squirrel menace is likely covered in that direction.”

“Right.”

When Dag, smiling, went off to find Barr and warn him of their afternoon’s planned absence, he found Neeta and Tavia at the boy’s elbow.

“Have you seen Arkady?” Neeta demanded. “I have to talk some sense into him.”

“He went off to get his bath, I believe.”

“Which way? ”

“I didn’t see him,” said Dag, with perfect truth. And with less perfect truth, added, “Downstream, wouldn’t you think?” Southeast, as the creeks ran here.

“Come on, Tavia,” said Neeta. “Arkady shouldn’t be wandering around in these woods on his own. It’s not safe.”

“I don’t think he went far, and I doubt he’d care for your company,” Dag observed. “He’s a man who likes his privacy.”

Tavia set her heels at the alarming thought of interrupting Maker Arkady at his bath; the pair were sitting on a log still arguing when Dag and Fawn snuck away in their own right. Westerly.

–-

The languid afternoon was everything Dag had dreamed of, back when he’d still been envisioning this as a wedding trip. Deep in the woods, he and Fawn found a creek trickling over clean rocks into a sunlit pool, as warm as the season could give, with their bedroll even warmer laid beside it on a sun-dappled bank of soft green horsetails. Mountain wildflowers abounded. But despite their decided lack of hurry, when they strolled back to the quiet camp Arkady and Sumac were still not there.

The mountain ridge they’d just crossed blocked the sun early, casting the woods into cool shadow under a still-luminous sky. Those shadows were thickening when Dag at last spotted Arkady and Sumac emerging from the fringe of the trees. He rather thought the pair supplied their own glow, leaking through their half-closed grounds. They stopped and unlinked hands, then Arkady turned to arrange Sumac’s loose, drying hair, falling like night’s shadow to her hips, combing it through his fingers.

Fortunate fingers… It took Dag another moment to realize what was different about Arkady-besides the obvious. His silver-gilt hair was no longer in its mourning knot, but braided down the back of his head and then set in a loose queue to his shoulders. A northern style-Sumac’s handiwork?

Nevertheless, and quite maddeningly, neither made any interesting announcements, but slipped back into the reduced camp’s dinner routine almost separately. The Basswoods kept to themselves, but Fawn, Calla, and Berry teamed up to grill the trout Remo and Barr had collected from the nearby rushing river. Neeta watched Arkady in concern, but either had the sense not to badger him, or was too caught up in the evening camp chores and horse care to get the chance.

Dag, wondering if he ought to ask Arkady his intentions, decided that was the wrong end of the stick. As the stars came out, he cornered Sumac.

“Pleasant afternoon? ” he inquired genially.

“Very. You? ”

“Likewise. I suspect. Not to pry.”

He could feel her smirk in the shadows of the tall blooming tulip tree they’d ducked behind. “You’re dying to pry.”

“Well. I do feel a certain responsibility for my partner.”

Sumac tilted her head back and remarked as if to no one in particular, “I do like a man with clean hands. Who knows what to do with them.”

“Should I ask you if your intentions are honorable? ”

“Intentions are like wishes. You don’t always get them.”

“Arkady… is a right sensitive man. If strong in his own way. You could-if you-” Dag strove for neutral wording. “He could be hurt.”

“I am aware.” Her eyes, glinting in the shadows, grew serious at last.

“We talked.”

“Talked.” Dag tried to imagine Arkady talking. It was an effort.

“What about? ”

“A lot of things. What we had in common, for one.”

“Like what? ” said Dag. They were not an obviously matched pair, for all that he suspected subtler compatibilities.

That dark smile, again. “I don’t think I’ll tell you. But you were right-the man’s insight is unholy.”

Dag cleared his throat. “Did he, um… tell you anything about his first marriage? ”

“With Bryna? Oh, days ago.”

“Oh.” Dag stumbled on: “A week’s not very long to make up your mind, after fifteen years of avoiding… whatever you’ve been avoiding.”

“Yes, I’m off to a late start. And he’s worried it could be his and Bryna’s sorrows all over again. He does feel it might be better not to get string-bound till we’re sure things will work out. So’s I wouldn’t quit the patrol and turn my life upside down for nothing. We’d both be glad of your blessing, though.”

Not seeing why his blessing was worth a pig’s whistle, it took Dag a moment to decode this. He imagined it: Why, yes, Arkady, by all means, impregnate my niece! The family will be ecstatic! Except that they likely would be, by now.

“It’s time, you see,” said Sumac simply. “After fifteen years, I’ve had so much practice at sorting out what I don’t want, it doesn’t take that long to see what I do. Even if I’ve never seen the like before. How long did it take you and Fawn to decide on each other? ”

“Er… several weeks.” Honesty compelled: “Well, two days. Several weeks to get up the courage.”

A flickering fox-grin. “Well, then.” She drew breath. “When I was twenty, I knew everything about my future. Now, I know nothing. But I do know your partner will go north when I do. So you can say, Thank you, Sumac.”

“Thank you, Sumac,” Dag echoed dutifully. And added more gently, “All the joy in the wide green world to you two.”

Her lips eased in quite the softest smile he’d ever seen on her toughgirl face. She nodded gravely.

–-

Sumac proved right about Arkady’s sense of direction.

Neeta, however, did not give up and turn around, in part because Remo had been argued into a tizzy of indecision by Barr. Tavia said little. But the upshot was that when the reunited company at last took the Trace north again, it was swollen to twenty-three people and an entire drove of horses and mules. Leastways, Dag reflected, it made them a more daunting target for bandits.

The Trace here ran for three days travel up a slot flanked by running ridges, vast green sky-blocking humps. It was a thinly peopled country.

A few hamlets, carved out of what little flat land the valley offered, supplemented their meager livings by supplying the needs of travelers.

Grouse, recovering from his ague attack enough to take the reins on his wagon box, eyed the land hungrily, but any vale with a creek bottom worth having was clearly already taken.

Inevitably, Whit saw and recognized the birthday walnut around his sister’s neck. Rather than having to talk his tent-brother into being his next target, Dag found him to be an eager volunteer. Dag was at first inclined to seek some private spot for the trial, then recalled the show he’d put on with Crane and his first sharing-knife bonding. The memory was disturbing, and he disliked doing complex and chancy groundwork with an audience, but this crowd was captive and mostly friendly. His own words came uncomfortably back to him: Never miss a chance to befriend and teach.

Around the campfire that night, Dag took on his next major making.

The first few minutes were spent sorting out whose hair Whit was to borrow to supplement his own too-short curls, his sister’s or his wife’s.

They settled on Berry’s. She made a face as Fawn did the snipping, filching a generous blond hank. Whit’s thicker fingers proved considerably less deft at cord braiding than Fawn’s, especially when his added blood made the mixed hair slippery. Everyone gathered around, the Lakewalkers watching more wide-eyed than the farmers when Dag straddled a log behind Whit and helped him draw his ground out into the growing length of braid.

“So that’s how they did those wedding cords!” murmured Tavia.

Indigo scowled in fascination, his fingers rubbing one another as if in troubled memory.

The little sack of black walnuts had ridden with Dag all the way from Hickory Lake, sifted to the bottom of his saddlebags and forgotten on the river journey. Taking up one now, he rolled it between his fingers, feeling an unexpected shiver at this reminder of home. He glanced up at Sumac, watching over Arkady’s shoulder, and managed a smile. Any hard-shelled nut would likely do to anchor this involution, but Dag was glad of these.

Arkady knelt at their side, watching closely as Dag, hook harness removed, held his long arms around Whit, his chin resting on the boy’s shoulder. His fleshly fingers worked with Whit’s to slip the nut into the net of hair, while his ghost fingers shaped the involution out of their own substance, catching up and winding in Whit’s ground.

“Suggest you ease down, Dag,” muttered Arkady in his ear. “You’ll turn yourself inside out going that deep.”

Indeed, Maker Vayve, too, had accused Dag of overbuilding his groundwork; Dag eased down. He and Whit together lifted the hair necklace over Whit’s head, and the walnut pendant fell to touch his skin, framed by the open collar of his shirt. Dag opened his ghost hand and let his involution go, setting his jaw against the tearing pain.

His belly shuddered, and his feet went cold. Arkady breathed sharply through his teeth; Sumac’s lips parted in a wince. Remo whispered, Ow. And smoothly, like a spreading stain, the shimmering ground shield spread out through Whit’s skin all over his body. Top to toe. Yes.

“Well, now what? ” asked Whit, fingering the walnut.

“Didn’t you feel that? ” asked Sumac.

“Not especially.” Whit looked up and blinked. “What? Are we done already? ”

“Yep.” Dag eased upright and stretched and clenched his fingers, grimacing as the tension unwound in his back. Whit leaped up and capered around the fire, demanding that Barr and Remo describe what they saw with their groundsenses.

Grouse Basswood, apparently still waiting for the human-sacrificeand- cannibalism part to start, blinked and said in a disappointed voice, “Is that it? He didn’t do nothing!”

“Now do Berry!” said Whit in a burst of enthusiasm. “And Hawthorn.”

Hawthorn crowed assent; Bo thumped him on the side of the head.

Hod hovered, grinning hesitantly. “And me? ”

Berry clutched her hair and laughed uneasily. “I’ll be snatched bald!”

Arkady eyed Dag’s slump on the log, and said, “May I try the next one? ”

Dag’s head jerked up, and he squinted in surprise; Arkady cast him a nod. Sumac’s encouraging grip on Arkady’s shoulder pushed him forward. Barr gave Dag a hand up; Dag staggered and stood a moment with his hands on his knees till his light-headedness passed.

Arkady swallowed, taking Dag’s place on the log. Fawn repeated the operation on Berry’s hair with her sewing scissors and a lot of female consultation about just where to cut to best conceal the growing back.

“You Lakewalkers have to give me some of your ground reinforcements later on these here finger cuts,” Berry said sternly as she seated herself with the hair strands laid out in front of her, “so’s I can play my fiddle.”

At the chorus of volunteers, she nodded in satisfaction, and began.

Berry’s bloodstained hair braiding was considerably neater than Whit’s, and swifter.

Arkady caught up her ground on his second try-Dag was impressed- and wound it into his involution with seeming ease. Arkady did complex and delicate involutions in his work from time to time; any sharing-knife maker or senior medicine maker, Dag thought, ought to be nearly as practiced and adept. His hopes rose. If more makers than Dag and the admittedly extraordinary Arkady could be taught this technique, it became far more than a stunt. It might even be a solution. Although even Arkady gasped when he let his shaped involution go, his face draining;

Sumac caught his arm and held him upright till his breathing steadied.

“Best stop for tonight,” said Dag. “That gives us three different samples to study.” The groundwork on each was slightly different, and Dag wasn’t sure which would be best. When he had perfected the skill, he decided, he would go back and redo Fawn’s. Although he didn’t think her shield overbuilt; if anything, he wanted to make it twice as strong, for her and for the child-he rather thought by now it was going to be their daughter, though the shield made it hard to be sure-growing so swiftly within her.

“That didn’t look so bad,” said Vio, watching Berry.

“This is just what they let us see,” Grouse grumbled.

Berry and Barr then flummoxed each other when he attempted a ground reinforcement on her pricked fingers and had it slide off. Arkady was called over to consult.

“Well, the shield repels groundwork, all right,” said Arkady, stroking Berry’s hand and frowning. “It doesn’t seem to care if the intent of the groundwork is good or not. You can break the shield by removing the necklace, but I’d rather you didn’t, just yet.”

Berry studied his slightly haggard face and nodded understanding.

“My word, yes, it would be like sinking the boat you’d just launched. I’ll just wash my fingers good and tie strips on them for the night. They’re only little cuts. They’ll be fine in the morning.”

Dag caught Arkady’s glance. “See why it won’t be finished till I figure out how to make the shield something the farmer can take on and off?”

“Something to think about, to be sure.” Arkady’s shoulders were as bowed with fatigue as after emergency medicine work, but his coppery eyes gleamed with excitement.

“What I don’t understand,” said Grouse, “is why you Lakewalkers would want to do something that stops you from doing things.”

“Really, this seems pointless,” murmured Neeta.

“It’s not Lakewalkers I want to protect farmers from,” said Dag-not entirely, leastways-“though I expect that might have some interestin’ consequences. It’s malices. Blight bogles.”

Grouse’s face screwed up. Another farmer who didn’t quite believe in a menace he’d never seen and barely heard of-or he wouldn’t be so anxious to move north, Dag reckoned. Vio looked more wary.

The show over, the company broke up to seek their respective bedrolls.

As the night breeze sighed in the trees, Dag hugged Fawn close.

She cuddled in tight under their blankets and said, “That was well done, Dag.”

“Well started, maybe. It all seems a long way from done to me.”

“Mm,” she said. “But stop and think about how far you’ve come since last year this time.”

He hardly needed to sense her clouded ground to feel her little spurt of memory, a ripple of tension across her back under his only hand.

“Hm? ”

“How far we’ve both come,” she went on more quietly. “Last year this time… I’d already made my big stupid mistake, and was just working up to running away from home in a panic. Well, not panic, exactly. Desperation, maybe.”

He let his fingers seek those back muscles, rubbing the remembered strain out of them. No more desperation for you, Spark. Not if I can help it.

“Me… let me think. Out walking my thousandth routine patrol, I suppose, before Chato’s courier called us down to Glassforge. I’d spent too many years just about one bad night’s sleep away from tossing it in and sharing, and was getting mighty tired of that state of mind. I do remember that.”

Her slim little fingers chased bad memories out of his muscles in turn. “Could you have imagined us, here, now? Could you have pictured doing such a making as you did tonight? ”

“Gods. No. Nor any other making. Not in my wildest dreams. My dreams mostly not being good dreams, see.”

“There you go, then.” Her lips pressed a warm circle on his collarbone, then curved up. “I s’pose the advantage of being a gloomy cuss is that all your surprises are good ones.”

He snickered. “Point, Spark.”

–-

The following afternoon brought them to the foot of the next pass, where they made an early stop to sort out the most efficient plans for getting the wagons up it. With a dawn start, Dag hoped the whole company could make it to the bottom of the far side by tomorrow night.

That vale, rugged and almost as unpeopled as the Barrens, was the last where this land humped up like a giant’s blanket folds; the trail at its head would lead over and down into the settled country approaching the Grace Valley. Dag felt a funny little flutter in his belly at that thought.

Spark and I and our youngin’ are coming home. It would be a home to make, carved new out of unknown territory, even though their sort of homesteading was unlikely to involve chopping trees and pulling stumps.

On his bedtime perimeter patrol that night, Dag became aware he was being shadowed by Neeta. Maybe he needed to vary his habits; he was getting too easy to ambush. He reluctantly slowed his steps and let her come up to him, not anxious to reopen the argument about his direction of travel.

“Nice night,” she remarked.

“Ayup.” It was star-spangled, the cool darkness drenched with the green scents of spring, alive with bug and frog songs.

“You know…”-she touched his sleeve, her smile turning warm-“you’d be welcome in my bedroll.”

What, had she been inspired by Sumac’s ploy? Did she mean to seduce him into turning south? What was this, with all these lovely young women flinging themselves at his head this season? And where were they all when I was twenty-two, and could have done something about it? The depressing answer, Not born yet, presented itself rather inescapably. First Calla, then Neeta, although Calla hadn’t hardly meant it. Neeta’s was a dodgier proposition on that score.

“Well, that’s a right flattering thing to say to a fellow my age, Neeta, but you know, I’m string-bound.” He reached to touch the cord coiled on his left arm above his harness, incidentally shifting his right arm out from under her grasp.

Neeta’s smile of invitation didn’t waver. “She’s a farmer. She’d never know.”

Wouldn’t be able to read the changes in his ground, Neeta meant.

“That’s not the point.” He needed to nip this in the bud hard and fast, but not, perhaps, cruelly. Forgive me, Kauneo, for using your memory so. But Kauneo had been a patrol leader herself, and would understand. “I think you do not see, so I’ll explain. Once only. I loved a patroller woman very much-”

“You might again.”

“No. Never again. Never while I breathe will I trade hearts with a woman who I could have the duty to order into harm’s way.”

“You’re talking about Wolf Ridge, aren’t you? It was a great tragedy, but a great battle.” Sympathy shone in her eyes like starlight.

“Actually, it was a pretty stupid battle. Since for two weeks afterwards I was too dizzy from blood loss to stand up, I had plenty of time to lie there and think about ways to have done it better. And one of the things I figured out was that if I had it to do all over, I would have sacrificed the whole company, and her brothers, and all, to save her, without remorse or regret. This is not a fit state of mind for a patrol leader or captain, which is why I never willingly took up those duties again.”

She started to speak; he overrode her. “One of the things I love best about Fawn is that she’s not a patroller woman, and never will be or could be. She’s an opposite to Kauneo in every way possible. Short instead of tall, dark hair instead of winter-red, brown eyes not silver, not my equal in age or groundsense. Farmer instead of Lakewalker, how much farther can you get? I can look at her all day long and not stir up one painful memory.” Except for the brightness of her ground; in that, his two wives were blazingly alike. He gulped at the thought, and wondered why he’d never allowed himself to think it before. “Give this notion over, Neeta. You’ll just embarrass yourself and me to no good purpose. There are better young men for you.”

“Young idiots,” she snorted.

“They grow older in due course.” Growing into old idiots? There was evidence.

She stood rigid. Dag wondered in despair how else he might say, You’re a cute young thing but your tactics are transparent and I wouldn’t touch you with a stick without offending or crushing her. He surely wasn’t the most ornamental addition to any woman’s bedroll, and he rather thought Neeta hadn’t thought of him in those terms till now-indeed, the first time they’d met, before she’d learned his ancient history, she’d looked at him like a spring beetle found crunched underfoot. But the tinge of hero worship was a dilemma.

Fortunately, before he could tangle himself up worse with his tongue, she raised her chin bravely, turned, and strode away. She was too much a proud patroller woman to flounce, which relieved him only slightly. Dag hoped he’d discouraged this approach to the argument about their direction of travel for good and all, although the possibility of Neeta sending in her partner as a second wave did cross his mind, and then he didn’t know whether to laugh or wince. He trusted Tavia had more sense.

Neeta had a problem more pressing than what man she might or might not attach to her bedroll. Dag wasn’t sure how much of a show she’d made of herself back at New Moon Cutoff to win both permission for the Arkady retrieval and command of it, but he had no doubt that for her to drag back to her camp without the groundsetter would be a considerable comedown. Still worse to return all alone, if Remo and maybe Tavia both bolted north, although Dag suspected Antan, at least, would be quite pleased if she came back without Dag and Fawn. Had her camp captain set her up to fail? Not a nice thought, though Dag could understand Antan yielding to the temptation to undercut his badgering young patroller and teach her a sharp lesson, the sharper for having brought it on herself.

So all in all, Dag was not surprised, come the dawn mist, to find Neeta and her little patrol saddling up to climb the next pass along with them. It was a long and busy day, fortunately, and by the time they’d been forced to cooperate on a dozen tasks, they’d established an unspoken pretense that the prior night’s conversation had never occurred. At least she didn’t seem heartbroken, and Dag could hardly fault her for her determination, even if it wasn’t going to do her any good.

–-

After the labors of the pass, the following day’s start was made later by a pouring rain. But the ragged gray clouds blew out by noon, the sun emerged, and a hot, bright, steaming stillness overtook the rugged country. Their cavalcade strung out along the miry road, just outpacing the first crop of mosquitoes whining in the woody shade. In the damp air, even quiet voices echoed off the rocks. Dag found himself riding together with Fawn, Whit, and Berry at the head of the line, everyone’s feet dangling beside their stirrups. Despite the lazy heat he was pleased to note Fawn upright and staring eagerly around, not as fatigued as she’d been of late.

“How many folks live in Clearcreek, would you guess? ” she asked Berry.

“Maybe seven hundred in the village, but a couple thousand up the whole valley.”

“I was wondering what was the right size of place for Dag-Dag and Arkady, now-to set up their trial medicine tent. Too little, and there wouldn’t be enough customers to keep them busy. Too many and they’d be overwhelmed. Likely Silver Shoals would be too much to start with. I don’t know about Tripoint.”

“It’s bigger than Silver Shoals,” said Dag. “I don’t know if we’ll have time this summer to take you up there and show you the city.”

“It would be something, to have ridden the whole Trace from Graymouth to Tripoint,” agreed Whit. “Still… I want to take Berry up to West Blue, too, and I don’t think there’d be time to do both.”

Whit was plainly eager to show his new bride off to his family. As well he should be, Dag thought.

“I’ve about got calluses on my backside from the Trace already,” said Fawn. “Maybe you could bring back my mare and her foal, though. And my sack of plunkin ears, which Aunt Nattie was keeping for me.”

“Oh, I thought we’d all go together,” said Whit, sounding a little disappointed.

“Well, we’ll see. How close is your place to the river, Berry? ”

“Not much more’n a mile up the Clear Creek. We launched our yearly flatboat right into the crick from our land.”

“So… you’re really almost in the Grace Valley. Do boats-and rivermen-come in off the river? Is it like a river town? ”

“Nearly. Clearcreek Landing, which sits at the crick mouth, is turning into a village in its own right, ’cept for washing away now and then in the floods. Are you thinkin’ of more trade for Dag? It’s a fact them river boys do themselves a world of hurt, time to time, even without the fevers.”

“That,” said Dag, “and something Fawn said once. That the river was like a village one street wide and two thousand miles long. I’ve been thinking for some time that if I want word to get around about what I’m doing, the river folks would ride courier for us.”

Berry nodded in approval; if Dag was not a riverman, a riverbank man would clearly be the next best thing, in her estimation. “It would be a help to me and Hawthorn if you and Fawn and Arkady was to keep our house while we was gone down with the yearly flatboat-that is, if we get a boat built for this fall’s rise. Whit still has a mite to learn ’fore I’m ready to make him boat boss and take up managin’ the goods-shed. I’d like at least one more trip on the river ’fore I get landed on shore like Fawn.” She jerked her chin toward her tent-sister’s middle.

Whit smiled innocently.

“I don’t suppose,” said Fawn, “you have a pond on your place, Berry? ”

“Why, we do, in fact.”

Fawn brightened. “Really!” Planting plunkin in her mind already, Dag could see. Clearcreek, Oleana, was looming larger in his future every day. He began to think he might deal with it right well.

“My word, this is a strange country,” said Fawn, looking around.

“Where did all the trees go? There wasn’t blight here, was there, Dag? ”

The woods had opened out, with only a few tall red oaks, their bark laced with black scars, growing out of a riot of green scrub. “No, forest fire,” said Dag. “There was a big summer drought in this valley a few years ago. It’s all coming back real good, looks like.”

Fawn peered under the flat of her hand at the new growth climbing the valley walls. “That must have been quite some fire.”

Whit squinted ahead into the hazy distance. “Huh. Funny-lookin’ fellow, there, wanderin’ our way. Hey-is he naked?”

Dag followed his glance, opening his half-closed groundsense. A big, shaggy-haired man with oddly mottled skin was limping southward down the middle of the road. Dag’s breath drew in, his back straightened, and his feet sought his stirrups as his mind burst in twenty directions at once, like a covey of startled quail.

“Blight, it’s a mud-man!”

Dag stood in his saddle and bellowed over his shoulder, “Barr! Remo! We got us a mud-man! Fetch out the boar spears! Sumac-”

Blight, where was Sumac? And Arkady? They weren’t in his groundsense range. If a live mud-man was here on this road, its malice master could not be far off. Not nearly far enough. But Dag, straining, couldn’t sense it yet. It came to him-gods, where had his wits gone?-that they hadn’t been passed by any southward-bound traffic all morning. All the night before? How long?

“Fawn”-panic was making Dag’s world turn red-“drop back to the wagons, make ’em stop, get all the farmers together, and stay there.”

One flying wit at least dropped a feather-“Explain to the ignorant ones what’s going on.”

Fawn had her reins tightened up while Whit was still closing his gaping mouth. “Right,” she said simply, and yanked Magpie around.

Dag wheeled in the opposite direction, wrapped his reins around his hook, drew his steel knife, and clapped his heels to his gelding’s sides.

Copperhead bolted forward into the breathless light.