“Come on. Let’s show these farmer boys and girls a patroller snake drive.”
Arkady sighed in a Must I? sort of way, but didn’t argue when Dag assigned him to the other side of the little river. He picked and waded his way across, and trudged up the opposite slope.
“Calla, Indigo-you want to learn how to do this? ”
“No!” said Calla, and “Um…” said her brother.
“It might be a good trick to know if you ever get snakes on your porch or under your house. Before your children find ’em,” Dag remarked.
An arrested look came over Calla’s long face. After a brief silence, she nodded and joined Dag. After another moment, Indigo trod reluctantly after Barr. Sage gulped, gripped his ax, and followed Calla. Dag’s voice faded in the distance, rising and falling in his patrol-leader lecture cadence, as he led them upstream and angled into the woods.
Fawn stayed atop Magpie. If I ever find snakes on my porch, I’ll yell for Dag, she decided firmly.
She couldn’t spot them at first, but she could see the grass quiver: here, then there, then over there, then seemingly everywhere. And she could hear the rustling, growing louder. Then, at the water’s edge, sinuous diamond-patterned forms in brown and dirty white appeared, thick, spade-shaped heads questing. First in ones and twos, and then in tangled dozens, the rattlesnakes slid into the churning water and were swept downstream, swirling in clotted mats like tangled branches.
On the opposite bank, Arkady’s snakes approached in neat ranks of ten across, and entered the water in a synchrony that unfortunately broke up as soon as they encountered the rocks and Dag’s snakes. Dag and Arkady called rather rude critiques upon each other’s snake-herding styles across the water. The important part, Fawn decided, was that they were all going away.
Dag, Barr, and Arkady and their reluctant apprentices moved down the valley in a wide ragged line, passing out of sight around the river’s curve. In about an hour, they all came trudging back. The rest of the company had finally unsaddled the horses and unharnessed the mules, a task somewhat impeded by the big sticks everyone was carrying.
“Mules may safely graze,” Dag announced cheerfully. “By the time those poor snakes get out of the water, they’ll be chilled through, and then nightfall will keep ’em sluggish. It should take them a few days to find their way home again.”
Barr put his hands on his hips, stared down the valley into the setting sun, and shook his head. “You know, if anyone’s camping downstream of us, they’re going to be in for quite a surprise.”
–-
To give the animals time to graze their fill, they made a late start from what Fawn now thought of as Rattlesnake Vale. She was grateful to be on the road before any of the wet and surly inhabitants returned.
As the day wore on, she could see that they were finally passing out of the Barrens. Streams grew more common, and trees taller and more abundant, climbing out of the watercourses to crown the heights once more. There were no farms as yet, though Dag said roving herders brought their flocks up for spring grazing. A debatable country; the southerners called it northern, and the northerners called it southern.
Another day, Dag assured her, and the Trace would begin its long descent toward the valley of the Hardboil River, the largest eastern tributary of the great Gray south of the Grace. After that, they’d soon reach the ferry-and beyond, Dag promised her green mountains like vast rolling waves. Fawn stayed awake on Magpie all that afternoon just for the excitement of the thought.
They passed their first crossroad for a hundred miles, and soon after that, another, plainly rutted with wagon-wheel tracks. Riding ahead between Arkady and Dag so as to eat the least road dust, Fawn spotted the return of local traffic: a few riders and walkers not burdened with camping gear, a farm wagon or two, a man, a boy, and dogs with some sheep. The passersby stared and a few times glared back, and Fawn was reminded that not everyone might be as friendly toward a mixed party of farmers and Lakewalkers as the rivermen had proved. Like the rivers, the road passed through places yet was apart from them, no one’s native country and everyone’s, a space where strangers had to get along with one another will or nil.
Fawn was suggesting they ought to send Barr ahead with Finch tonight to scout for their campsite, just in case, when Arkady turned in his saddle. Coming up around the wagon at an easy lope was a pair of rangy Lakewalker mounts. Their riders were probably partners, Fawn thought; couriers, perhaps. You couldn’t tell a patroller man from a patroller woman at a distance by their clothes, but as they neared Fawn saw they were one each, both fit and tall with hair in single braids. The woman wore a long, dark leather coat, loosely open in the warmth, split up the back for riding. Her black braid swung behind her, still as thick as Fawn’s arm where it was cut off bluntly to clear her cantle.
Her partner’s braid only made it past his shoulders, thinning to a sad tail at the end. The woman’s face turned curiously toward them as their horses blew past; she had the coppery skin of a true northerner, and her eyes flashed gold.
“Great hair,” murmured Arkady. Dag stared, too; Fawn wondered if either man had even noticed the fellow.
“I know that coat!” Dag stood in his stirrups, staring harder. “Could it be-? ” He raised his hand to his mouth, and bellowed, “Sumac!”
The woman reined in her mount so hard it nearly squatted on its haunches, wheeling around in almost the same stride. She, too, stood up in her stirrups. Dag switched his reins over and waved his hook.
The woman’s gold eyes widened. In an equally startled voice, she yelled back, “Uncle Dag!”
–-
Dag grinned as his niece trotted back to him and pulled up her mount.
He gave Copperhead’s rein a sharp yank as the gelding attempted to snap. “Now, be nice to the family, old fellow. Redwings are too rare to waste.”
Sumac’s eyes gleamed with laughter. “I see you still have that awful horse!”
“I see you still have my awful coat.” It actually fit her less loosely than it had her older brother, years back, but then Dar’s eldest had been a skinny pup during his youthful stint in the patrol. It had then descended through Sumac to her younger brother; Dag had thought it lost.
“You bet I do. I made Wyn give it back soon as he got home from his final exchange. You’ll like this-look.” She twisted around in her saddle and lifted her thick braid. “See that scratch across the back? ”
“Is that new?” It was dyed red, barely visible against the black leather.
“ ’Bout a year old. My patrol ambushed a malice just going off sessile above Eagle Falls. One of its mud-men yanked a boar spear away from one of my patrollers. Which I made him eat much dirt about later-you’d have been proud. The spear point would have gone straight in and out my chest wall, and just ruined my new shirt, but instead it skittered across my back. I let it knock me the rest of the way down and came up rolling, then got inside the swing with my knife and did for the mud-man, very tidy.”
Dag concealed the skip in his heartbeat and gave this tale a proper death’s-head patroller grin. She had not told this story at home, or he would have heard about it before this. With reproaches. “First time that ratty old garment paid for itself, I do believe, after all those years of carting it around.”
They were interrupted as the wagon rolled past. Dag waved on a concerned-looking Sage and Calla, and the boys with the pack animals as well. Barr stared over his shoulder, handed his pack string off to Ash, and came trotting back to them.
Fawn’s eyes were wide, looking across Dag’s saddlebow at tall Sumac. “Is that your old magic coat that was supposed to turn arrows, Dag? ”
Sumac’s gaze flicked with equal curiosity toward little Fawn. “I’ve not tried arrows. Rain and spears, definitely. I’ve become very attached to it, tatters and all. I paid Torri Beaver a pot of coin to renew the groundwork when last I was home, though she offered to make me a new one for not much more. I had her leave the scratch in, for bragging rights. Er… you don’t want it back, do you, Uncle Dag? ”