“Hm?” He wasn’t there yet, but he had hold of the tail of something, she could tell. Something elusive.
“When I make a perfect shot with my bow. Which happens from time to time, though never often enough. I don’t just mean get the arrow into the target, which I can do pretty consistently. In a perfect shot, everything’s there the same as any ordinary shot, yet not. For that fleeting moment, it’s like—my worries, my body, my bow, the target, even the arrow disappear. Only the flight is left.” His hand closed, opened.
“My left-hand groundwork is like the flight of the arrow without the arrow.”
He stared down as if his words had fallen into his palm as unexpectedly as a jeweled tooth.
He just said something important. Hang on to that, farmer girl, even if you don’t quite get it yet. “So why am I not beguiled, yet Hod is? You’ve done groundwork on us both. The why and how has to lie somewhere in the space between us three.”
His mouth slowly closed; the gold of his eyes turned flat and unreflective. But he said only, “We’re keeping Berry,” and walked on.
Fawn matched his pace, satisfied that her question had not been dismissed; his sudden abstraction only marked the wheels in his head turning creakily in unaccustomed directions. So maybe I should keep that axle grease coming, huh?
12
Despite the delay from Dag’s fruitless errand, the Fetch made another eight downriver miles before darkness drove them to shore. At supper, Berry opined that they would reach Silver Shoals by tomorrow, if the river didn’t fall overnight. Dag smiled into his mug of fizzy cider as he watched Fawn’s and Whit’s eyes light up at the news. They both quizzed Berry and Bo about the famous rivertown, which filled the time until Hawthorn and Hod carried the dirty dishes to the back deck to wash up. This looked to take a while, as Hawthorn was attempting to teach his raccoon kit to ride on his shoulder at the same time. There was still a long stretch of evening left, and it wasn’t raining, windy, or excessively cold.
“Bow lessons?” suggested Dag to Whit. “It’s been a few days.” Since before the distractions of Glassforge and Pearl Riffle.
Whit looked up eagerly, but said, “Isn’t it too dark? The moon won’t be up for a while, and even then it’s none too full.”
“The Fetch has plenty of lanterns, if Berry’ll lend us a couple.”
Berry nodded, looking interested.
“Set up one by the target, the other by us,” Dag continued. “Easy.”
“Sounds like a waste of good rock oil. And lanterns,” said Bo.
“Whit will aim by it, not at it. Or so we hope,” said Dag. Whit grinned sheepishly. “You need to learn to shoot in all kinds of light. If you were a Lakewalker, I could teach you to shoot in complete darkness, by groundsense. Those slow-moving trees in broad daylight are getting too easy for you. We’ll have to shift you on to peppier targets soon. But tonight we can borrow Copperhead’s and Daisy-goat’s spare straw bale and set it up above the bank a ways.”
Fawn said, “Wait, who has to go grope for the misses in the dark? We’ll be losing my good arrows!” Arrow retrieval had been her job in Whit’s prior camp-side lessons, mostly due to an understandable protectiveness of her craftwork.
“Not a one,” Dag promised. “You collect the hits, and I’ll undertake to find the misses.” He cast a mock-stern eye on Whit. “That means you’d better tighten your aim, boy.”
With Fawn carrying the lanterns, Whit thumped off to lug the straw bale onto shore. Berry followed after. Bo got up to poke the fire, then settled back with his feet to the hearth. Dag finished his tankard of cider in a more leisurely way.
Remo had listened to all this with a frown. Now he said, “You’re really teaching that mouthy farmer boy Lakewalker bow-work? Why?”
“That would be my tent-brother, yes, and because he asked.”
Remo hesitated. “I suppose it’s been a long time since you had a chance to handle a bow yourself,” he said more quietly. “Were you good, once?”
Remo hadn’t heard all the Dag stories from Saun, it seemed. Maybe it was the livelier Barr that Saun had struck up his acquaintance with. From his tone, Dag guessed Remo was attempting to apologize. Pity he isn’t better at it. Dag let a couple of tart replies go, including I was a fairly dab hand last week, in favor of “Come on along and make yourself useful, if you like. There are some things I just can’t show Whit about his left-hand grip, for one.”
Remo looked taken aback at the notion.
Dag added evenly, “You know, if you’re going to be living with farmers, it’s time you started learning how to talk to ’em.”
“I’m not going to be living with farmers!”
“Well, it doesn’t appear you mean to be living with Lakewalkers, either. What, do you figure to perch up a tree with the squirrels and eat acorns all winter? It’s got to be one or the other.”
Remo’s lips compressed. Dag just shook his head and rose to stroll after Fawn and Whit. He called over his shoulder, “If you change your mind, come on out.”
Whit had set up his bale on some deadfall a reasonable distance upstream, that being the direction with fewer trees and more level footing, and was arguing with Fawn over where to place the lantern. They compromised on a nearby broken cottonwood stump. Fawn pinned the increasingly tattered cloth target with the two concentric circles painted on it to the bale. The white fabric showed up well in the modest yellow glow. They returned to the boat, and Whit ran inside to get his bow and arrows. When he came back out, Remo followed slowly, though only as far as the boat’s front rail, on which he leaned.
The night was quiet—the songs of frogs and insects stilled by the recent frosts, the current barely lapping the dark shore. Dag settled comfortably on a fallen log by the second lantern, offering corrections to Whit’s stance and grip as he sped his dozen arrows. After that, Dag had to grunt up and go with Fawn to find six of them. But the next round, he only had to collect two. Pleased, he made Whit back up ten paces for the following round.
Then Hawthorn arrived, agog to be let try. At least his hands were clean from the dishwashing and wouldn’t leave grubby prints on the bow. Dag promptly set up Whit as Hawthorn’s instructor, a good old-patroller trick to force a novice to focus on his problems from the outside for a change. Dag grinned to hear some of his own phrases falling glibly from Whit’s lips. Remo, Dag was bemused to note, kept creeping closer, first to the end of the gangplank, then to the end of Dag’s log. Every once in a while his hands twitched. If Remo owned a bow, he had not brought it with him on his cross-river swim. Well, if he wanted to play with this one, he would have to ask Whit, just like Hawthorn.
When Dag returned from seeking the next set of misses, and had suggested Whit move Hawthorn rather closer to the target, Remo said suddenly, “Collecting spent arrows was always work for the beginners. Not for a captain.”
Not for a captain with twenty-seven malice kills to his name, did he mean? On whose behalf was Remo offended? “You fetch back your share when you were a tad, did you?”
“Yes!”
“Good for you.”
Fawn wandered back to watch over Dag’s head, finding a task for her restless hands by kneading Dag’s shoulders, which disinclined him to get up and run down the shore again. She said, “What about you, Dag? You haven’t practiced in a while either.”
“Now, Spark, I’ve been pulling a sweep half the day. I’m tired. If I can’t hit that target it’ll make me look nohow in front of all these youngsters.”
“Ha,” she said unsympathetically, abandoned her lovely task—he tried not to whimper out loud—and dodged back up the gangplank. In a couple of minutes, she came back toting Dag’s adapted bow and his well-stocked quiver.