Hod would not meet his gaze. “Fell,” he muttered belligerently.
Dag drew a long breath. Hod’s was a real injury, but not a real emergency. There was no need for hasty stopgaps. Dag could take time, slow down, think. That didn’t feel like his best skill, right now, but maybe, like bow-work, it took practice. I wonder if my brain will bleed?
Hod seemed stupid and surly, but maybe those were just other words for inarticulate and terrified. Dag had won this trouble by making assumptions about Hod. When his own habits of concealment met Hod’s mute bewilderment, it wasn’t any wonder that enlightenment didn’t generally follow.
“Hod, you were standing right there on the front deck when I did the groundwork on Cress’s belly-hurt. Did you hear what I said to her and Mark about beguilement? Did you understand it?”
Hod managed somehow to shake his head yes and no at the same time. Dag couldn’t tell if that meant he hadn’t heard, hadn’t understood, or was just uncertain if it was safe to admit to either.
“Do you even know what beguilement is?” Did Dag? It seemed he was finding out.
Hod shook his head again, but then offered, “Lakewalker magic? They make people give them bargains. Or make the girls”—he shot a glance at Fawn and turned red—“want to go out to the woodpile with ’em.”
The latter, Dag guessed, being a Hod-ism, or perhaps Glassforge slang, for seduction. “It’s not either of those things,” he asserted, possibly untruthfully. At least it wasn’t either of those in this case, and he didn’t want those slanderous—or cautionary, pick one—notions cluttering up Hod’s thinking. Or his own. “You and I are both finding out just what beguilement really is, because I beguiled you by accident when I healed your smashed knee. It seems to happen when a farmer—that’s you—experiences Lakewalker groundwork and wants it to happen again. Wants it so bad he or she will do crazy things to get it.” He let his finger tap the swollen skin over the knee; Hod whimpered.
“Hurts,” said Hod. Complaint, or placation?
“No doubt. What I want to know is why you want a ground reinforcement again so bad you’d go and hurt yourself to coax one out of me?”
Hod looked as panicked as a possum in a leg-hold trap. He gulped, but kept his lips clamped.
“It’s not a trick question, blight it!” Hod jumped; Dag gentled his tone. “Lakewalkers give each other ground reinforcements all the time—well, often—and they don’t work like that on us. I have to know. Because I’ve a notion, a dream, leastways, that I’d really like to settle down with Fawn someplace and be a medicine maker who heals farmers, but I sure can’t do that if I’ll make all my patients crazy. I’m really hoping you can help me figure it out.”
“Oh,” said Hod. In a voice, absent gods, of Hoddish enlightenment. “Me, help you? Me?” He looked up at Dag and blinked. “Why didn’t you say?”
Why hadn’t he said? Maybe he should go out to that back deck and hit, say, his head against the wall…He glanced up to find Fawn looking at him with her arms crossed and her brows up as if she quite seconded Hod’s question.
Evading answering, Dag went on, “First off, this has to stop. You can’t go on hurting yourself just to get a ground reinforcement.”
Hod looked up in hope. “Would you give me one without me hurting?”
“I don’t think I’d better give you any more at all. I’m not sure if beguilement wears off over time or not, but I’m pretty sure repeating makes it worse.”
“Oh.” Hod gingerly petted his knee and blinked tears. “You gonna make me…wait?”
“If only I had two hurt Hods, I could make one wait and one not, and compare, and then I’d know.”
“Which one would I get to be?”
Dag couldn’t quite figure out an answer to this. He ran his hand through his hair.
Fawn put in, “In a way, you do have another Hod to do the waiting. Cress. If we ever get back to Pearl Bend, say, next spring, you could check up on her.”
“Good point, Spark.”
Hod, too, brightened. He looked at Fawn almost favorably.
“I guess that frees me up to try something else.” Dag squinted into the fire. He hated to interrupt the first voluntary interchange Remo had enjoyed with his boat-mates since the start of this trip, but needs must.
“Fawn, would you go ask Remo to come inside for a moment, please?”
Her brows twitched up, but she nodded and went off. In a few minutes, Remo shouldered through the shadowed supplies into the firelight and lantern glow of the kitchen area, Fawn trailing. He frowned at Hod and looked his question at Dag, What’s this?
“Ah, Remo,” said Dag. “Glad you’re here. Have you been taught how to give minor ground reinforcements, out on patrol?”
“Verel taught all of us who had the knack,” said Remo cautiously. “I’ve never had a chance to try it out for real.”
“Good, then it’s time you had some practice. I would like you to put a reinforcement into Hod’s hurt knee, here.”
Remo stared, shocked. “But he’s a farmer!”
“I thought you wanted to break the rules?”
“Not that one!”
You’re choosy all of a sudden. Dag rubbed his lips, reminded that Remo hadn’t been there to witness Cress. Or Hod’s original injury, either. Dag steeled himself and gave a brisk description of both incidents, finishing, “With Hod beguiled by me already, the last thing I want to do is make it worse. What I don’t know is what would happen if a beguilement was divided amongst two Lakewalkers. I’m hoping—wondering, leastways—if the division might halve the problem.”
Remo’s lip jutted in suspicion. “Are you trying to foist this off on me?”
“No,” said Dag patiently, “I’m trying to solve a groundwork problem. For myself, yes, but if I can solve it for myself, there might be a chance I’d solve it for a lot of other medicine makers as well. It seems worth a shot.”
“I thought you were a patroller.”
“Old habits die hard. Did you think I quit only because I ran mad over a pretty little farmer girl a third my age?” Fawn raised her brows ironically at him; he tipped her a wink. “I’m also becoming—trying to become—a maker.” I’m just not sure of what. “Take a good look at Hod’s knee, down to the ground, and tell me if I’m wrong about that ambition.”
Reluctantly, Remo knelt down next to Dag beside Hod, who gave him a worried smile. He glanced aside at Dag and opened his ground for the first time in days. Dag saw Remo’s wince as the unveiled farmer grounds pressed upon him: the dark old knots of the watching Bo, the mess of Hod, Fawn’s brightness. It took him a moment to draw his focus in upon the injury. When he did, his brows climbed. “You did all that? Verel doesn’t pull breaks together that tight!”
“I could have wished for Verel. Or someone, to guide and guard me. I almost groundlocked myself.”
Remo’s ground, open to Dag at last, was in about the uproar he expected. Upset patroller—he knew the flavor well. Sometimes he regretted that reading grounds did not give access to thoughts, although most of the time he had better sense. We already know too much about each other. Who knew what Remo would perceive of him? “What’s on your mind?” he asked gently.
Remo licked his lip, still a little sore. “I don’t know what you want from me!” he blurted. “You didn’t have any use for me before.”
Dag almost said, I just told you what I wanted, but hesitated. “How do you figure?”
Remo hung his head, and muttered, “Never mind. It’s stupid.” He made to lumber up, but Dag held out his spread hand, stop. Remo drew breath. “When you got in trouble the other day with that fish. You called for Whit. The farmer. Not for me. Remo the botch-up. Well,” he added fiercely, “why would you?”
Remo, who hadn’t been able to save his partner from trouble before? Leaving aside the flash of jealousy about Whit, Remo was wounded, it seemed, in his oversensitive conscientiousness. Dag couldn’t hand him back his self-esteem gift-wrapped. He wondered if it was time for the full tale of Wolf Ridge again. He was reminded of Mari’s trick of hauling him and his maiming along when she wanted to shame local farmers into pitching in with pay or supplies after a malice kill in their area, and grimaced in distaste. No. Parading his old griefs to shame Remo was not the right road; Remo had shame enough for two already. You’re making this too hard, old patroller. Keep it simple.