Whit’s awful marksmanship had turned out not to be merely from his complete lack of training; his little hoard of arrows, picked up for free somewhere, was ill-made and ill-balanced. When Whit had asked plaintively if Dag couldn’t fix them the way a Lakewalker would, Dag had thought about it, nodded, and, to Whit’s temporary horror, broken them over his knee. He’d then donated Fawn and a dozen old flint points to their replacement, being wishful to conserve his best steel-tipped shafts for more urgent uses than target practice. Besides, it was good for Whit to suffer some instruction from his younger sister. He was still, in Dag’s view, too inclined to discount Fawn.
Now Dag raised his brows, tried to look awake, and answered Fawn’s papa—my tent-father? — “Sir?”
Sorrel was studying him. “I don’t believe I’ve said thank you for staying on through the harvest. You do more work with one hand than most men do with two.”
Fawn, squinting to wrap a carefully cut trio of feathers to a shaft with fine thread, dimpled in an I-told-you-so sort of way.
Sorrel continued, “I never thought much before about what Lakewalker patrollers do, but I suppose it is hard work, in its way. Harder than I rightly imagined, maybe, and not much comfort in it.”
Dag tilted his head in acknowledgment. Sorrel seemed clumsy but sincere, sorting through these new notions.
“But the thing is…I can’t help but wonder…have you ever worked for a living?”
Fawn sat up indignantly, but Dag waved her back down. “It’s not an insult, love. I know what he means. Because in a sense, the answer’s no. Out on patrol, we might hunt, cure skins, collect medicines, trade a little, keep the trails clear, but that’s all second place to hunting malice. Patrollers don’t make and save like farmers do. My camp kin did that part. At home, my bed was always made for me. Not that I ever spent long in it.”
Sorrel nodded. “But you don’t have your camp anymore.”
“…No.”
“So…how are you and Fawn planning to go on, then? Do you think to farm? Or something else?”
“I’m not sure,” said Dag slowly—honestly. “I figured I was too old to learn a whole new way of life, but I will say, these past weeks have given me more to chew on than Tril’s good cooking. I guess I never pictured having friendly folks to show me the trail.”
“A farmer Lakewalker?” murmured Tril, raising her brows. Whit made a face, though Dag was not sure why.
“By myself, no, but Fawn knows her part. Maybe together, it wouldn’t be so unlikely as it once seemed.” His other potential skill, medicine maker, was far too dangerous to attempt in farmer country, he’d been told. Repeatedly. In any case, his weakened ground made the notion futile, for now.
Sorrel said cautiously, “Would you be thinking to take up land here in West Blue?”
Dag glanced at Fawn, who gave him a slight, urgent headshake. No, she had no desire to settle a mere three miles up the road from her disastrous first love, and first hate. Dag wasn’t the only one of them who had been avoiding the village. “It’s too early to say.”
Tril looked up from her sewing, and said, “So what do you plan to do when a child comes along? They don’t keep to schedule, in my experience.” Her penetrating maternal look plainly wondered if he was simply being a male idiot, or if there was something he wasn’t saying.
He wasn’t about to go into the variety of methods available to Lakewalkers for not having children till wanted, some of which he was fairly sure—make that, entirely certain—Fawn’s parents would not approve of. The secret of the malice-damage to Fawn’s womb, as slowly healing as his own inner blight, she had elected to keep to herself, a choice he respected, and—what was that farmer phrase for letting go of a regretted past? Water over the dam. He offered instead, weakly, “Lakewalker women have children on the move.”
Tril gave that the fishy stare it deserved. “But it seems Fawn is not to be a Lakewalker woman, after all. And from what you say, Lakewalker mamas have kin and clan and camp to back ’em, in their need, even if their men are off chasing bogles.”
He wanted to declaim indignantly, I will take care of her! But even he wasn’t that much of a fool. His eyelids lowered, opened; he said instead, merely, “That’s so, ma’am.”
“We plan to travel, before we decide where to settle,” Fawn put in firmly. “Dag promised to show me the sea, and I mean to hold him to his word.”
“The sea!” said Tril, sounding shocked. “You didn’t say you were fixing to go all that way! I thought you were just going to the Grace Valley. Lovie, it’s dangerous!”
“The sea?” said Whit in an equally shocked but very different tone.
“Fawn gets to go to the sea? And Raintree? I’ve never been past Lumpton Market!”
Dag regarded him, trying to imagine a whole life confined to a space scarcely larger than a single day’s patrol-pattern. “By your age, I’d quartered two hinterlands, killed my first malice, and been down the Grace and the Gray both.” He added after a moment, “Didn’t see the sea for the first time till a couple years later, though.”
Whit said eagerly, “Can I go with you?”
“Certainly not!” Fawn cried.
Whit looked taken aback. Dag muffled a heartless smile. In a lifetime of relentlessly heckling his sister, Whit had clearly never once imagined needing her goodwill for any aim of his own. So do our sins bite us, boy.
“We’re not done harvest,” said Sorrel sternly. “You have work here, Whit.”
“Yes, but they’re not leaving tomorrow. Are you?” He looked wildly at Dag.
Dag did some rapid mental calculating. Fawn’s monthly would be coming on shortly, bloodily debilitating since her injuries, though slowly improving as she healed inside. They must certainly wait that out in the most comfortable refuge possible. “We’ll linger and help out for another week, maybe. But we can’t stay much longer. It’ll be near a week’s ride down to the Grace. If we want any choice of boats we have to get there in time to catch the fall rise, and not so late as to be caught by the winter freeze-up. Or just by the cold and wet and misery.”
A daunted silence fell, for a while. Nattie’s spindle whirred, Whit went back to sanding a shaft smooth, and Dag considered the attractions of his bed upstairs, compared to dozing off and falling out of his chair onto his chin.
Whit said suddenly, “What are you planning to do with your horses?”
“Take ’em along,” said Dag.
“On a keelboat? There’s hardly room.”
“No, on a flatboat.”
“Oh.”
More busy silence. Whit set down the shaft with a click, and Dag opened one wary eye.
Whit said, “But Fawn’s mare’s in foal. You wouldn’t want her to drop her foal along the trail somewheres. I mean…wolves. Catamounts. Delay. Wouldn’t it be better to leave her here all comfy at West Blue and pick her up when you got back?”
“And what am I supposed to do, walk?” said Fawn in scorn.
“No, but see…suppose you left her here for Mama to ride, since she can’t ride Swallow. And suppose we each rode one of my team, instead. I’d been meaning to sell them in Lumpton next spring, but I bet down by those rivertowns I’d get a better price. Also Papa and Fletch wouldn’t be put to the trouble of feedin’ them all winter. And you’d save the cost of taking your pregnant horse on a boat ride she wouldn’t hardly appreciate anyhow.”
“How would I get back? Copper can’t carry us double, and my bags!”
“You could pick up another horse when you get down there to Graymouth.”
“Oh, so Dag’s supposed to pay for this, is he?”
“You could sell it again when you got back. That, plus the savings for not shipping your mare, you’d likely come out pretty near even. Or even ahead!”
Fawn huffed in exasperation. “Whit, you can’t come with us.”
“Only as far as the river!” His voice went wheedling. “And see, Mama, I wouldn’t be going off by myself—I’d be with Dag and all. Going out, anyhow, and coming back I’d know how to find my way home again.”