18
During an easy stretch of river in the morning, Berry took Whit topside to give him a lesson on the steering oar. Mildly inspired, Dag assembled the Lakewalkers on the front deck for a drill in ground-veiling. He’d a shrewd suspicion such groundwork had been somewhat neglected by these two partners in favor of more vigorous training in bow, knife, sword, and spear.
Dag took the bench, Barr leaned against the goat pen, and Remo settled cross-legged on the deck. Eyes closed or open, they went around the lopsided circle taking turns at that inward-furling blindness that sacrificed perception for privacy—or invisibility. Unfairly, Barr had the stronger native groundsense of the pair, though unsurprisingly, Remo was more disciplined at handling what he had.
“You can’t veil yourself any better than that, and they let you out on patrol?” said Dag to Barr. “Amma Osprey must be harder up for patrollers than I thought.”
Barr waved a hand in protest. “Going blind like this feels like being a little kid again,” he complained. “Back to before my groundsense even came in.”
“There’s a deep difference in vulnerability. But leaking like you do, you’d never get close enough to a malice to make a rush with your knife.” If you had a knife.
“At that range, it could see me, couldn’t it? I mean, they do have eyes, right?”
“Usually. But that’s not the point. A good ground-veiling also resists ground-ripping, at least by a weak sessile or early molt. Which you’d better hope is what you’ll find yourself facing.” It occurred to Dag that this could be another use for his own weak ground-ripping ability—training young patrollers to resist it. He was tempted to test the notion, except for the certainty that it would scare the crap out of these two even worse than it scared him, and then there would be all those awkward explanations. But it was a heartening realization that any patroller who could resist a malice could resist Dag, as readily as a brawler could block a blow to his face. If he saw the blow coming, leastways.
But not any farmer.
He bit his lip and pushed that troubling thought aside for later examination. “And whether you’re the patrol member who places the knife or not, the better your ground-veiling, the better the chance of not spending the week vomiting your guts out from the blight exposure, after.”
Remo eyed him. “You ever do that?”
“It was closer to two weeks,” Dag admitted. “After that, I took my ground drills a lot more seriously. Let’s go around again. My turn to veil. You two close your eyes, but leave your groundsenses open and try to watch me.”
Dag furled himself firmly, watching as the two obediently scrunched their eyes closed. Softly, he rose from his seat.
Barr grinned. “Hey, where’d you go?”
“Here,” he breathed in Barr’s ear.
The boy yelped and jumped sideways. “Blight! Don’t do that!”
“It’s how you get close to a malice. You need to learn, too.”
“I’ve heard an advanced malice can ground-rip you all the same,” said Remo dubiously.
“I’ve only tangled with two that strong, in my forty years of patrolling. The Wolf Ridge malice I didn’t see close-up, just heard about from the survivors of the actual attack on the lair. The Raintree malice I saw eye-to-eye. That malice opened up one of the best ground-veilers in my company as easy as you’d gut a trout.”
“How can you even take down a malice that strong?” asked Remo.
“Gang up on it. Go after it all at once with a lot of patrollers with a lot of knives, and hope one gets through. Worked at Wolf Ridge, worked the same at Raintree.” He added after moment, “Well-veiled patrollers. So let’s go around again.”
After a couple more circuits, Barr remarked, “So, are you saying if I stayed this lousy at my ground-veiling, I’d never be chosen for one of those suicide-rushes?”
“In Luthlia, we’d set you out for bait,” Dag said.
Remo sniggered. Barr grimaced at him.
“Again,” said Dag. Interestingly, Barr improved; but then, Barr had more room for improvement. Judging by his increased flickering, Remo was growing fatigued. Time to wind up.
“That’s enough for today,” said Dag, easing back onto the bench. “I think we’ll spend an hour a day in this drill from now on.”
Barr stretched and rolled his shoulders, squinting. “So much for the benefits of running away from home.”
“Depends on what you run into,” Dag drawled. “If we rode slap into a river malice around the next bend, would you be prepared?”
“No,” said Remo bitterly. “None of us has a primed knife.”
“Then your job would be to survive and run for help to the next camp. Which is where?”
“Blight,” said Barr. “I’m not even sure where we are.”
“Amma made us memorize the locations of all the camps in Oleana,” Remo offered.
“Good,” said Dag. “Too bad you’re in Raintree now.” And led the boys through a list of every Lakewalker ferry camp and its location in river miles from Tripoint to the Confluence, and made them each recite it back, individually and in chorus. Granted, the obscene version of the old memory-rhyme sped the process.
The cool morning was failing to warm, the climbing sun absorbed by graying skies. Dag glanced down the river valley to see dense mist advancing up it. Berry popped her head over the roof edge.
“If you can spare one of your patroller boys to pilot duty up here in a few minutes, I’d be much obliged,” she said. “Looks like we’re in for a real Grace Valley fog, and I don’t want to run up over it into some pasture half a mile inland like in Bo’s tale. The Fetch’d look funny on rollers.”
“I’ll come up,” said Dag. “I could do with a stretch.”
He joined Berry and Whit on the roof; Bo and Hod climbed down for a turn at the hearth.
“If I’m right in my reckoning,” said Berry, “we’re coming up on a big island around this next bend that I don’t want to get on the wrong side of.”
“Do we want the right- or left-hand channel?”
“Right-hand.”
“Will do, Boss.” Dag took a sweep and matched Whit’s slow sculling—just enough to give Berry’s rudder steering-way—which they had learned how to keep up for hours if necessary. The mist thickened about them, beading on Dag’s deerskin jacket, which Fawn had lately lined with quilting to help fit his scant summer gear for fall. They followed the main channel as it hurried around the wide bend; Dag extended his groundsense to its full mile range to locate the split in the current before they were swept wrongside-to.
“Hey,” he said. “There’s somebody on that island.”
“Can’t be,” said Berry, peering into the clinging damp. They could see maybe three boat-lengths ahead, now. “With this rise from the Beargrass, that island’s under three, maybe four feet of water.”
“That could explain why they don’t seem too happy.” Dag reached, opening himself as wide as he could, ignoring the familiar, and much louder, grounds close-by. “Seven men. Blight, I think they may be those same Raintree flatties who passed us by backwards last night.” He added after a moment, “And a bear. They’ve all taken refuge from the flood up in the trees!”
“Must be exciting for the one who’s sharing with the bear,” said Whit dubiously.
“Bear’s got his own private tree.” After a moment, Dag added, “No sign of their boats. Not moored within a mile, leastways. I think those fellows are in trouble over there, Boss. At least one ground shows signs of being hurt.”
Berry drew breath through her teeth. “Bo!” she bawled. “Hod! You patroller boys, git out here! We need to get the skiff in the water afore we float too far!”
The rest of the crew turned out onto the back deck, and Berry leaned over and explained the situation. After Dag confirmed the head-count of men stranded on the island, they decided to launch both the skiff and the narrow boat, in the hope of rescuing them all in one pass; also, Dag pointed out, so the two boats could partner each other in case of snags literal or figurative. Dag stayed with the Fetch to guide it down the channel. Whit and Remo each took an oar in the skiff; Barr paddled his narrow boat.