“Whoever this knife was bonded to is dead now.” So, probably not Crane’s, though Dag supposed he could hope.
Barr, startled, said, “You can tell that?”
“My brother is a knife maker,” Dag said vaguely; the two patrollers’ brows rose in respect. “Keep this aside.” He handed it back.
Remo slipped the bone blade back into its sheath and hung the thong around his neck. As he hid it all inside his shirt, his voice hushed in outrage. “They must’ve murdered a Lakewalker without even letting him share!”
Or her. Dag didn’t want to think on that. There would have been women amongst the boat victims from time to time, but there weren’t any around now. Can’t let any run off to tell, Skink had claimed. Should Dag hope that they’d died quickly, and were his hopes worth spit?
Chicory’s drainage was clotting off again, blight it, the pressure in the blood pocket growing once more. “Did you find any sign at all of Crane?” Or of those mad Drum brothers who seemed to have become his principal lieutenants; Dag definitely wanted to locate them—dead, alive, or prisoners.
Barr shook his head. “Not within half a mile of here, anyway.”
“We have to find him. Take him.” And not only for his monstrous crimes. If the Lakewalker leader was not tried with the rest, perfunctory as Dag suspected the trial was going to be, the boatmen would always suspect the patrollers had colluded in his escape. “Blight it, what’s taking Wain so long…?”
As if in answer, Saddler crunched across the cave to stare down at Dag, shake his head in worry at Chicory, and report that all the bandits were accounted for but five. Two, it seemed, had left the night before last, cashing out their stakes and quitting the gang permanently, unable to stomach the Drum brothers’ grotesque cruelties any longer. Crane and his two lieutenants had left separately early the next morning, some hours before Alder had flagged down the Fetch. It had been a chance to the boatmen’s benefit, it seemed, because the bandit crew, bereft of their leader’s supervision, had broached some kegs Crane had been saving, and had been a lot drunker than usual this night.
So, up to five bandits still loose out there, including the worst of the bunch. Have we left enough men to guard the boats? Dag suddenly didn’t think so. But he dared not move his two charges yet, and besides, there would be no point jostling them up over the hill in litters when the boats had to come downriver anyway. The convoy could float around the Elbow in the morning and tie up below the cave, carrying them smoothly. But I can’t wait that long.
Dag wet his lips. “Anyone on our side killed?”
Saddler looked dubiously at Dag’s two patients. “Not yet, seems. Nine of the bandits are goners. Twenty-one here left to hang, though there’s one that might not live for it.”
Dag stared in frustration at Chicory’s drained face. He must bring the Raintree man to a point where he could be left for a while, because Dag had to start moving after Crane. But in what direction? Haring off the wrong way would be worse than useless. He did know he wanted Copperhead under him to speed the search. Barr and Remo might be mounted on a couple of the bandits’ horses—they’d found a dozen or so hobbled not far from the cave.
“Saddler, go back and see if you can find out anything at all about which way those five fellows might have gone. Barr, take a turn around the perimeter again—they might be coming back, and we want to spot them before they spot us. Remo…stay with me. I need you.”
Whit, unassigned, tagged off after Saddler. Remo knelt beside Dag.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked quietly.
“Break me out if I appear to groundlock myself. I need to do some deeper groundwork inside Chicory’s poor bashed head, here.”
Remo nodded gravely. Trustingly. Absent gods, did Dag look like he knew what he was doing? Surely Remo should know better by now. Dag sighed and dropped down into that increasingly easy, ever more familiar level of ground-awareness.
The inner world expanded to fill his horizon, as vast and complex a landscape as the Luthlian woods. No wonder that, once a fellow had done this, any other sort of making seemed trivial and dull. A calling, indeed. But his elation was short-lived. These injuries were subtler by far than Hod’s knee, the groundscape deeper and much stranger. Far beyond Dag’s understanding.
I don’t have to understand everything. The body is wiser than I’ll ever be, and will heal itself if it can. Let him just start with the obvious, mend the biggest broken vessels. He’d done that before. Maybe that would be enough. It had better be enough.
He continued the inner exploration. This end went with that one, ah. A little shaped reinforcement would hold them together. For a time. Another, another, another. Ah! That torn artery was the main source of the trouble, yes! Dag brought it back into alignment, reinforced it doubly. And then blood was leaking into the pocket more slowly than it was leaking out, and then it was hardly refilling at all. This time, when the bulge deflated, it stayed shrunken. Another push to position the shell-cracked bone. The squashed brain tissue expanded back into its proper place, still throbbing. Another ground reinforcement quelled its distress…
In his exacerbated sensitivity, Remo’s little ground-bump felt like a blow to the side of Dag’s head. He gasped and fell, disoriented, upward into the light.
“Are you all right?” asked Remo.
Dag gulped and nodded, blinking and squinting. “Thanks. That was timely.”
“Seemed to me you’d been in that trance for an awful long stretch.”
Had he? It had seemed like mere minutes to Dag. Whit appeared at his side; he handed Dag a cup of something, and Dag, unsuspecting, drank and nearly choked. It was nasty, sickly sweet, but it burned down his throat in a heartening way. Some sort of horrible fruit brandy, he decided, from the bandits’ stores. His stomach, after a doubtful moment, elected not to heave.
Dag had done all he could think of for the skull fracture, for now. They were into the wait and see what happens part. He set Chicory’s head down gently, cradling it in a folded blanket, and clambered to his feet. His stiffened joints moved like chalk scraping over a slate. Bearbait reappeared—when had he gone off? — and earnestly took in Dag’s brief instructions about keeping his leader warm and lying still till Dag got back. For once, Dag had no objection when Remo grabbed his arm to steady him on his feet. Weirdly, the tiny ground-rip he’d taken from Chicory seemed to be giving him a spurt of strength, even as Whit’s vile liquor quickened the blood in his veins. He suspected he’d have cause to regret both later, but now…
“Whit, give me another drink of that skunk syrup. Barr, where’s Barr…?”
“Here, sir.”
“Find anything outside?” Dag lifted the cup again and sipped with an effort. The fumes did clear his sinuses.
Barr shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Any other word which way our missing bandits all went?”
“The first two had evidently talked about heading back toward the Beargrass,” reported Whit. “Nobody knows about Crane and the Drums.”
They need not have all gone the same way. Only the latter trio really concerned Dag, so that northerly hint was not too useful. It occurred to Dag suddenly that Alder had been Crane’s lieutenant before the Drums, and might possess clues that were beyond the rest of the bandits. Which gave Dag an excellent excuse to ease his heart and go back to the boats first, even better than his need for his horse. Alder hadn’t been very forthcoming before, but he could be made to be, Dag decided grimly. One way or another.
Supported by Remo, Barr, and Whit, Dag stumbled out of the reeking cave into chilly predawn dew. The sky had a steely cast, the stars fading, the half-moon turning sallow overhead. He could find his way through the foggy woods with his eyes alone, now. He sent Barr and Remo off to pick out mounts for themselves from the bandits’ string, then made his way back up the hill behind the cave. His stride lengthened despite his exhaustion, so that Whit was pressed to keep up.