“You don’t have to be the best medicine maker in seven hinterlands.”
Although she suspected Arkady might be. “Yeah, Arkady sets a high bar, though I wonder if some of that isn’t your mama’s voice in the back of your head. She does make you crazy, you know that, Dag. But all you really have to do is be better than what folks have now. And be there.”
Dag shook his head gloomily.
“Maybe you can find another medicine maker up in Oleana who’ll take you up on your terms. Arkady can’t be the only good teacher.”
The gloom lightened slightly. “Point, Spark.” He scrubbed his hair, studied her. “You want to go home.”
Truly, if they were going north this year, it needed to be soon. Early pregnancy was no picnic-she remembered the sickness and minddraining fatigue-but late pregnancy would be even worse for travel.
Hers, anyhow. Yeah, we need to go before I get too round to move. Dag was endearingly nervous for her health during, a concern she treasured after the frightening isolation of her first experience, but she was more nervous for what would come after. She had never been much for other people’s babies, though she’d always expected to quite like her own. Still… just how scary was it to be handed a baby you couldn’t hand back?
She didn’t need a substitute kinswoman; she had a real one now in Berry Bluefield. Best thing Whit ever did for me. If Fawn was going to end up having a baby in someone else’s house, she wanted it to be Berry’s place in Clearcreek.
Useless to try to lie to a man with groundsense, but she at least managed, “I want what you need.”
A crooked smile. “I think I need to go home, too. We need.” We-three, not we-two; she heard that, and had to smile back. Dag straightened. “Go home and get started. Arkady’s wrong about one thing; it does make a difference where you put your hand on the lever. But we’re not going anywhere without our horses. We’ll have to see what Barr and Remo- or Barr, leastways-brings us.”
–-
Barr brought Arkady.
Also Copperhead, Magpie, and two heavily loaded packhorses. Dag, strolling out onto the porch when he sensed them, stared openmouthed at the train. Barr was riding Copperhead himself, but trailed a strange horse bearing an empty saddle and his bags. Dag looked in vain for Remo, and his heart sank at that absence.
It had been two days since Captain Bullrush’s decree of expulsion.
Dag hadn’t expected Barr back before yesterday noon at the earliest. A hundred things might have delayed him, most hopefully some Barrish persuasion to reverse Antan’s ruling. The longer Dag had waited, the more his hopes had risen. But Barr surely wouldn’t have packed all that gear just for a quick return to New Moon, and for pity’s sake how had he obtained all those horses?
“What’s all this?” Dag asked, bemusedly returning Barr’s wave of greeting.
Arkady overrode the answer. “What does it look like, you unutterable fool? I told you how it would be, did I not? Did I not? ”
Arkady’s outward appearance was typically fastidious, barring riderumpled clothing and a few wisps of hair escaping its knot. But the roil in his usually serene ground and look of wild exasperation in his eyes put Dag forcibly in mind of a cat that had been stuck in a barrel and rolled downhill.
“You broke your word to me!” Arkady went on.
“I didn’t seek to, sir. The problem came to me, and I couldn’t turn aside.”
“Did you have the first notion what was being thrown away? No, of course you didn’t. Patrollers! Antan’s a bull and you’re a mule. The only one who really understands is Challa, and even she didn’t come in on my side!”
“Side? ” said Dag. His glance at Barr was not enlightening. Barr wasn’t actually staring up at the sky and innocently whistling, but he might as well have been.
“It’s unconscionable-unconscionable!”
Dag admired Arkady’s ability to even pronounce such a jaw-breaking word while sputtering with rage, but he was still adrift, here. If Arkady hadn’t been sent out to offer Dag a pardon, why was he here? Just to vent his feelings?
“-to waste a talent like yours. Still worse to turn you loose on the world one-tenth trained and wholly unsupervised. So since that pack of fools won’t let you come back to New Moon”-Arkady’s voice dwindled-“
I’m coming with you.”
Dag’s jaw dropped. “What? ”
“You heard me.” Arkady’s eyes sought the dirt. “I’m coming along with you. To continue your training till it’s complete to my satisfaction.”
“Where? ”
“North, I suppose. That’s where you’re going, isn’t it? Your wife will be homing like a pigeon-women in her condition generally do, you know. That much was obvious.”
Dag wanted to say Not to me, but came up instead with, “Arkady, you mean to ride the Trace with us? ”
Arkady nodded.
“It’s eight hundred miles and more, you do know that? ”
He nodded again, more shortly.
“What’s the longest you’ve ever ridden at a stretch? ”
Arkady raised his chin. “Twenty miles.”
“For how many days? ”
Arkady cleared his throat. “One.”
“And how long have you ever gone without a bath? ”
Arkady glared, but didn’t deign to answer that one. He straightened his shoulders and dismounted; Barr followed suit. The maker rather absently handed the young patroller his reins, then stepped up to the porch.
“Is New Moon going to allow this?” Dag’s staggered wits were finally beginning to work again. If this offer was real, he should fall on his knees and thank the absent gods. Was it? “Do they even know you’re out here? ”
“They’ll figure it out,” snapped Arkady. “I warned Antan, and the rest of those ditherers on the camp council. If they imagined I was bluffing, well, they’ll know better next time.”
“You can’t live on the road the way you do in camp.” Dag looked away at the tree line along the road, hazy in the damp warmth of the late afternoon, looked back, caught Arkady’s evasive eyes square. “It looks like I’m going to have a lot more people on my hands this trip than I expected. I can’t be your nursemaid, and Barr can’t be your servant.”
“I will not crumple into a heap from a horseback ride, thank you,” said Arkady through his teeth. “Not even one eight hundred miles long.”
“The world under the skin is your home hinterland, but the world outside it is mine. My road, my rules. Can you accept that? ”
“About as well as you ever did, I expect,” Arkady returned. Their stares held each other for an uncomfortable stretch.
“Then you can begin by taking care of your own horse,” Dag said at last. “The barn’s around back.”
Arkady’s glare turned scorching. Barr looked very alarmed. But after a long hesitation, Arkady merely said, “All right,” and took back his reins. As he started around the house, he added over his shoulder, “When I return I want to inspect what you did to that boy with the lockjaw.”
Lines drawn clearly enough; Dag nodded acceptance.
This still left Barr holding the leads of five horses, although Copperhead’s ground showed signs of recent heavy persuasion; that and the gelding’s ten-mile jaunt this morning doubtless explained why he wasn’t trying to tear strips out of his trail mates just now. Dag took him and Magpie off Barr’s hands. Barr yielded gratefully.
“Where’s Remo?” Dag asked.
Barr’s face went bleak. “He stayed.”
“Ah.” An unexpected exchange. Dag frowned after Arkady. “Barr- is Arkady bluffing, with this crazy gambit? Holding himself hostage, to force the camp council to knuckle under and take me back? ”
The corner of Barr’s mouth tucked up. “I think he thinks he is. I’m sure they think he is.”