The show over, the company broke up to seek their respective bedrolls.
As the night breeze sighed in the trees, Dag hugged Fawn close.
She cuddled in tight under their blankets and said, “That was well done, Dag.”
“Well started, maybe. It all seems a long way from done to me.”
“Mm,” she said. “But stop and think about how far you’ve come since last year this time.”
He hardly needed to sense her clouded ground to feel her little spurt of memory, a ripple of tension across her back under his only hand.
“Hm? ”
“How far we’ve both come,” she went on more quietly. “Last year this time… I’d already made my big stupid mistake, and was just working up to running away from home in a panic. Well, not panic, exactly. Desperation, maybe.”
He let his fingers seek those back muscles, rubbing the remembered strain out of them. No more desperation for you, Spark. Not if I can help it.
“Me… let me think. Out walking my thousandth routine patrol, I suppose, before Chato’s courier called us down to Glassforge. I’d spent too many years just about one bad night’s sleep away from tossing it in and sharing, and was getting mighty tired of that state of mind. I do remember that.”
Her slim little fingers chased bad memories out of his muscles in turn. “Could you have imagined us, here, now? Could you have pictured doing such a making as you did tonight? ”
“Gods. No. Nor any other making. Not in my wildest dreams. My dreams mostly not being good dreams, see.”
“There you go, then.” Her lips pressed a warm circle on his collarbone, then curved up. “I s’pose the advantage of being a gloomy cuss is that all your surprises are good ones.”
He snickered. “Point, Spark.”
–-
The following afternoon brought them to the foot of the next pass, where they made an early stop to sort out the most efficient plans for getting the wagons up it. With a dawn start, Dag hoped the whole company could make it to the bottom of the far side by tomorrow night.
That vale, rugged and almost as unpeopled as the Barrens, was the last where this land humped up like a giant’s blanket folds; the trail at its head would lead over and down into the settled country approaching the Grace Valley. Dag felt a funny little flutter in his belly at that thought.
Spark and I and our youngin’ are coming home. It would be a home to make, carved new out of unknown territory, even though their sort of homesteading was unlikely to involve chopping trees and pulling stumps.
On his bedtime perimeter patrol that night, Dag became aware he was being shadowed by Neeta. Maybe he needed to vary his habits; he was getting too easy to ambush. He reluctantly slowed his steps and let her come up to him, not anxious to reopen the argument about his direction of travel.
“Nice night,” she remarked.
“Ayup.” It was star-spangled, the cool darkness drenched with the green scents of spring, alive with bug and frog songs.
“You know…”-she touched his sleeve, her smile turning warm-“you’d be welcome in my bedroll.”
What, had she been inspired by Sumac’s ploy? Did she mean to seduce him into turning south? What was this, with all these lovely young women flinging themselves at his head this season? And where were they all when I was twenty-two, and could have done something about it? The depressing answer, Not born yet, presented itself rather inescapably. First Calla, then Neeta, although Calla hadn’t hardly meant it. Neeta’s was a dodgier proposition on that score.
“Well, that’s a right flattering thing to say to a fellow my age, Neeta, but you know, I’m string-bound.” He reached to touch the cord coiled on his left arm above his harness, incidentally shifting his right arm out from under her grasp.
Neeta’s smile of invitation didn’t waver. “She’s a farmer. She’d never know.”
Wouldn’t be able to read the changes in his ground, Neeta meant.
“That’s not the point.” He needed to nip this in the bud hard and fast, but not, perhaps, cruelly. Forgive me, Kauneo, for using your memory so. But Kauneo had been a patrol leader herself, and would understand. “I think you do not see, so I’ll explain. Once only. I loved a patroller woman very much-”
“You might again.”
“No. Never again. Never while I breathe will I trade hearts with a woman who I could have the duty to order into harm’s way.”
“You’re talking about Wolf Ridge, aren’t you? It was a great tragedy, but a great battle.” Sympathy shone in her eyes like starlight.
“Actually, it was a pretty stupid battle. Since for two weeks afterwards I was too dizzy from blood loss to stand up, I had plenty of time to lie there and think about ways to have done it better. And one of the things I figured out was that if I had it to do all over, I would have sacrificed the whole company, and her brothers, and all, to save her, without remorse or regret. This is not a fit state of mind for a patrol leader or captain, which is why I never willingly took up those duties again.”
She started to speak; he overrode her. “One of the things I love best about Fawn is that she’s not a patroller woman, and never will be or could be. She’s an opposite to Kauneo in every way possible. Short instead of tall, dark hair instead of winter-red, brown eyes not silver, not my equal in age or groundsense. Farmer instead of Lakewalker, how much farther can you get? I can look at her all day long and not stir up one painful memory.” Except for the brightness of her ground; in that, his two wives were blazingly alike. He gulped at the thought, and wondered why he’d never allowed himself to think it before. “Give this notion over, Neeta. You’ll just embarrass yourself and me to no good purpose. There are better young men for you.”
“Young idiots,” she snorted.
“They grow older in due course.” Growing into old idiots? There was evidence.
She stood rigid. Dag wondered in despair how else he might say, You’re a cute young thing but your tactics are transparent and I wouldn’t touch you with a stick without offending or crushing her. He surely wasn’t the most ornamental addition to any woman’s bedroll, and he rather thought Neeta hadn’t thought of him in those terms till now-indeed, the first time they’d met, before she’d learned his ancient history, she’d looked at him like a spring beetle found crunched underfoot. But the tinge of hero worship was a dilemma.
Fortunately, before he could tangle himself up worse with his tongue, she raised her chin bravely, turned, and strode away. She was too much a proud patroller woman to flounce, which relieved him only slightly. Dag hoped he’d discouraged this approach to the argument about their direction of travel for good and all, although the possibility of Neeta sending in her partner as a second wave did cross his mind, and then he didn’t know whether to laugh or wince. He trusted Tavia had more sense.
Neeta had a problem more pressing than what man she might or might not attach to her bedroll. Dag wasn’t sure how much of a show she’d made of herself back at New Moon Cutoff to win both permission for the Arkady retrieval and command of it, but he had no doubt that for her to drag back to her camp without the groundsetter would be a considerable comedown. Still worse to return all alone, if Remo and maybe Tavia both bolted north, although Dag suspected Antan, at least, would be quite pleased if she came back without Dag and Fawn. Had her camp captain set her up to fail? Not a nice thought, though Dag could understand Antan yielding to the temptation to undercut his badgering young patroller and teach her a sharp lesson, the sharper for having brought it on herself.
So all in all, Dag was not surprised, come the dawn mist, to find Neeta and her little patrol saddling up to climb the next pass along with them. It was a long and busy day, fortunately, and by the time they’d been forced to cooperate on a dozen tasks, they’d established an unspoken pretense that the prior night’s conversation had never occurred. At least she didn’t seem heartbroken, and Dag could hardly fault her for her determination, even if it wasn’t going to do her any good.