Everyone in Sumac’s party had carried light bedrolls and food with them, for the failed flight to Laurel Gap, and most folks had hung on to them despite their forced malice march. While Dag looked after his horse with the help of Sage, being careful not to let Fawn out of his sight, she nibbled a piece of hardtack till her stomach settled, then was able to get down a couple of strips of dried plunkin. The meal made her cold shakiness pass off. She was reminded of the very first time she had met Dag, with his firm belief in grub as a cure for shock, and smiled a little.
Her bedroll had contained a wedge of soap, and despite the hour she wanted a bath above all things. They borrowed a lantern from one of the muleteers and made their way across the road and around a crook in the creek to a pool of sorts. It was too chilly for lingering; they stripped down and splashed quick, although Fawn soaped up and rinsed her hair twice, holding her breath and shaking her head underwater, to be sure.
She fussed over Dag’s ankle, not to mention his impressive new collection of gouges and bruises, and he fussed over her shoulder. They could do no more with their filthy clothes than whack them against a tree trunk and shake them out before skinning damply back into them.
It would be better when they got back to the wagons and their gear.
Meanwhile, this… helped.
It wasn’t till they were lying down together between two thin blankets on the grass that her mind began to turn over the events of the past day, imagining other, grimmer outcomes. Then she cried, muffled in Dag’s shoulder. Mostly, he just held her, but then, he’d hardly let her out of his arms since… since she’d… been dug up out of her grave.
Which seemed horror enough, till she dwelled on not being dug up. To have come all this way, and survived so much, only to be killed on the last leg, not by bandits or mud-men or malices, but just by an ignorant misunderstanding…
“Shh,” he murmured into her hair, when her shudders renewed.
She swallowed to control her sniffling-was she crying too much?-and managed, “Is the baby all right after all that, can you tell? ”
Under her hands she could feel the familiar stillness of his concentration as he went deep with his groundsense. “Yes, seems to be,” he said, coming back up and blinking at her, eyes a mere gleam in the firelight and shadows. “Far as I can tell, leastways. She’s no bigger than your little finger yet, you know. But I’ll have Arkady check when we meet up again, for luck.”
Fawn melted with relief. But-“She? You sure, now?”
“Yep,” he said, and if his voice was tinged with a faint, smug glee, well, that was all right by her. As she shivered again, he said blandly, “We’ll name her Mari.”
His gentle teasing was a deliberate distraction from her grave thoughts, and she was grateful for it. “Hey, shouldn’t you ask me about that? ” She cogitated. “What about Nattie? ”
“Dirla’s a nice name for a smart strong girl. Or Sumac.”
“Too confusing, if Sumac’s going to be around with Arkady. Maybe for later.”
“Later,” he murmured. “Ah. I like later.”
“No baby animals, that’s for sure. I do sometimes wonder what my parents were thinking.” They’d certainly never pictured her as a grownup woman-then or later. “Can you imagine a grandmother still named Fawn?”
“With great delight.”
She snickered, and poked him fondly. “Just don’t you ever start saying, Yes, Deer.”
She could feel his smile in her curls, and finally grew warm enough to stop shivering. She wondered when a thin bedroll on plain grass had started to seem such unutterable luxury. As long as Dag is in it with me, and we’re safe. The safety, not the coverlet, was the true source of her comfort, she realized. And the comfort of all the folks with them, too, so nearly lost to one another, sleeping close in blanketed lumps around the fire tonight for more than warmth. She cuddled in harder and, for all her hurts and wobbling thoughts, slept.
23
Dag woke in gray light to the sort of drowned lethargy that generally followed great struggles. Yeah, I’ve been here before. He wasn’t so weary that he didn’t reach out to reassure himself that Fawn was still in their bedroll, warm and asleep under his hand as she should be. His hazy mind shuddered over all the might-have-beens that he’d forbidden her to dwell on last night, and it struck him anew how very little interest he had in saving a world that didn’t have her in it.
Well, and Berry and Whit and the rest of Tent Bluefield. And their friends, and they needed their neighbors, he supposed, and the tangle widened ever outward and he was back to where he’d started.
Maybe a fellow didn’t have to love the whole world-Grouse’s voice, raised in complaint about something across the clearing, grated on his ear-maybe just one short heartening person would do. Dag stared up through new beech leaves at the pale blue sky. It would be a clear, warm day once the valley mist burned off.
Fawn stirred and sat up, looking dauntingly perky, all things considered.
After supporting his hobble to the woods to take care of the morning necessities, she parked him back on the blanket with his purple foot prominently displayed, which served admirably to fend off any other demands upon him. Was it malingering, when you really couldn’t hardly stand up? He was in any case content to lie low behind this excuse and watch the others deal with the day.
A couple of stray muleteers had arrived in the night, and a few more came with the dawn, with yet more recovered mules in tow. One beast, unfortunately, had another body draped over it. In addition to the muleteers, the camp included a trio of trappers who had been captured by the malice while taking their furs south to Mutton Hash, and another family of five grown siblings and their mama who’d been snatched while heading north for homesteading. They all assembled to pay what brief respects could be devised. The gaping maw in the earth that Fawn had escaped was filled after all, which made her sober all over again.
Dag was glad for the delay when Neeta rode into the clearing, guiding a half patrol from Laurel Gap detailed to bring Pakko down off the ridge. Her shock at finding Fawn afoot was swiftly cloaked by her closing ground. She looked almost more taken aback to find Dag.
“I thought you’d still be up on the mountain with Arkady! I brought extra fellows to help carry you!”
“I came down on my own. Copperhead did the rest.” I’ll deal with you later. He couldn’t do it now, so soon after yesterday; he was too exhausted, and didn’t trust himself. At the very least, he wanted Sumac with him, for all sorts of good reasons including a check on his wits.
But the uproar that ensued when the dozen Lakewakers trailing Neeta discovered just who had taken down the fearsome flying malice that had scattered three of their patrols across the upper valley, and how, was sufficient diversion.
Dag hardly had to open his mouth. Twenty-five farmer eyewitnesses plus Fawn, Berry, and Whit were couriers enough to carry the tale.
Everyone was led around to marvel at the tattered wings, handle the walnut necklaces, see and touch the pieces of the spent sharing bolt- collected by Berry and preserved in a cloth-and be marched through all the steps of the dawn ambush, Whit brandishing his crossbow and acting it out. Dag, limping after with his stick, had to allow that farmers and Lakewalkers were sure talking to one another now. And, better still, listening.
A field medicine maker traveling with the patrol cornered Dag back on his blanket, intent on the walnut necklaces. While Dag wasn’t quite up to a live demonstration, the young maker did seem to follow his descriptions, and promised to carry them back to her camp medicine and knife makers. She was excited about unbeguilement, too. Dag attempted to show her, and at the same time relieve one of his worries, by having her put a general reinforcement against infection into Fawn’s shoulder, but the maker was so open to the farmer heroine of the hour that she didn’t leave a beguilement for Dag to clear. He considered, grimly, having Neeta work an example, but… no.