It was like to frighten the horses.
Mari’s patrol was slated to ride north and pick up their pattern again where it had been broken off almost two weeks ago by the call for aid. With his patrol’s purse newly topped off by the Glassforgers, Chato planned to continue on his mission to purchase horses from the limestone country south of the Grace. He would be slowed on the first leg by a wagon to carry Saun and Reela, neither quite ready to ride yet; the pair were to finish convalescing at a Lakewalker camp that controlled a ferry crossing down on the river, and be picked up again on the return journey. Both patrols had planned their removals for the crack of noon, a merciful hour. Dag sensed Chato’s moderating influence at work. Mari was perfectly capable of ordering a dawn departure after a bow-down, then concealing her evil hilarity behind a rod-straight face as her bleary troop stumbled out.
Mari was far and away Dag’s favorite relative, but that was a pretty low fence to get over, and he prayed to the absent gods that he might avoid her altogether this morning.
After breakfast Dag helped lug the last of Saun’s gear to the wagon, and turned to find his prayers, as usual, unanswered. Mari stood holding the reins of her horse, staring at him in mute exasperation.
He let his eyebrows rise, trying desperately not to smile. Or worse, chortle.
“What?”
She drew a long breath, but then just let it out. “Besotted fool. There’s no more use trying to talk to you this morning than to those twittering wrens in that elm across the yard. I said my piece. I’ll see you back in camp in a few weeks. Maybe the novelty will have worn off by then, and you’ll have your wits back, I don’t know. You can do your own blighted explaining to Fairbolt, is all I can say.”
Dag’s back straightened. “That I will.”
“Eh!” She turned to gather her reins, but then turned back, seriousness replacing the aggravation in her eyes. “Be careful of yourself in farmer country, Dag.”
He would have preferred a tart dressing-down to this true concern, against which he had no defense. “I’m always careful.”
“Not so’s I ever noticed,” she said dryly. Silently, Dag offered her a leg up, which she accepted with a nod, settling in her saddle with a tired sigh. She was growing thinner, he thought, these last couple of years. He gave her a smile of farewell, but it only made her lean on her pommel and lower her voice to him. “I’ve seen you in a score of moods, including foul. I’ve never before seen you so plain happy. Enough to make an old woman weep, you are… Take care of that little girl, too, then.”
“I plan to.”
“Huh. Do you, now.” She shook her head and clucked her horse forward, and Dag belatedly recalled his last statement to her on the subject of plans.
But he could almost watch himself being displaced in her head with the hundred details a patrol leader on duty must track—as well he remembered. Her gaze turned to sweep over the rest of her charges, checking their gear, their horses, their faces; judging their readiness, finding it enough to go on with. This day.
Again.
Fawn had been helping Reela, apparently one of the several dozen people, or so it seemed to Dag, that Fawn had managed to make friends of in this past week.
The two young women bade each other cheery good-byes, and Fawn popped down off the wagon to come stand with him as he watched his patrol form up and trot out through the gateway. At least as many riders gave a parting wave to her as to him. In a few minutes, Chato’s patrol too mounted up and wheeled out, at a slower pace for the rumbling wagon. Saun waved as enthusiastic a farewell as his injuries permitted. Silence settled in the stable yard.
Dag sighed, caught as usual between relief to be rid of the whole maddening lot of them, and the disconcerting loneliness that always set in when he was parted from his people. He told himself that it made no sense to be shaken by both feelings simultaneously. Anyway, there were more practical reasons to be wary when one was the only Lakewalker in a townful of farmers, and he struggled to wrap his usual guarded courtesy back about himself. Except now with Fawn also inside.
The horse boys disbanded toward the tack room or the back door to the kitchen, walking slowly in the humidity and chatting with each other.
“Your patrollers weren’t so bad,” said Fawn, staring thoughtfully out the gate.
“I didn’t think they’d accept me, but they did.”
“This is patrol. Camp is different,” said Dag absently.
“How?”
“Eh…” Weak platitudes rose to his mind, Time will tell, Don’t borrow trouble.
“You’ll see.” He felt curiously loath to explain to her, on this bright morning, why his personal war on malices wasn’t the sole reason that he volunteered for more extra duty than any other patroller in Hickory Lake Camp. His record had been seventeen straight months in the field without returning there, though he’d had to switch patrols several times to do it.
“Must we leave today, too?” asked Fawn.
Dag came to himself with a start and wrapped his arm around her, snugging her to his hip. “No, in fact. It’s a two-day hard ride to Lumpton from here, but we’ve no need to ride hard. We can make an easy start tomorrow, take it in gentle stages.” Or even later, the seductive thought occurred. “I was wondering if I ought to give my room back to the hotel. Since I’m not really a patroller and all.”
“What? No! That room is yours for as long as you want it, Spark!” Dag said indignantly.
“Um, well, that’s sort of the point, I thought.” She bit her lip, but her eyes, he realized, were sparkling. “I was wondering if I could sleep in with you?
For…
frugality.”
“Of course, frugality! Yes, that’s the thing. You are a thoughtful girl, Spark.”
She cast him a merry smirk. She flashed an entrancing dimple when she smirked, which made his heart melt like a block of butter left in the summer sun. She said, “I’ll go move my things.”
He followed, feeling as utterly scatter-witted as Mari had accused him of being.
He could not, could not run up and down the streets of Glassforge, leaping and shouting to the blue sky and the entire population, She says I make her eyes happy!
He really wanted to, though. They did not leave the next day, for it was raining. Nor the next either, for rain threatened then, too. On the following morning, Dag declared Fawn too sore from the previous night’s successfully concluded bed experiments to ride comfortably, although by midafternoon she was hopping around as happily as a flea and he was limping as the pulled muscle in his back seized up. Which provided the next day’s excuse for lingering, as well. He pictured the conversation with Fairbolt, Why are you late, Dag? Sorry, sir, I crippled myself making passionate love to a farmer girl. Yeah, that’d go over well.
Watching Fawn discover the delights that her own body could provide her was an enchantment to Dag as endlessly beguiling as water lilies. He had to cast his mind far back for comparisons, as he’d made those discoveries at a much younger age. He could indeed remember being a little crazed with it all for a while.
He found he really didn’t need to rack his brains to provide variety in his lovemaking, for she was still overwhelmed by the marvel of repeatability. So he probably hadn’t created anything he couldn’t handle, quite.
Dag also discovered in himself a previously unsuspected weakness for foot rubs.
If ever Fawn wanted to fix him in one place, she didn’t need to hog-tie him with ropes; when her small firm hands worked their way down past his ankles, he slumped like a man poleaxed and just lay there paralyzed, trying not to drool too unattractively into his pillow. In those moments, never getting out of bed again for the rest of his life seemed the very definition of paradise. As long as Spark was in the bed with him.