Fawn cuddled down, her head resting on his chest, and allowed herself to be rocked along, not speaking for a while. Ambushed again by the deep fatigue of her blood loss after the dawn’s spate of excitement, Dag judged; like other injured younglings he’d known, she seemed likely to overestimate her capacity, swinging between imprudent activity and collapse. He hoped her recovery would be as swift. She made a warm and comfortable burden, balanced on his lap. The mare’s walk was certainly smoother than a wagon would have been in these muddy ruts, and he had no intention of jostling either of them with a trot. A few mosquitoes whined around them in the damp shade, and he gently bumped them away from her fair skin with a flick of his ground against theirs.
The scent of her skin and hair, the moving curve of her breasts as she breathed, and the pressure of her thighs on his stimulated him, but not nearly so much as the light, the contentment, and the flattering sense of safety swirling through her complex ground. She was not herself aroused, but her air of openness, of sheer physical acceptance of his presence, made him unreasonably happy in turn, like a man warmed by a fire. The deep red note of her inmost injury still lurked underneath, and the violet shadings of her bruises clouded her ground as they did her flesh, but the sharp-edged glints of pain were much reduced.
She could not sense his ground in turn; she was unaware of his lingering inspection. A Lakewalker woman would have felt his keen regard, seeing just as deeply into him if he did not close himself off and keep closed, trading blindness for privacy. Feeling guiltily perverse, he indulged his inner senses upon Fawn without excuse of need—or fear of self-revelation.
It was a little like watching water lilies; rather more like smelling a dinner he was not allowed to eat. Was it possible to be starved for so long as to forget the taste of food, for the pangs of hunger to burn out like ash? It seemed so. But both the pleasure and the pain were his heart’s secret, here.
He was put in mind, suddenly, of the soil at the edge of a recovering blight; the weedy bedraggled look of it, unlovely yet hopeful. Blight was a numb gray thing, without sensation. Did the return of green life hurt? Odd thought.
She stirred, opening her eyes to stare into the shadows of the woods, here mostly beech, elm, and red oak, with an occasional towering Cottonwood, or, in more open areas around the stream, stubby dogwood or redbud, long past their blooming. Splashes of the climbing sun spangled the leaves of the upper branches, sparking off lingering water drops.
“How will you find your patrol in Glassforge?” she asked.
“There’s this hotel patrols stay at—we make it our headquarters when we’re in this area. Nice change from sleeping on the ground. It’ll also be our medicine tent. I’m pretty sure that more patrollers than my partner Saun took blows when we jumped those bandits the other night, so that’s where they’ll be holed up.
They’re used to our ways, there.”
“Will you be there long?”
“Not sure. Chato’s patrol was on their way south over the Grace River to trade for horses when they got waylaid by this trouble, and my patrol was riding a pattern up northeast, when we broke off to come here. Depends on the injured, I suspect.”
She said thoughtfully, “Lakewalkers don’t run the hotel, do they? It’s Glassforge folks, right?”
“Right.”
“What all jobs do they do in a hotel?”
He raised his brows. “Chambermaid, cook, scullion, horse boy, handyman, laundress… lots of things.”
“I could do some of that. Maybe I could get work there.”
Dag tensed. “Did Petti tell you about her cousin?”
“Cousin?” She peered up at him without guile.
Evidently not. “No—never mind. The couple that run the place have owned it for years; it’s built on the site of an old inn, I think, which was his father’s before. Mari would know. It’s brick, three floors high, very fine. They burn brick as well as glass in Glassforge, you know.” She nodded. “I saw some houses in Lumpton Market once, they say were built from Glassforge brick. Must have been quite a job hauling it.”
He shifted a little beneath her. “In any case, there’ll be no work for you till you stop fainting when you jump up. Some days yet, I expect. If you eat up and rest.”
“I suppose,” she said doubtfully. “But I don’t have much money.”
“My patrol will put you up,” he said firmly. “We owe you for a malice, remember.” We owe you for your sacrifice.
“Yes, all right, but I need to look ahead, now I’m on my own. I’m glad I met all those Horsefords. Nice folks. Maybe they’ll introduce me around, help get me a start.”
Would she not go home? Neither the picture of her dragging back to the realm of Stupid Sunny nor the notion of her as a Glassforge chambermaid pleased him much.
“Best see what Mari has to say about that knife, before making plans.”
“Mm.” Her eyes darkened, and she huddled down again.
The peace of the woodland descended again, easing Dag’s spirit. The light and air and solitude, the placid mare moving warmly beneath him, and Fawn curled against him with her ground slowly releasing its accumulation of anguish, put him wholly in a present that required nothing more of him, nor he of it.
Released, for a moment, from an endless chain of duty and task, tautly pulling him into a weary future not chosen, merely accepted.
“How’re you doing?” he murmured into Fawn’s hair. “Pain?”
“No worse than when I was sitting up at breakfast, anyhow. Better than last night. This is all right.”
“Good.”
“Dag…” She hesitated.
“Mm?”
“What do Lakewalker women do who get in a fix like mine?”
The question baffled him. “Which fix?”
She gave a small snort. “I suppose I have been collecting troubles, lately. A
baby and no husband was the one I was thinking of. Grass widowhood.”
He could sense the grating of grief and guilt through her with that reminder.
“It doesn’t exactly work like that, for us.”
She frowned. “Are young Lakewalkers all really, really… um… virtuous?”
He laughed softly. “No, if by virtuous you just mean keeping their trousers buttoned. Other virtues are more in demand. But young is young, farmer or Lakewalker. Pretty much everyone goes through an awkward period of fumbling around finding things out.”
“You said a woman invites a man to her tent.”
“If he’s a lucky man.”
“Then how do…” She trailed off in confusion.
He finally figured out what she was asking. “Oh. It’s our grounds, again. The time of the month when a woman can conceive shows as a beautiful pattern in her ground. If the time and place are wrong for a child, she and her man just pleasure each other in ways that don’t lead to children.”
Fawn’s silence following this extended for a quite a long time. Then she said,
“What?”
“Which what?”
“How do people… people can do that? How?”
Dag swallowed uneasily. How much could this girl not know? By the evidence so far, quite a lot, he reflected ruefully. How far back did he need to begin?
“Well—hands, for one.”
“Hands?”
“Touching each other, till they trade release. Tongues and mouths and other things, too.”
She blinked. “Release?”
“Touch each other as you’d touch yourself, only with a better angle and company and, well, just better all around. Less… lonely.”
Her face screwed up. “Oh. Boys do that, I know. I guess girls could do it for them, too. Do they like it?”
“Um… generally,” he said cautiously. This unexpected turn of the conversation sped his mind, and his body was following fast. Calm yourself, old patroller.
Fortunately, she could not sense the heated ripple in him. “Girls like it, too.
In my experience.”
Another long, digestive silence. “Is this some Lakewalker lady thing? Magic?”
“There are tricks you can do with your grounds to make it better, but no.
Lakewalker ladies and farmer girls are equally magical in this. Anyway, farmers have grounds too, they just can’t sense them.” Absent gods be thanked.
Her expression now was intensely cogitative, and a stuttering swirl of arousal had started in her as well. It wasn’t, he realized suddenly, just her hurts that blocked its flow. Something that half-blood woman at Tripoint had once told him, that he’d scarcely believed, came back to him now: that some farmer women never learned how to pleasure themselves, or to find release. She’d laughed at his expression. Come, come, Dag. Boys practically trip over their own parts.
Women’s are all tucked neatly up inside. They can be just as tricky for us as for the farmer boys to find. Many’s the farmwife has me to thank for providing her man with the treasure map, scandalized as she’d be to learn it. Since he’d had much to thank her for as well, he’d set about it, dismissing the ineptness of farm boys from his mind and, in a short time, from hers.
That had been a long time ago…
“What other things?” Fawn said.
“Beg pardon?”
“Besides hands and tongues and mouths.”
“Just… don’t… not… never mind.” And now his arousal had grown to serious physical discomfort. Atop a horse, of all things. There were many things not to try on a horse, even one as good-natured as this mare. He couldn’t avoid remembering several of them, which didn’t help.
Spark couldn’t sense his ground. He could stand in front of her rigid with mind-numbing lust, and as long as he kept his trousers on, she wouldn’t know.
And considering all her recent disastrous experiences, she oughtn’t to know.
Bad if she laughed… no, upon reflection, good if she laughed. Bad if she was disgusted or horrified or frightened, taking him for another lout like Stupid Sunny or that poor fool he’d shot in the backside. If it grew too excruciating, he could slip off the horse and disappear into the woods for a spell, pretending to be answering a call of nature. Which he would be; no lie there. Stop it.
You did this to yourself. Suffer in silence. Think of something else. You can control your body. She can’t tell.
She sighed, rustled about, and gazed up into his face. “Your eyes change color with the light,” she observed in a tone of new interest. “In the sun they’re all bright gold like coins. In the shade they go brown like clear spice tea. In the night, they’re black like deep pools.” She added after a moment, “They’re really dark right now.”
“Mm,” said Dag. Every breath brought her heady scent to his mouth, to his mind.
He could not very well stop breathing.
A flash of motion at treetop height caught both their eyes.
“Look, a red-tailed hawk!” she cried. “Isn’t he beautiful!” Her head and body turned to follow the pale clean-cut shape, ruddy translucent tail feathers almost glowing against the washed blue of the sky, and her hot small hand came down to support herself. Directly on Dag’s aching erection.
His startled recoil was so abrupt, he fell off the horse.
He landed on his back with a breath-stealing thump. Thankfully, she landed atop him and not underneath. Her weight was soft upon him, her breath accelerated by the shock. Her pupils were too wide for this light, and, as she twisted around and thrust out one hand to support herself, her gaze grew fixed upon his mouth.
Yes! Kiss me, do. His hand spasmed, and he laid it out flat and stiff, palm up upon the grass, lest he lunge at her. He moistened his lips. The damp of the grass and the soil began soaking into the back of his shirt and trousers. He could feel every curve of her body, pressed into his, and every curse of her ground. Absent gods, he was halfway to groundlock all by himself…
“Are you all right?” she gasped.
Terror shot through him, wilting his arousal, that the fall might have torn something loose inside her to start her bleeding again like the first day. It would take the better part of hour to carry her back to the farm, and in her current depleted state, she might not survive another such draining.
She scrambled off him and plunked herself ungracefully on the ground, panting.
“Are you all right?” he asked urgently in turn.
“I guess so.” She winced a little, but she rubbed her elbow, not her belly.
He sat up and ran his hand through his hair. Fool, fool, blight you, pay attention… ! You might have killed her.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I… thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but it was just a trick of the light. I didn’t mean to shy like a horse.” Which had to be the weakest excuse for an excuse he’d ever uttered.
The mare, in fact, was less shaken than either of them. She had sidestepped as they’d gone over, but now stood peacefully a few yards off, looking at them in mild astonishment. No further excitement seeming forthcoming, she put her head down and nibbled a weed.
“Yes, well, after that mud-man this morning, it’s no wonder you’re jumpy,”
Fawn said kindly. She stared around at the woods in renewed worry, then balanced a hand on his shoulder, pushed herself up, and tried to brush the dirt off her sleeve.
Dag took a few deep breaths, letting his pounding heart slow, then rose as well and went to recapture the mare. A fallen tree a few steps into the woods looked like an adequate mounting block; he led the horse up to it, and Fawn dutifully followed. And if they started this all over again, he feared he would disgrace himself before they ever got to Glassforge.
“To tell the truth,” Dag lied, “my left arm was getting a bit tired. Do you think you could sit behind and hang on pillion style, for a while?”
“Oh! I’m sorry. I was so comfortable, I didn’t think it might be awkward for you!” she apologized earnestly.
You have no idea how awkward. He grinned to hide his guilt, and to reassure her, but he was afraid it just came out looking demented.