The sliding door onto the lane was open, and a soft yellow light spilled out from an oil lantern hung on a nail in a rafter. Grace, in a box stall by the door, snorted uneasily as they entered. The packed-dirt aisle smelled not unpleasantly of horses and straw and manure and dove droppings and dry rot.
From Copperhead’s box sounded an angry squeal. Dag held out a restraining hand as Sorrel started to surge forward. Wait, Dag mouthed.
It was hard for Dag not to laugh out loud as the scene revealed itself, although the sight of half his gear strewn across the stall floor being well trampled by Copperhead did quite a lot to help him keep a straight face. On the far wall of the stall, some wooden slats were nailed to make a crude manger, and above it a square was cut in the ceiling to allow hay to be tossed down directly from the loft above. Although the hole was big enough to stuff down an armload of hay, it wasn’t quite big enough for Rush’s broad shoulders to make the reverse trip.
At the moment, having scrambled off the top of the manger as a partial ladder, Rush had one leg and both arms awkwardly jammed through the hole, and was attempting to twist the rest of his body out of range of Copperhead’s snapping yellow teeth. Copperhead, ears flat back and neck snaking, squealed and snapped again, apparently for the pure evil pleasure of watching Rush squirm harder.
“Patroller!” Rush cried as he saw them come up to the stall partition. “Help me!
Call off your horse!”
Sorrel shot Dag a worried look; Dag returned a small headshake and draped his arms over the partition, leaning comfortably.
“Now, Rush,” said Dag in a conversational voice, “I distinctly remember telling you and your brothers that Copperhead was a warhorse, and to leave him alone.
Do you remember that, Sorrel?”
“Yes, I do, patroller,” said Sorrel, matching his tone, also resting his elbows on the boards.
“I know you magic him in some way! Get him off me!”
“Well, we’ll have to see about that. Now, what I’m mightily curious about is just how you happened to be in his stall, without my leave, but with my saddlebags and bedroll and all my gear, which I had left in Aunt Nattie’s weaving room. I think your pa would like to hear that story, too.” And then Dag fell silent.
The silence stretched. Rush made a tentative move to swing down. Copperhead, excited, stamped and snapped and made a most peculiar noise, halfway between whipsaw menace and a horselaugh, Dag thought. Rush swung up again hastily.
“Your brute of a horse savaged me!” Rush complained. His shirt was ripped on one shoulder, and some blood leaked through, but it was clear to Dag’s eye by the way Rush moved that there was nothing broken.
“Now, now,” said Dag in a mock-soothing tone. “That was just a love bite, that was. If Copper’d really savaged you, you’d be over there, and your arm would be over here. Speaking from experience and all.”
Rush’s eyes widened as it dawned on him that if he’d wanted sympathy, he’d gone to the wrong store with the wrong coin. Dag didn’t say anything some more.
“What do you want to know?” Rush finally asked, in a surly tone.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Dag drawled.
“Pa, make him let me down!”
Sorrel vented an exasperated sigh. “You know, Rush, I’ve drawn you and your brother out of wells of your own digging more than once when you were younger, because every boy’s got to survive his share of foolishness. But as you’re both so fond of telling me, you’re not youngsters anymore. Seems to me you got yourself up there. You can get yourself down.”
Rush looked appalled at this unexpected parental betrayal. He started blurting a somewhat garbled account for his predicament involving an imaginary request relayed from Fawn.
Dag gave Sorrel another small headshake. Sorrel looked increasingly grim.
“No,” Dag interrupted in a bored voice, “That’s not it. Think harder, Rush.”
After a moment, he said, “I should also mention, I suppose, that Sunny Sawman and his three strapping friends are now on their way downriver to West Blue.
Under escort. Underwater, mostly. I don’t think they’ll be back for some several days.”
“How did you—I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
More silence.
Rush added in a smaller voice, “Are they all right?”
“They’ll live,” said Dag indifferently. “You can remember to thank me kindly for that, later.” And fell silent again.
After a couple more false starts, Rush at last began to ‘fess up. It was more or less the story Dag expected, of alehouse conspiracy and youthful bravado. In Rush’s version, Reed was the ringleader, valiantly horrified at the thought of his only sister marrying a Lakewalker corpse-eater and thus making him brother-in-law to one, and Rush’s motivations were lost in a mumble; Dag wasn’t sure whether this was strict truth or blame-casting, nor did he greatly care, as it was clear enough both boys were in it together. They had found a strangely enthusiastic helper in Sunny, fresh from a summer of stump-pulling and happy to show off his muscle. Unsurprisingly, it appeared Sunny had not seen fit to mention to the twins his prior encounter with Dag. Dag chose not to either.
Sorrel looked grimmer and grimmer.
Rush at last stuttered to a halt. A cool silence fell in the warm barn. Rush began to sag down; Copperhead lunged again. Rush tightened up once more, clinging like a possum to a branch. Dag could see that his arms were shaking.
“Now, Rush,” said Dag. “I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be. I am actually prepared to forgive and forget your brotherly plan to beat me crippled or dead and buried in your pa’s woods on the night before my wedding. The fact that you also seriously endangered the lives of your friends—because I would not, facing that death, have held back in defending myself—I leave to your pa to take up with you two. I’ll even forgive your lies to me.” Dag’s voice dropped to a deadly register that made Sorrel glance aside in alarm. “What I do not forgive is the malice of your lies to Fawn. You’d planned for her to wake up joyful on her wedding morning and then tell her I’d scunnered out in the night, make her believe herself shamed and betrayed, humiliate her before her friends and kin, set her to weeping—although I think her real response might have surprised you.”
He glanced aside. “You like that picture, Sorrel? No? Good.” Dag took a long breath. “Whatever reasons your parents tolerated your torment of your sister in the past, it stops tomorrow. You claim Reed was afraid of me? He wasn’t near afraid enough. Either of you so much as look cross-eyed at Fawn tomorrow, or anytime thereafter, I will give you reason to regret it every day for the rest of your lives. You hear me, Rush? Look at me.” Dag hadn’t used that voice since he was a company captain. He was pleased to note it still worked; Rush nearly fell from his perch. Copperhead shied. Even Sorrel stepped backward. Dag hissed,
“You hear me?”
Rush nodded frantically.
“All right. I will halter Copperhead, and you will climb down from there.
Then you will pick up every bit of my gear and put it back where you found it.
What’s broken, you and your brother can fix, what’s been rolled through the manure you can scrub—which will keep you two out of further mischief for the rest of the evening, I think—what can’t be fixed, you’ll replace, what can’t be replaced, I leave you to work out with your pa.”
“You heard the patroller, Rush,” said Sorrel, in a deeply paternal snarl.
Really, it was almost as good as the company-captain voice.
Dag extended his ground to his horse, a familiar reach long practiced; he’d been saddled with this chestnut idiot for about eight years, now. Disappointed at the loss of his toy, Copperhead lowered his head to the stall floor and began lipping straw, pretending that it all never happened. Dag thought he had a lot in common with Rush, that way. “You can get down,” said Dag.
“He isn’t haltered,” said Rush nervously.
“Yes, he is,” said Dag, “now.” Sorrel’s eyebrows climbed, but he didn’t say anything. Cautiously, Rush climbed down. Red-faced, his eyes wary on Copperhead, he began collecting Dag’s strewn possessions: clothing and saddlebags and ripped bedroll, knocked-about saddle and pummeled saddle blanket. The adapted bow, though kicked into a corner, was undamaged; Dag was glad. Only the reasonably benign outcome was keeping him from utter fury right now—that, plus not thinking too hard about Spark. But he had to think about Spark.
“Now,” Dag said, as Rush made his way out of the stall with his arms loaded, and Dag closed the stall door after him. Rush set the tangled gear down very carefully. “We come to the other question. What of all this would you have me tell Fawn?”
The place had been quiet like a barn; for a moment, it grew quiet like a tomb.
Sorrel’s face screwed up. He said cautiously, “Seems to me she’d be near as distressed for the word of this as for the thing itself. I mean, with respect to Reed and Rush,” he added, visions of Fawn weeping over Dag’s battered corpse evidently presenting themselves to his mind’s eye, as indeed they did to Dag’s.
Rush, who had been rather red, turned rather white.
“Seems that way to me, too,” said Dag. “But, you know, there’s eight people who know the truth about what happened tonight. Granted, four of them will be telling lies when they drag home tonight, though I doubt even those will all be the same lies. Some kind of word’s going to get around.”
Dag let them both dwell on this ugly vision for a little, then said, “I’m not Reed’s and Rush’s linker, though I should have been. I will not lie to her for them. But I’ll give you this much, and no more: I’ll not speak first.”
Sorrel took this in almost without expression for a moment, clearly thinking through the deeply unpleasant family ramifications. Then he nodded shortly.
“Fair enough, patroller.”
Dag extended his groundsense briefly, for all that the proximity of the two shaken Bluefields made it painful. He said, “Reed is coming back to the house with Fawn, now. I’d prefer to leave him to you, Sorrel.”
“Send him down here to the barn,” said Sorrel, somewhat through his teeth.
“That I will, sir.” Dag gave a nod in place of his usual salute.
“Thank you—sir.” Sorrel nodded back. Fawn returned to the kitchen with Reed in some annoyance with him for dragging her out in the dark. She lit a few candle stubs on the mantel to lighten both the room and her mood. Better still for the latter was the sound of Dag’s long footfalls coming through from the front hall. Reed, who had ducked into Nattie’s weaving room for some reason, came out with an inexplicable triumphant smile on his face. She was about to ask why he was so happy all of a sudden when the look was wiped clean at the sight of Dag entering the kitchen. Fawn bit back yet more irritation with her brother. She had better things to do than fuss at Reed; hugging Dag hello was on the top of that list.
He gave her a quick return embrace with his left arm and turned to Reed. “Ah, Reed. Your papa wants to see you in the old barn. Now.”
Reed looked at Dag as though he were a poisonous snake surprised in some place he’d been about to put his hand. “Why?” he asked in a suspicious voice.
“I believe he and Rush have quite a lot to say to you.” Dag tilted his head and gave Reed a little smile, which had to be one of the least friendly expressions to go by that name Fawn had ever seen. Reed’s mouth flattened in return, but he didn’t argue; to Fawn’s relief, he took himself off. She heard the front door slam behind him.
Fawn pushed back her unruly curls. “Well, that was a fool’s errand.”
“Where did you two go off to?” Dag asked.
“He dragged me all the way to the back pasture to help rescue a calf stuck in a fence. If the brainless thing had got itself in, it had got itself out by the time we made it there. And then he wanted to walk the fence line while we were out there. I didn’t mind the walk, but I have things to do.” She stood back and looked Dag over. He was often not especially tidy, but at the moment he looked downright rumpled. “Did you have your quiet think?”
“Yes, I just spent a very enlightening hour. Useful, too, I hope.”
“Oh, you. I bet you never sat still.” She brushed at a few stray bits of bark and leaf stuck to his shirt, and observed with disfavor a new rip in his trouser knee stained with blood from a scrape. “Walking in the woods, I think. I swear, you been walking so long you don’t know how to stop. What, were you climbing trees?”
“Just one.”
“Well, that was a fool thing to try with that arm!” she scolded fondly. “Did you fall down?”
“No, not quite.”
“That’s a blessing. You be more careful. Climbing trees, indeed! I thought I was joking. I don’t want my bridegroom broken, I’ll have you know.”
“I know.” He smiled, glancing around. Fawn realized that, miraculously, they were actually alone for a moment. He seemed to realize this at the same time, for he sat in the big wooden chair by the hearth and pulled her toward him.
She climbed happily into his lap and raised her face for a kiss. The kiss went urgent, and they were both out of breath when their lips parted again.
She said gruffly, “They won’t be able to keep us apart much longer.”
“Not even with ropes and wild horses,” he agreed, his eyes glinting. His smile grew more serious. “Have you decided yet where you want us to be tomorrow night?
Ride or bide?”
She sighed and sat up. “Do you have a partiality?”
He brushed her hair from her forehead with his lips, likely because he had a notable reluctance for touching her about the face with his hook. It turned into a small trail of kisses along the arches of her eyebrows before he, too, sat back thoughtfully. “Here would be physically easier. We won’t get to Hickory Lake in a day, still less in a couple of hours tomorrow evening. If we camped, you’d have to do most everything.”
“I don’t mind the work.” She tossed her head.