"Better." Mari set the harness back down and picked up the makeshift linen bag and let it drift through her hand, feeling the contents shift within. Her expression grew sad, almost remote. "Kauneo"s heart"s knife, wasn"t it?"
Dag nodded shortly.
"I know how long you"ve kept it aside. This fate was worthy."
Dag shook his head. "They"re all the same, really, I"ve come to believe." He took a breath and advanced to the bed, motioning Fawn to sit.
She perched cross-legged on the bed"s head, smoothing her skirt over her knees, and watched the two patrollers. Mari had gold eyes much like Dag"s, if a shade more bronze, and she wondered if she really was his aunt and his use of the t.i.tle not, as she"d first thought, just a joke or a respectful endearment.
Mari set the bag back down. "Do you plan to send it up to be buried with the rest of her uncle"s bones? Or burn it here?"
"Not sure yet. It will keep with me; it has so far." Dag drew a deeper breath, staring down at the other knife. "Now we come to the long story."
Mari sat down at the bed"s foot and crossed her arms, listening closely as Dag began his tale again, this time starting with the night raid on the bandit camp. His descriptions of his actions were succinct but very exact, Fawn noticed, as though certain details might matter more, though she was not sure how he sorted which to leave in or out. Until he came to, "I believe the mud-man lifted Miss Bluefield from the road because she was two months pregnant. And came back and took her from the farm for the same reason."
Mari"s lips moved involuntarily, Was Was?, then compressed. "Go on."
Dag"s voice stiffened as he described his risky raid on the malice"s cave. "I was just too late.
When I hit the entrance and the mud-men, the malice was already taking her child."
Mari leaned forward, her brows drawing down. "Separately?"
"So it seems."
"Huh..." Mari leaned back, shook her head, and peered at Fawn. "Excuse me. I am so sorry for your loss. But this is new to me. We knew malices took pregnant women, but then, they take anyone they can catch. Rarely, the women"s bodies are recovered. I did not know the malice didn"t always take both grounds together."
"I don"t think," said Fawn distantly, "it would have kept me around very long. It was about to break my neck when I finally got the right knife into it."
Mari blinked, glanced down at the blue-hilted bone knife lying on the bedroll, and stared up again at Dag. "What?"
Carefully, Dag explained Fawn"s mix-up with his knives. He was very kind, Fawn thought, to excuse her from any blame in the matter.
"The knife had been unprimed. You know what I was saving it for."
Mari nodded.
"But now it"s primed. With the death of Spark"s-of Miss Bluefield"s daughter, I believe.
What I don"t know is if that"s all it drew from the malice. Or whether it will even work as a sharing knife. Or... well, I don"t know much, I"m afraid. But with Miss Bluefield"s permission, I thought you could examine it too."
"Dag, I"m no more a maker than you are."
"No, but you are more... you are less... I could use another opinion."
Mari glanced at Fawn. "Miss Bluefield, may I?"
"Please. I want to understand, and... and I don"t, really."
Mari leaned over and picked up the bone knife. She cradled it, ran her hand along its smooth pale length, and finally, much as Dag had, held it to her lips with her eyes closed. When she set it down again, her mouth stayed tight for a moment.
"Well"-she took a breath-"it"s certainly primed."
"That, I could tell," said Dag.
"It feels... hm. Oddly pure. It"s not that souls go into the knives-you did explain that to her, yes?" she demanded of Dag.
"Yes. She"s clear on that part."
"But different people"s heart"s knives do have different feels to them. Some echo of the donor lingers, though they all seem to work alike. Perhaps it"s that the lives are different, but the deaths are all the same, I don"t know. I"m a patroller, not a lore-master. I think"-she tapped her lips with a forefinger-"you had better take it to a maker. The most experienced you can find."
"Miss Bluefield and I," said Dag. "The knife is properly hers, now."
"This isn"t any business for a farmer to be mixed up in."
Dag scowled. "What would you have me do? Take it from her? You You?"
"Explain, please?" Fawn said tightly. "Everyone is talking past me again. That"s all right mostly, I"m used to it, but not for this." this."
"Show her your knives, Mari," Dag said, a rasp of challenge in his voice, for all that it was soft.
She looked at him, then slowly unb.u.t.toned her shirt partway down and drew out a dual knife pouch much like Dag"s, though of softer leather. She pulled the strap over her head, pushed the bedroll aside, and laid out two bone knives side by side on the quilt. They were nearly identical, except for different-colored dye daubed on the lightly carved hilts, red and brown this time.
"These are a true pair, both bones from the same donor," she said, caressing the red one. "My youngest son, as it happens. It was his third year patrolling, up Sparford way, and I"d just got to thinking he was getting over the riskiest part of the learning... well." She touched the brown one. "This one is primed. His father"s aunt Palai gave her death to it. Tough, tough old woman-absent G.o.ds, we loved her. Preferably from a safe distance, but there"s one like that in every family, I think." Her hand drifted again to the red one. "This one is unprimed, bonded to me. I keep it by me in case."
"So what would happen," said Dag dryly, "to anyone who tried to take them from you?"
Mari"s smile grew grim. "I"d outstrip the worst wrath of Great-aunt Palai." She sat up and slipped the knives away, then nodded at Fawn. "But I think it"s different for her."
"It"s all strange to me." Fawn frowned, staring at the blue-hilted knife. "I have no happy memories about this to balance the sorrows. But they"re my memories, all the same. I"d rather they weren"t... wasted."
Mari raised both hands in a gesture of frustrated neutrality.
"So could I have leave from the patrol to travel on this matter?" asked Dag.
Mari grimaced. "You know how short we are, but once this Gla.s.sforge business is settled, I can"t very well refuse you. Have you ever drawn leave? Ever? You don"t even get sick!"
Dag thought a moment. "Death of my father," he said at last. "Eleven years ago."
"Before my time. Eh! Ask again when we"re ready to decamp. If there"s no new trouble landed in our laps by then."
He nodded. "Miss Bluefield"s not fit to travel far yet anyway. You can see by her eyelids and nails she"s lost too much blood, even without how her knees give way. No fever yet, though.
Please, Mari, I did all I could, but could you look her over?" His hand touched his belly, making his meaning clear.
Mari sighed. "Yes, yes, Dag."
He stood expectantly for a moment; she grimaced and sat up, waving to a set of saddlebags leaning in the corner. "There"s your gear, by the by. Luckily your fool horse hadn"t got round to sc.r.a.ping it off in the woods. Go on, now."
"But will you... can"t I... I mean, it"s not as though you have to undress her."
"Women"s business," she said firmly.
Reluctantly, he made for the door, though he did scoop up his arm harness and recovered belongings. "I"ll see about getting you a room, Spark."
Fawn smiled gratefully at him.
"Good," said Mari. "Scat."
He bit his lip and nodded farewell. His boot steps faded down the hall.
Fawn tried not to be too unnerved by being left alone with Mari. Scary old lady or not, the patrol leader seemed to share some of Dag"s straightforward quality. She had Fawn sit quietly on the bed while she ran her hands over her. She then sat behind Fawn and hugged her in close for several silent minutes, her hands wrapped across Fawn"s lower belly. If she was doing something with her groundsense, Fawn could not feel it, and wondered if this was what being deaf among hearing people was like. When she released Fawn, her face was cool but not unkind.
"You"ll do," she said. "It"s clear you were ripped up unnatural, which accounts for the suddenness of the bleeding, but you"re healing about as quick as could be expected for someone so depleted, and your womb"s not hot. Fever"s a commoner killer in these things than bleeding, though less showy. You"ll have some blight-scarring in there, I guess, slow to heal like the ones on your neck, but not enough to stop you having other children, so you be more careful in future, Miss Miss Bluefield." Bluefield."
"Oh." Fawn, looking back through clouds of regret, had not even thought ahead to her future fertility. "Does that happen to some women, after a miscarriage?"
"Sometimes. Or after a bad birth. Delicate parts in there. It amazes me the process works at all, when I think about all the things I"ve seen can go wrong."
Fawn nodded, then reached to put away Dag"s blue-hilted knife, still lying on her bedroll atop her spare clothes.
"So," said Mari in a carefully bland tone, "who"s the other half owner sides you of that knife"s priming? Some farm lout?"
Fawn"s jaw set. "Just me. The lout made it very clear he was giving it all to me. Which was why I was out on the road in the first place."
"Farmers. I"ll never understand "em."
"There are no Lakewalker louts?"
"Well..." Mari"s long, embarra.s.sed drawl conceded the point.
Fawn reread the faded brown lettering on the bone blade. "Dag meant to drive this into his own heart someday. Didn"t he." This Kauneo had intended that he should.
"Aye."
Now he couldn"t. That was something, at least. "You have one, too."
"Someone has to prime. Not everyone, but enough. Patrollers understand the need better."
"Was Kauneo a patroller?"
"Didn"t Dag say?"
"He said she was a woman who"d died twenty years ago up northwest someplace."
"That"s a bit close-mouthed even for him." Mari sighed. "It"s not my place to tell his tales, but if you are to have the holding of that knife, farmer girl, you"d better understand what it is and where it comes from."
"Yes," said Fawn firmly, "please. I"m so tired of making stupid mistakes."
Mari twitched a-provisionally-approving eyebrow at this. "Very well. I"ll give you what Dag would call the short tale." Her long inhalation suggested it wasn"t going to be as short as all that, and Fawn sat cross-legged again, intent.
"Kauneo was Dag"s wife."
A tremor of shock ran through Fawn. Shock, but not surprise, she realized. "I see."
"She died at Wolf Ridge."
"He hadn"t mentioned any Wolf Ridge to me. He just called it a bad malice war." Though there could be no such thing as a good malice war, Fawn suspected.
"Farmer girl, Dag doesn"t talk about Wolf Ridge to anyone. One of his several little quirks you have to get used to. You have to understand, Luthlia is the biggest, wildest hinterland of the seven, with the thinnest population of Lakewalkers to try to patrol it. Terrible patrolling- cold swamps and trackless woods and killing winters. The other hinterlands lend more young patrollers to Luthlia than to anywhere, but they still can"t keep up.
"Kauneo came from a tent of famously fierce patrollers up that way. She was very beautiful I guess-courted by everyone. Then this quiet, una.s.suming young patrol leader from the east, walking around the lake on his second training tour, stole her heart right out from under all of them." A hint of pride colored her voice, and Fawn thought, Yes, she"s really his aunt Yes, she"s really his aunt. "He made plans to stay. They were string-bound-you farmers would say, married-and he got promoted to company captain."
"Dag wasn"t always a patroller?" said Fawn.
Mari snorted. "That boy should have been a hinterland lieutenant by now, if he hadn"t... agh, anyway. Most of our patrols are more like hunts, and most turn up nothing. In fact, it"s possible to patrol all your life and never be in on a malice kill, by one chance or another. Dag has his ways of improving those odds for himself. But when a malice gets entrenched, when it goes to real war... then we"re all making it up as we go along."
She rose, stalked across the bedchamber to her washstand, poured a gla.s.s of water, and drank it down. She fell to pacing as she continued.
"Big malice slipped through the patrol patterns. It didn"t have many people to enslave up that way, no bandits like the malice you slew here. There are no farmers in Luthlia, nor anywhere north of the Dead Lake, save now and then some trapper or trader slips in that we escort out.
But the malice did find wolves. It did did things to wolves. Wolf-men, man-wolves, dire wolves as big as ponies, with man-wits. By the time the thing was found, it had grown itself an army of wolves. The Luthlian patrollers sent out a call-up for help from neighbor hinterlands, but meanwhile, they were on their own. things to wolves. Wolf-men, man-wolves, dire wolves as big as ponies, with man-wits. By the time the thing was found, it had grown itself an army of wolves. The Luthlian patrollers sent out a call-up for help from neighbor hinterlands, but meanwhile, they were on their own.
"Dag"s company, fifty patrollers including Kauneo and a couple of her brothers, was sent to hold a ridge to cover the flank of another party trying to strike up the valley at the lair. The scouts led them to expect an attack of maybe fifty dire wolves. What they got was more like five hundred."
Fawn"s breath drew in.
"In one hour Dag lost his hand, his wife, his company all but three, and the ridge. What he didn"t lose was the war, because in the hour they"d bought, the other group made it all the way through to the lair. When he woke up in the medicine tent, his whole life was burned up like a pyre, I guess. He didn"t take it well.
"In due course his dead wife"s tent folk despaired of him and sent him home. Where he didn"t take it well some more. Then Fairbolt Crow, bless his bones-our camp captain, though he was just a company captain back then-got smart, or desperate, or furious, and dragged him off to Tripoint. Got some clever farmer artificer he knew there to make up the arm harness, and they went round and round on it till they hit on devices that worked. Dag practiced with his new bow till his fingers bled, pulled himself together to meet Fairbolt"s terms, and let me tell you Fairbolt didn"t cut him any slack, and was let back on patrol. Where he has been ever since.
"Some ten or twelve sharing knives have pa.s.sed through Dag"s hand since-people keep giving them to him because they"re pretty sure to get used-but he always kept that pair aside. The only mementos of Kauneo I know of that he didn"t shove away like they scorched him. So that"s the knife now in your keeping, farmer girl."
Fawn held it up and drew it through her fingers. "You"d think it would be heavier." Did I Did I really want to know all this really want to know all this?
"Aye." Mari sighed.
Fawn glanced curiously at Mari"s gray head. "Will you ever be a company captain? You must have been patrolling for a long time."
"I"ve had far less time in the field than Dag, actually, for all I"m twenty years older. I walked the woman"s path. I spent four or five years training as a girl-we must must train up the girls, for all that fellows like Dag disapprove, because if ever our camps are attacked, it"ll be us and the old men defending them. I got string-bound, got blood-bound-had my children, that is- train up the girls, for all that fellows like Dag disapprove, because if ever our camps are attacked, it"ll be us and the old men defending them. I got string-bound, got blood-bound-had my children, that is- and then went back to patrolling. I expect to keep walking till my luck or my legs give out, five more years or ten, but I don"t care to deal with anything more fractious than a patrol, thank you. Then back to camp and play with my grandchildren and their children till it"s time to share. It will do, as a life."
Fawn"s brow wrinkled. "Did you ever imagine another?" Or being thrown into another, as Fawn had been?
Mari c.o.c.ked her head. "Can"t say as I ever did. Though I"d have my boy back first if I were given wishes."
"How many children did you have?"
"Five," Mari replied, with distinct maternal pride that sounded plenty farmerish to Fawn, for all she suspected Mari would deny any such thing.