“Sounds like.” His brows rose as he considered this in curiosity, possibly of the more idle sort. “Anyway. Utau and Sarri loved each other despite their sorrow, and didn’t want to part. And they were both good friends with Utau’s cousin Razi. I’m not just sure who persuaded who to what, but one day Razi up and moved all his things into Sarri’s tent with the pair of them. And a few months later Sarri was pregnant. And, to top the matter, not only did Razi get string-bound with Sarri, Razi and Utau got string-bound with each other, so the circle went all the way around and each ended up wearing the strings of both the others. All Otters now. And everyone’s families went around for a while looking like their heads ached, but then there came this beautiful girl baby, and a while after, this bright little boy, that all three just dote on, and everyone else pretty much gave up the worrying. Although not the lewd speculation, naturally.”

Fawn laughed. “Naturally.” Her mind started to drift off in a little lewd speculating of its own, abruptly jerked back to attention when Dag continued in his thoughtful-voice.

“I’ve never made a child, myself. I was always very careful, if not always for the same reasons. There’s not a few who have trouble when they switch over from trying to miss that target to trying to hit it. All their prior care seeming a great waste of a sudden. The sort of useless thing you wonder about late at night.”

Had Dag been doing so, staring up at the stars? Fawn said, “You’d think, with that pattern showing in women’s grounds, it would be easier rather than harder to get a baby just when you wanted.” She was still appalled at how easy it had been for her.

“So you would. Yet so often people miss, and no one knows why. Kauneo and I—” His voice jerked to a halt in that now-familiar way.

She held her peace, and her breath.

“Here’s one I never told anyone ever—”

“You need not,” she said quietly. “Some people are in favor of spitting out hurts, but poking at them too much doesn’t let them heal, either.”

“This one’s ridden in my memory for a long, long time. Maybe it would look a different size if I got it outside my head rather than in it, for once.”

“Then I’m listenin’.” Was he about to uncork another horror-tale?

“Indeed.” He stared ahead between Copperhead’s ears. “We’d been string-bound upwards of a year, and I felt I was getting astride my duties as a company captain, and we decided it was time to start a child. This was in the months just before the wolf war broke. We tried two months running, and missed. Third month, I was away on my duties at the vital time; for the life of me I can’t now remember what seemed so important about them. I can’t even remember what they were. Riding out and checking on something or other. And in the fourth month, the wolf war was starting up, and we were both caught up in the rush.” He drew a long, long breath. “But if I could have made Kauneo pregnant by then, she would have stayed in camp, and not led out her patrol to Wolf Ridge. And whatever else had happened, she and the child would both have lived. If not for that lost month.”

Fawn’s heart felt hot and strange, as if his old wound were being shared through the very ground of his words. Not a good secret to lug around, that one. She tried the obvious patch. “You can’t know that.”

“I know I can’t. I don’t think there’s a second thought I can have about this that I haven’t worn out by now. Maybe Kauneo’s leadership, down at the anchor end of the line, was what held the ridge that extra time after I went down. Maybe…A patroller friend of mine, his first wife died in childbed. I know he harbors regrets just as ferocious for the exact opposite cause. There is no knowing. You just have to grow used to the not knowing, I guess.”

He fell quiet for a time, and Fawn, daunted, said nothing. Though maybe the listening had been all he’d needed. She wondered, suddenly, if Dag was doubting whether he could sire children. Fifty-five years was a long time to go without doing so, for a man, although she had the impression that it wasn’t that he’d been with so many women, before or after Kauneo, as that he’d paid really good attention when he had. In the light of her own history, if no child appeared when finally wanted, it would seem clear who was responsible. Did he fear to disappoint?

But his mind had turned down another path now, apparently, for he said, “My immediate family’s not so large as yours. Just my mother, my brother, and his wife at present. All my brother’s children are out of the tent, on patrol or apprenticed to makers. One son’s string-bound, so far.”

Dag’s nephews and nieces were just about the same age range as Fawn and her brothers, from his descriptions. She nodded.

He went on, “I hope to slip into camp quietly. I’m of two minds whether to report to Fairbolt or my family first. It’s likely rumors have trickled back about the Glassforge malice kill ahead of Mari’s return, in which case Fairbolt will want the news in full. And I have to tell him about the knife. But I’d like to introduce you to my brother and mother in my own way, before they hear anything from anyone else.”

“Well, which one would be less offended to be put second?” asked Fawn.

“Hard to say.” He smiled dryly. “Mama can hold a grudge longer, but Fairbolt has a keen memory for lapses as well.”

“I should not like to begin by offending my new mama-in-law.”

“Spark, I’m afraid some people are going to be offended no matter what you and I do. What we’ve done…isn’t done, though it was done in all honor.”

“Well,” she said, trying for optimism, “some people are like that among farmers, too. No pleasing them. You just try, or at least try not to be the first to break.” She considered the problem. “Makes sense to put the worst one first. Then, if you have to, you can get away by saying you need to go off and see the second.”

He laughed. “Good thinking. Perhaps I will.”

But he didn’t say which he believed was which.

They rode on through the afternoon without stopping. Fawn thought she could tell when they were nearing the lake by a certain lightness growing in the sky and a certain darkness growing in Dag. At any rate, he got quieter and quieter, though his gaze ahead seemed to sharpen. Finally, his head came up, and he murmured, “The bridge guard and I just bumped grounds. Only another mile.”

They came off the lesser track they’d been following onto a wider road, which ran in a sweeping curve. The land here was very flat; the woods, mixed beech and oak and hickory, gave way to another broad meadow. On the far side, someone lying on the back of what looked to be a grazing cart horse, his legs dangling down over the horse’s barrel, sat up and waved. He kicked the horse into a canter and approached.

The horse wore neither saddle nor bridle, and the young man aboard it was scarcely more dressed. He wore boots, some rather damp-looking linen drawers, a leather belt with a scabbard for a knife, and his sun-darkened skin. As he approached, he yanked the grass stem he’d been chewing from his mouth and threw it aside. “Dag! You’re alive!” He pulled up his horse and stared at the sling, and at Fawn trailing shyly behind. “Aren’t you a sight, now! Nobody said anything about a broken bone! Your right arm, too, absent gods, how have you been managing anything at all?”

Dag returned an uninformative nod of greeting, although he smiled faintly. “I’ve had a little help.”

“Is that your farmer girl?” The guard stared at Fawn as though farmer girls were a novelty out of song, like dancing bears. “Mari Redwing thought you’d been gelded by a mob of furious farmers. Fairbolt’s fuming, your mama thinks you’re dead and blames Mari, and your brother’s complaining he can’t work in the din.”

“Ah,” said Dag in a hollow voice. “Mari’s patrol get back early, did it?” “Yesterday afternoon.”