Dag, Mari, and Fawn took the shore branch, and while no one suggested a trot, Mari did kick her horse into a brisker walk. She was standing up in her stirrups peering ahead by the time they turned into her campsite.

Everyone had come out into the clearing. Razi and Utau held a child each, and Sarri waved. Cattagus waved and wheezed, striding forward. In addition there was a mob of new faces—a tall middle-aged woman and a fellow who had to be her spouse, and a stair-step rank of six gangling children ranging from Fawn’s age downward to a leaping little girl of eight. The woman was Mari’s eldest daughter, obviously, back from the other side of the lake with her family and her new boat. They all surged for Mari, although they stepped aside to give Cattagus first crack as she slid from her saddle. “’Bout time you got back, old woman,” he breathed into her hair, and, “You’re still here. Good. Saves thumpin’ you,” she muttered sternly into his ear as they folded each other in.

Razi dumped his wriggling son off on Sarri, who cocked her hip to receive him, Utau let Tesy loose with admonishments about keeping clear of Copperhead, and the pair of men came to help Dag and Fawn dismount. Utau looked tired but hale enough, Fawn thought. Mari’s son-in-law and Razi had all three horses unsaddled and bags off in a blink, and the two volunteered to lead the mounts back to Mare Island, preferably before the snorting Copperhead bit or kicked some bouncing child.

Tent Bluefield was still standing foursquare under the apple tree, and Sarri, smiling, rolled up and tied the tent flaps. Everything inside looked very neat and tidy and welcoming, and Fawn had Utau drop their grubby saddlebags under the outside awning. There would be serious laundry, she decided, before their travel-stained and reeking garments were allowed to consort again with their stay-at-home kin.

Dag eyed their bedroll atop its thick cushion of dried grass rather as a starving dog would contemplate a steak, muttered, “Boots off, leastways,” and dropped to a seat on an upended log to tug at his laces. He looked up to add, “Any problems while we were away?”

“Well,” said Sarri, sounding a trifle reluctant, “there was that go-round with the girls from Stores.”

“They tried to steal your tent, the little—!” said Utau, abruptly indignant. Sarri shushed him in a way that made Fawn think this was an exchange much-repeated.

“What?” said Dag, squinting in bewilderment.

“Not stealing, exactly,” said Sarri.

“Yes, it was,” muttered Utau. “Blighted sneakery.”

“They told me they’d been ordered to bring it back to Stores,” Sarri went on, overriding him. “They had it halfway down when I caught them. They wouldn’t listen to me, but Cattagus came out and wheezed at them and frightened them off.”

“Razi and I were out collecting elderberries for Cattagus,” said Utau, “or I’d have been willing to frighten them off myself. The nerve, to make away with a patroller’s tent while he was out on patrol!”

Fawn frowned, imagining the startling—shocking—effect it would have had, with her and Dag both so travel-weary, to come back and find everything gone. Dag looked as though he was imagining this, too.

“Uncle Cattagus puffing in outrage was likely more effective,” Sarri allowed. “He turns this alarming purple color, and chokes, and you think he’s going to collapse onto your feet. The girls were impressed, anyway, and left off.”

“Ran, Cattagus tells it,” said Utau, brightening.

“When Razi and Utau came back they put your tent up again, and then went down and had some words with the folks in Stores. They claimed it was all a misunderstanding.”

Utau snorted. “In a pig’s eye it was. It was some crony of Cumbia’s down there, with a notion for petty aggravation. Anyway, I spoke to Fairbolt, who spoke with Massape, who spoke with someone, and it didn’t happen again.” He nodded firmly.

Dag rubbed the back of his neck, looking pinch-browed and abstracted. If he’d had more energy, Fawn thought he might have been as angry as Utau, but just now it merely came out saddened. “I see,” was all he said. “Thank you.” He nodded up to Sarri as well.

“Fawn, not to tell you your job, but I think you need to get your husband horizontal,” said Sarri.

“I’m for it,” said Fawn. Together, she and Utau pulled Dag upright and aimed him into the tent.

Utau, releasing Dag’s arm from over his shoulder as he sank down onto his bedroll, grunted, “Dag, I swear you’re worse off than when I left you in Raintree. That groundlock do this to you? Your leg hasn’t turned bad, has it? From what Hoharie said, I’d thought she’d patched you up better ’n this before she left you.”

“He was better,” said Fawn, “but then we went and visited Greenspring on the way home. It was all really deep-blighted. I think it gave him a relapse of some sort.” Except she wasn’t so sure it was the blight that had drained him of the ease he’d gained after their triumph over the groundlock. She remembered the look on his face, or rather the absence of any look on his face, when they’d ridden out of the townsmen’s burying field past the line of small uncorrupted corpses. He’d counted them.

“That was a fool thing to do for a ground-ripped man, to go and expose yourself to more blight,” Utau scolded. “You should know better, Dag.”

“Yeah,” sighed Dag, dutifully lying flat. “Well, we’re all home now.”

Sarri and Utau took themselves out with an offer of dinner later, which Fawn gratefully accepted. She fussed briefly over Dag, kissed him on the forehead, and left him not so much dozing as glazed while she went to deal with unpacking their gear. She glanced up at the lately contested awning of little Tent Bluefield as she began sorting.

Home again.

Was it?

Fawn brought Dag breakfast in bed the next morning. So it was only plunkin, tea, and concern; the concern, at least, he thought delicious. Though he had no appetite, he let her coax him into eating, and then bustle about getting him propped up comfortably with a nice view out the tent flap at the lakeshore. As the sun climbed he could watch her down on the dock scrubbing their clothes. From time to time she waved up at him, and he waved back. In due course, she shouldered the wet load and climbed up out of sight somewhere, likely to hang it all out to dry.

He was still staring out in benign lassitude when a brisk hand slapped the tent side, and Hoharie ducked in. “There you are. Saun told me you’d made it back,” she greeted him.

“Ah, Hoharie. Yeah, yesterday afternoon.”

“I also heard you weren’t doing so well.”

“I’ve been worse.”

Hoharie was back in her summer shift, out of riding gear; indeed, she’d made a questionable-looking patroller. She settled down on her knees and folded her legs under herself, looking Dag over critically.

“How’s the leg, after all that abuse?”

“Still healing. Slowly. No sign of infection.”

“That’s a blessing in a deep puncture, although after all that ground reinforcement I wouldn’t expect infection. And the arm?”

He shifted it. “Still very weak.” He hadn’t even bothered with his arm harness yet this morning, though Fawn had cajoled him into clean trousers and shirt. “No worse.”

“Should be better by now. Come on, open up.”

Dag sighed and eased open his ground. It no longer gave him sensations akin to pain to do so; the discomfort was more subtle now, diffuse and lingering.

Horarie frowned. “What did you do with all that ground reinforcement you took on last week over in Raintree? It’s barely there.”

“It helped. But we crossed some more blight on the way back.”

“Not smart.” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s your groundsense range right now?”

“Good question. I haven’t…” He spread his senses. He hardly needed groundsense to detect Mari’s noisy grandchildren, shouting all over the campsite. The half-closed adults were subtler smudges. Fawn was a bright spark in the walnut grove, a hundred paces off. Beyond that…nothing. “Very limited.” Shockingly so. “Haven’t been this weak since I lost my real hand.”