“No,” Dag concurred. “I mean to find some other road, wide enough for everyone. Someone has to survey it. Could be the new way won’t be mine to make, but mine to be given, out there. From someone smarter than me. If I keep my ground open, watch and listen hard enough.”
Fairbolt said meditatively, “Not much point for a man to learn new things if he doesn’t come back to teach ’em. Pass ’em on.”
Dag shook his head. “Change needs to happen. But it won’t happen today, here, with these people. Camp council proved that.”
Fairbolt held his hand out, palm down, in a judicious rocking gesture. “It wasn’t unanimous.”
“There’s a hope,” Dag conceded. “Even if it was mainly due to Dowie Grayheron having a spine of pure custard.” Fairbolt barked a laugh, shaking his head in reluctant agreement
Dag said, “This wasn’t my first plan. I’d have stayed here with Spark if they’d have let me. Be getting myself ready for the next patrol even now.”
“No, you’d still be on the sick list, I assure you,” said Fairbolt. He glanced down. “How’s the leg? You were favoring it, walking back, I noticed.”
“It’s coming along. It still twinges when I’m tired. I’m glad I’ll be riding Copperhead instead of walking, bless Omba’s wits. I’ll miss that woman.”
Fairbolt stared out the hooked-open window at the glimmer of the lake. “So…if you could have your first plan back—sorry, Fawn, not even what you call Lakewalker magic could make that happen now, but if—would you take it?”
It was a testing question, and a good one. Dag tilted his head in the silence, his eyelids lowering, rising; then said simply, “No.” As Fawn looked solemnly up at him, he gave her a squeeze around the shoulders. “Go on and chuck my peg in the fireplace. I’m done with it.”
Fairbolt gave him a short nod. “Well, if you ever change your mind—or if the world bucks you off again—you know where to find us. I’ll still be here.”
“You don’t ever give up, do you?”
Fairbolt chuckled. “Massape wouldn’t let me. Very dangerous woman, Massape. The day I met her, forty-one years gone, all my fine and fancy plans for my life fell into Hickory Lake and never came up again. Hang on to your dangerous woman too, Dag. They’re rare, and not easy to come by.”
Dag smiled. “I’ve noticed that.”
Fairbolt tossed the peg in his palm once more, then, abruptly, held it out to Fawn. “Here. I think this is yours, now. Don’t lose it.”
Fawn glanced up at them both, her eyebrows climbing in surprise, then smiled and folded the peg in her firm little grip. “You bet I won’t, sir.”
Dag made plans to leave in the gray light of dawn, in part to get a start on a day that promised to turn cool and rainy later, but mostly to avoid any more farewells, or worse, folks who still wanted to argue with him. He and Fawn had packed their saddlebags the night before, and Dag had given away what wouldn’t fit: his trunk to Sarri, his good ash spear to Razi, and his father’s sword to Utau, because he sure wasn’t passing it back to Dar. His winter gear in storage at Bearsford he supposed he must abandon with his camp credit. Tent Bluefield he left standing for Stores to struggle with, since they’d been so anxious for it.
Dag was surprised when Omba herself, and not one of her girls, appeared out of the mists hanging above the road leading Copperhead and Grace. She gave him a hug.
“Sneaking in a good-bye out of sight of the kin?” he inquired, hugging her back.
“Well, that, and, um…I have to offer an apology to Fawn.”
Fawn, taking Grace’s reins from her, said, “You never did me any harm that I know of, Omba. I’m glad to have met you.”
Omba cleared her throat. “Not harm, exactly. More of an…accident.” She was a bit flushed in the face, Dag was bemused to note, not at all like her usual dry briskness. “Fawn, I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid your horse is pregnant.”
“What?” cried Fawn. She looked at Grace, who looked back with a mild and unrepentant eye, and snuffled her soft muzzle into Fawn’s hand in search of treats. “Grace! You bad girl, what have you been up to?” She gave her reins a little shake, laughing and amazed.
“Omba,” said Dag, leaning against Copperhead’s shoulder and grinning despite himself, “who have you gone and let ravish my wife’s mare?”
Omba sighed hugely. “Rig Crow’s stallion Shadow got loose and swam over from Walnut about five nights ago. Had himself a fine old time before we caught up with him. You’re not the only mares’ owners I’m going to have to apologize to today, though you’re the first in line. I’m not looking forward to it.”
“Will they be angry?” asked Fawn. “Were they planning other mates? Was he not a good horse?”
“Oh, Shadow is a fine horse,” Dag assured her. “You would not believe how many furs Rig asks for, and gets, as a stud fee for that snorty horse of his. I know. I paid through the nose last year to have him cover Swallow, for Darkling.”
“And therefore,” said Omba, pulling on her black-and-white braid, “everyone will say they are very upset, and carry on as convincingly as possible. While Rig tries to collect. It could go to the camp council.”
“You’ll forgive me, I trust, for wishing them all a long, tedious dispute, burning many candles,” said Dag. “If Rig asks, my wife and I are just furious about it all.” He vented an evil laugh that made even Fawn raise an eyebrow at him.
“I wasn’t even going to mention Grace,” Omba assured him. “I’ll be having troubles enough over this.”
Utau and Razi came out to help them saddle up, followed by Sarri, and Mari and Cattagus together. Dag mostly exchanged sober nods, except with his aunt Mari, whom he embraced; Fawn hugged everybody.
“Think you’ll be back?” asked Utau gruffly. “For that Bearsford Council, maybe?”
“Not for that. For the rest, who can say? I’ve left home for good at least four times that I recall, as Mari can testify.”
“I remember a spectacular one, ’bout eight years back,” she allowed. “There was a lot of shouting. You managed to be gone for seventeen months.”
“Maybe I’ll get better at it with practice.”
“Could be,” she said. Then added, “But I sort of hope not.”
And then it was time to mount up. Razi gave Dag a leg up and sprang away, Copperhead put in his usual tricks and was duly chastised, and Utau boosted Fawn onto Grace. On the road, Dag and Fawn both turned and gave silent waves, as silently returned. As the blurring forms left behind parted to their different tents, the mist swallowed them all.
Dag and Fawn didn’t speak again till the horses had clopped over the long wooden span from the island. She watched him lean his hand on his cantle and stare over his shoulder.
She said quietly, “I didn’t mean, when I fell in love with you, to burn your life to the ground.”
He turned back, giving her a pensive smile. “I was dry, dry timber when you met me, Spark. It’ll be well.” He set his face ahead and didn’t look around again.
He added after a while, “Though I’m sorry I lost all my camp credit. I really thought, when I promised your folks I would care for you, to have in hand whatever you’d need for your comfort, come this winter and on for a lot of winters more. All the plunkins in the Bearsford cold cellars won’t do us much good now.”
“As I understand it, your goods aren’t lost, exactly. More like, held. Like my dowry.”
His brows rose. “There’s a way of looking at it I hadn’t thought of.”
“I don’t know how we’d manage traveling anyhow, with a string of, what did you say—eight horses?”
He considered this picture. “I was thinking more of converting it into Tripoint gold tridens or Silver Shoals silver mussels. Their monies are good all up and down the Grace and the Gray. But if all my camp credit for the past eighteen years were converted into horses—average horses, not Copperheads or Shadows…hm. Let me see.” He did some mental estimating, for the curiosity of it. “That would be about forty horses, roughly. Way too many for us to trail in a string, it’s true.”