Horizon

11

Fawn awoke tucked up under Dag’s left arm, so early in a misty dawn that the farmhouse was still silent. She was wearing one of his shirts for a nightdress; he was stripped for sleep as usual. She stretched her neck to put her ear to his heartbeat, then glanced up. He was awake, looking down at her.

“Slept out, finally? ” she asked.

“Yes, I feel much better now.” His hand traced over her neck, breast, belly, and rested there, spread-fingered. His expression grew curiously tender.

She gave him a sleepy smile. “What? ”

“You amaze me,” he whispered. “Every day, you amaze me.”

She cuddled in more firmly. I think I have the better part of that trade.

She wondered just how refreshed he found himself this morning, and considered lifting the quilt to check. They’d made do with much less privacy than this back on the Fetch, time to time, muffling early morning giggles in each other’s quick kisses.

But Dag’s face grew serious, and he sighed. Yet he made no move to rise. Talk, then? Or maybe talk first, then…

“Remember the night of the pig roast? ”

She kissed his collarbone. “Yes? ” she said encouragingly. She stifled worry. Was he finally going to cough up whatever had been putting him off his stride since then? About time.

“I was a little distracted. I was… gods, Dag, stop making excuses for yourself…” His mutter trailed off. He drew breath and began again. “Your fertile time was starting up, and I didn’t catch it. I… we… I made you… you’re pregnant.”

She froze in astonishment. His chest had stilled, not breathing. A wave of shock seemed to rise from her feet through her lungs to the top of her head, and for a moment she wasn’t sure if it was good or bad or just immense, because her whole world was turning inside out. With a squeal of wild joy, she lurched up and kissed him smack on the mouth. “Oh! Oh!”

His squeezed eyes flew wide; he kissed her back, hugged her hard, released her; only then did his chest collapse in a woosh of breath.

“Well! That’s a relief. Thought you’d be mad at me, Spark.”

“Is that why you blurted it out so blunt? ” She stared, confused and a trifle alarmed. “I admit, this might not’ve been my first pick of time ’n place, but you don’t expect babies to be convenient. Not if you have a lick of sense. Aren’t you happy? ”

His arms tightened around her. “Ecstatic. Confounded.” He hesitated.

“Taken by surprise.”

“But we’re married. We knew this was bound to happen sometime, that’s what marriage is for. Surprised today, sure, but not… not in general.” Her nose wrinkled. “I suppose it could be like patrolling for malices. They’re what you went out looking for, but it’s still a surprise to find one that day.”

His deep laugh rumbled in his chest, and she was reassured. “Not my first pick of comparisons, Spark!” The laugh faded. “Except for the part about being scared.”

“Scared? When you went out after them again and again? Brave, I’d say!”

He shook his head, his expression growing inward, as if looking into long memory. “No. That wasn’t courage, just a kind of numbness. It was like I’d lost all affinity with the world. Now, though… oh gods, I care so much I can’t hardly breathe.” He dotted kisses all across her face, quick, almost frantic pecks. “And I’m scared spitless.”

About to say, It’ll be fine, Dag!, she paused as the complexities of their present situation began to creep back to her mind. Instead she said, “Babies, once they’re started, come on in their time, not yours. You just have to scramble around as best you can.”

She reached up and set her finger to his lips, stopping whatever he’d been about to say, as her own memory gripped her. The boy who’d fathered her first lost child had feared only for his own threatened comfort.

He’d greeted the news of its bare existence with anger, rejection, threats of unforgivable slander.

This astonishing man in bed with her wanted to remake the whole world into a safe cradle for her second. Or leastways turn his heart inside out trying.

She’d a sneaking suspicion wisdom was to be found in some happy medium, but on the whole she preferred Dag’s approach. “You amaze me, too, Dag,” she whispered.

He rolled toward her, folded her in.

She nuzzled his chest hair, then thought of yet another advantage to possessing a Lakewalker spouse. “Hey! Is it a boy or a girl? ”

“Too early to tell even for groundsense. It’ll be another few weeks till anyone can be sure.” He drew her upward to kiss her again, then added, “A girl could carry on our tent name.” His attempt at a neutral tone failed to conceal his hopeful interest.

“But if she married a farmer, she’d take her husband’s name,” Fawn felt constrained to point out.

“Any boy who marries our girl will take her name and like it!”

She giggled madly. “You sound so fierce!”

He blushed. “I ’spose I am getting a bit ahead of myself, Spark.”

Truly.

Uncertainty began to nibble away at her first joyful surprise. Because her attempt to picture the birth of this child foundered on the first question, Where? Somewhere between the surety of this morning’s breakfast and the air dream of the child’s future wedding lay a whole lot of today’s-work. And a need, burning as inexorably as an hour-marked candle, to get things settled. Laying in winter supplies on the farm every fall had taught her how to plan ahead, how to make the future happen as it was supposed to. Well… it had shown her one way, she reckoned. It hadn’t taught her how to follow a long-legged Lakewalker husband over half a continent; that, she’d had to learn as she trotted along. And she was still learning. How do we do this? wasn’t to be simply answered, Just like Mama and Papa.

Dag’s hand left off caressing her belly and found a lower spot to admire. She eased her thighs apart to give him room, then hesitated. “I suppose it’s safe to…? Must be, stands to reason. Most folks wouldn’t even know at this point.”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I asked.”

“Who? ”

“Arkady.”

“Oh.” She digested this, as well as she could through the distraction of his sweet tickling. “Does he know that I’m…? Oh. Yeah. ’Course he could tell, if you could.” She blinked. “Wait a minute. Did everyone know but me? Barr and Remo, too? And…” Now she hit him, but it was too late to be convincing.

“Groundsense,” he sighed. “You just deal with it.” He licked down her neck. “You’re smiling.”

She suspected she was grinning like a chipmunk with its cheeks full, actually. “So much for my dignity.”

“Remember,” he breathed, “to take joy.”

She was put in mind of what he’d said when planning their wedding night; that it would stand out sharp and clear when a thousand other nights blurred. So far, he’d been proved right, though they weren’t even up to a thousand days, yet. She opened mind, heart, and body to him as he set about making sure that, along with all her other recollections of this remarkable morning, she would remember that she was beloved.

–-

After they washed up and dressed, Dag went in to give Sparrow another treatment. The boy seemed so much eased that Finch’s unmarried sister, a girl of fifteen, was left to sit with him. Midmorning found Fawn and Dag on their own in the farmhouse kitchen, the rest of the Bridger family having scattered to their relentless farm chores. Fawn rewarmed the pot of grits left out for them, not too stiffly congealed, and fried up ham and eggs to go-with. They were half done with this meal when Dag lifted and turned his head at nothing. It reminded Fawn of the way a cat stared at things no one else could see. Lakewalkers. No wonder they made regular folks uneasy.

“What? ” said Fawn.

“Just bumped grounds with Neeta, of all people. What’s she doing here? ”

“Looking for us? ” Fawn made to scramble up.

“Seemingly. Sit, Spark, she’s still riding in. Finish your breakfast. You need your food.” He gave her a fond smile.

She smiled back. Deep inside her head an excited voice was still crying Babybabybaby, yesnoyes eep! She wanted to jump up and run around madly preparing something, but truly, there was nothing much to do yet, especially here. Except to eat her breakfast. She swallowed the last bite of buttery grits, then followed Dag to the front porch.

Neeta was just cantering into the farmyard, mud splashing from the hooves of her sweating horse, which shook its head as she pulled up, and stood blowing through round, red nostrils. “Dag!” she cried. “Sir! You’re alive!”

Had there been doubt? Dag’s left arm tightened around Fawn’s waist, whether possessively or in warning she wasn’t sure.

“Am I in time? ” Neeta added breathlessly. She cast an odd look at Fawn, her blond brows tightening as if in confusion or dismay or… disappointment?

In a rather deliberate drawl, Dag said, “In time for what, Neeta? I expect we could still rustle you up some breakfast.”

She made an impatient swipe of her hand at the levity. “Captain Bullrush can’t be more than an hour behind me, and he’s hopping mad. You have time to get away if you hurry.”

“Away where, and why? I can’t believe Antan Bullrush has mayhem on his mind, on such a fine spring morning.”

“No, no, of course not, but you can still get back to camp. Slip past him. No one need ever know you were here. Oh gods, I should have brought another horse. I can lend you mine if you like, and I can walk home.” She dismounted and climbed the wooden steps as if to present her reins to Dag at once.

Dag stuffed his hand into his pocket. “I should’ve thought folks knew we were out. Didn’t Arkady get my note? ”

“Yes, Barr and Remo said. Except they didn’t tell us till the next night, when the rumors were already all over the place.”

An uneasy sigh trickled through Dag’s lips. “So, ah… you want to begin at the beginning, Neeta? ” He let a tinge of patrol-captain sternness seep into his tone-deliberately?

Perhaps, for Neeta straightened her shoulders. “Yes, sir. Well. I guess old Arkady wasn’t best pleased when he found you’d gone off- was there a sick farmer? ”

“Lockjaw,” said Dag shortly.

Neeta’s mouth made an Oh; she looked briefly daunted, but forged on. “I don’t know what was going through Arkady’s mind, but the next morning when you two didn’t come to the medicine tent, he told Challa he’d given you a day of rest. Except that Nola and Cerie piped up that they’d seen Fawn go off into the woods the day before with some cute farmer boy, and she never came back. Well, Cerie said she wasn’t sure it was like that, but Nola thought it was. And Arkady just snorted.”

“Wasn’t like what? ” said Fawn, taken aback.

“That you had eloped with that farmer boy, and Dag had gone chasing after you both.” Neeta’s lips thinned with as much disapproval as if she had discovered it to be true.

Fawn gasped in outrage at the slander. “I never-!”

Dag squeezed her to silence and removed his hand from his pocket, but only to rub it over his face. “Go on.”

“Any gossip that’s all over the medicine tent spreads all over the camp pretty shortly. That night Barr and Remo told me and Tavia about your note, but they made us swear to keep our mouths shut, which I for one was just as happy to do. I still thought it could have been a false trail, if you’d gone off with blood in your eye. I don’t know how the whole garbled mess came to Captain Bullrush’s ear, but next morning he stormed down to the medicine tent to find out what was really going on. He said he wasn’t going to be having some blighted murder ballad play out in his patrol district.

“He was even more livid when he found out the truth, and that Arkady hadn’t warned him. I heard they had the most ferocious argument. They agreed to give you till last night to show up and explain yourself, and then the captain was going to go looking for the answers. Which he is doing this morning. Oh, sir!” Neeta raised a distressed hand toward Dag. “Arkady and I had almost talked the camp into offering you tent rights! I thought you fought so hard for your training-don’t you care about it anymore? ”

“More than I can rightly say.”

“Then there has to be some way to salvage this. Can’t you have these farmers swear you were never here? ”

Dag wanted, Fawn could see, to slap Neeta with a flat No, and leave it at that. But the habits of too many years spent shaping young patrollers cut in before he could gratify himself. “Useless, Neeta. Antan would have the truth out in no time. I won’t lie. But I’d be glad to grovel, if you think it would help.”

“Oh!” Neeta nearly stamped her foot, Fawn thought; she did clench her fists. “Can’t you please come away? ”

“Not yet. One more day of nerve treatments will slice better ’n a week off Sparrow’s recovery, I figure. Have you ever seen lockjaw, Neeta? ”

She shook her head, lips tight. “No. But I hear it’s gruesome.”

“You heard right.” Dag straightened and stretched, as if girding himself.

“Leave your captain to me, Neeta. It’s come on sooner than I would have liked, but these questions were bound to get laid on the table sometime. Best to have it out and done.”

“Sir, you… you blighted fool, sir!”

“The Bridgers will let you use their barn. Go take care of your horse, patroller.” Dag sighed. “You’ve used him hard this morning.”

“To no good purpose, it looks like,” muttered Neeta savagely. She stalked off the porch and led her blown mount away around the house.

“I could wish Arkady hadn’t taken it into his head to cover for me,” murmured Dag. “I wasn’t expecting that. Did he lie outright? Ah, gods. This is going to be Hickory Lake all over again. I’m so sorry, Spark.”

“I don’t think it’s the same,” said Fawn sturdily.

“Sure puts me in mind. Blight. If only I’d had more time to earn my place, time to persuade. I thought the scheme of a medicine tent in the farmer’s market was first-rate, or could be made to be, with unbeguilement. Get it set up and running in two years or three, leave it behind as a seed when we did go north again.”

“Planting ideas? ” Fawn tested the notion in her mind. “Only works if you’re going to stay and water and weed them. And pick off the caterpillars.”

“Huh.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “It’s never simple, is it, Spark? ”

–-

Captain Bullrush bumped Dag’s groundsense within the hour. Dag went out to wait on the top porch step, leaning against the post. Fawn sat at his feet, her face propped in her little fists. Neeta lounged on the steps opposite Fawn, one booted leg outstretched, scowling. The adult Bridgers filtered out onto the porch, too, Papa Bridger and Lark flanking the front door with their arms crossed, Mama Bridger in her rocker failing to knit, Cherry and Finch anxious on the bench beside her.

“I expect Captain Bullrush will be wanting a word or two with me. I’d take it kindly if you folks won’t interrupt his say,” Dag cautioned the Bridgers.

“Fawn’s and my place back at New Moon Camp is at stake, here.”

Finch ducked his head at Fawn, his source of many lessons on Lakewalkers over the past four days-though not that one-and said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know!”

Dag gave him a dry smile over his shoulder. “If you had, would you have done any different? ”

Finch glanced up toward the corner bedroom, where his nephew lay peacefully sleeping. “I guess not. Not really.”

“Me neither.”

The little Lakewalker patrol trotted slowly up the lane. The camp captain naturally didn’t ride alone; he’d chosen his age mate Tapp to be his partner for this inquiry. Witness, too, probably. Not surprisingly, Barr and Remo trailed after. They looked relieved to see Dag and Fawn, more confused to see Neeta. The four drew up their mounts in the muddy yard in front of the porch.

From his place in his saddle, Antan Bullrush was almost eye to eye with Dag. He did not dismount, but did ease his reins and lean on his saddlebow. His bent back revealed as much of his state of mind as his mostly closed ground: weary exasperation tempered by confusion and caution. If he’d been younger and less tired, he’d likely have been more angry. Dag understood that one, bone-deep.

His eye fell on Neeta in a way that made the girl flinch. “And what are you doing here, patroller? ” he growled.

She raised her chin. “I’m off duty, sir. I’m free to go where I like.”

“Is that so? ”

She had the prudence to make no reply. Thankfully. Antan turned his gaze to Dag, and went on, “I see your intelligencer has run ahead of us. So which of the tales was true, northerner? Was this an elopement, or an errand of mercy? ”

“It was a five-year-old boy with lockjaw. Sir.” Dag touched his fingers to his temple in a habitual salute that had very little actual salute in it.

To his credit, the captain’s face set in what might have been a sympathetic wince. A flicker of his groundsense extended; he glanced after it toward that corner room, then nodded. “I see. It’s as well to have the facts straight, I suppose.” Even if they weren’t the facts he might have preferred?

“Told him it couldn’t be an elopement,” Remo muttered.

“Might have been an abduction, though,” Barr said judiciously, or mock judiciously-with Barr, it was hard to tell. “I might have believed that.”

A sharp downward jerk of Antan’s fist demanded silence from the pair.

Papa Bridger stepped sternly forward. “Without this lanky fellow and his little wife, I believe we’d be burying my grandson today.”

Dag turned his left arm in what would be a palm-down calming gesture, if he’d had a palm on that side. The faint threat from his hook and reminder of his sacrifice were just a bonus for Antan, he figured.

Antan took in the array of Bridger eyes upon him and said to Dag, a trifle through his teeth, “We would do better without the audience, here.”

“They’re on their own porch,” observed Dag. “You’re in their yard.”

Antan looked sulky, but couldn’t very well deny this.

“What I think,” said Fawn abruptly, standing up, “is that it’s time to get everyone here introduced to each other, so’s they’ll have no excuse for talking over each other’s heads.” And she proceeded to spend the next several minutes doing so. Antan’s attempt to glower continuously at Dag kept getting interrupted by having to acknowledge names and little life stories. By the time Fawn had worked through everything including Tapp’s recent gut problems, it was plain that Antan’s plan to keep this on his own familiar terms-a stern patrol dressing-down- was slipping through his fingers.

Antan stared at the farmers, rubbed his face, grasped at straws.

“How many folks know about this excursion of yours by now, Dag? Just the ones here, or more-neighbors, kinfolk? ”

Fawn answered. “Neighbors, married sisters, in-laws-all sorts of folks have stopped by to help in the past few days. It’s how farmers do things, you know, sir.”

“Uh huh. So any notion that this could be kept a secret is hash? ”

“Afraid so, sir,” said Dag, understanding his drift, and its hopelessness.

“As I tried to explain to Neeta. But I believe she was only thinking about half of the picture.”

Neeta glanced over her shoulder at all the Bridgers and blinked uneasily.

Antan gave Neeta an I’ll-deal-with-you-later look. He said to Dag, “Did Arkady make it clear to you that this sort of thing was forbidden?”

“He made it clear he thought it inadvisable, and explained why.” Dag hesitated. “It was clearer to me that I couldn’t turn away from a youngster dying in that much agony and still be a fellow I wanted to shave every morning.”

Antan was plainly moved by this last-but not far enough. “If we have a repeat of what happened over at Hatchet Slough, my patrollers will bear the brunt of it.” He glanced at Tapp, at Neeta. Seeing broken heads? Or worse?

Dag was moved, too-but not far enough. “A good idea badly carried out is not the same as a bad idea. With unbeguilement, I believe Arkady’s old notion of setting up a medicine tent in the farmers market would be an orderly way to try a new thing, without riots at your gates. It wouldn’t have to be Hatchet Slough again.”

Antan rocked back in his saddle. “Is that the bee you have in your brain? ”

Dag nodded. Oh gods, was this the time, place, and man for this argument?

Never mind, keep going. “Because someday, when all the malices are gone-when that long evil doesn’t mold us anymore-who will we Lakewalkers be? I’ve seen a boatload of possibilities, this patrol. It’s not too soon to start trying new things, especially here. In a lot of ways, the south is a vision of the future of the north.”

Antan had gone rigid, like a man fighting inside his own mind as well as outside. “Listen to me, northerner-it’s my calling to hold New Moon Cutoff. To defend it, lest our traditions and our blood be destroyed by inches.”

Dag snorted. “Our traditions? Really? Where did you exchange when you were a young patroller, Antan?

“South Seagate,” the camp captain replied uneasily.

“Pretty far south for north, that is. So when did New Moon hold its last ten-year rededication? I know what a traditional camp looks like, and it’s nothing like New Moon. If you were traditional, you’d put a torch to every house in it. Because traditional Lakewalkers don’t defend. We run.

New Moon has gone as sessile as its farmer neighbors. And you’re only clenching your hands so tight because you have so little left in them.”

Antan looked down at his reins, and, with an effort, undid his white-knuckled fingers from around them. He frowned across at Fawn.

“I’d think you’d be newly interested in defending what’s in front of you, Dag.”

Dag shrugged. “I’d be very happy to return to New Moon and continue my training.” He spared a glance at glowing Fawn, regarding him in unshaken trust. Absent gods, would I be happy for that.

“And would you swear not to do anything in secret like this”-a wave around at the Bridger farm-“again? ”

Silence. Then, “Can I have a medicine booth, so I wouldn’t have to be secret? ”

Longer silence.

“That’s groveling?” Neeta muttered through her teeth.

Fawn had hunkered next to her on the step; Dag heard her whisper in return, “Dag-style, yep. Watch ’n listen.”

Dag went on more urgently, “The future is happening right here, every day. You can swim or you can drown, but you can’t choose not to be in the flood. I suppose the real insight is that it’s always been that way.” He took a breath. “I think we should start learning to swim.”

Antan snapped, “Men like Tapp and me have youngsters to defend, too. Everyone’s youngsters, not just our own.”

Dag gave a conceding nod, but swept his hand around in a loop that took in not only Fawn, but Neeta and the Oleana boys, Finch, and Sparrow and his sister upstairs. “If you really mean everyone’s youngsters, Lakewalker and farmer alike, then I’m with you. Because they may be our charges now, but they will be our judges when the waters fall.”

“Blight,” said Antan slowly. “And here I thought you were just dangerous because you were a softhearted fool. You’re a real renegade, aren’t you? Ten times more than that poor bandit fellow you knifed up on the Grace.”

“Well, sir.” And what kind of an answer was that? Not a denial.

“Gods, you make me dizzy. I sit here listening to you any longer, I’m like to fall off my blighted horse. Listen, northerner. We didn’t have a problem till you walked in. No question that the fastest way to rid ourselves of it is for you to walk out again. I don’t have time for this.”

Fawn looked off into the air, but her voice grew distinctly edged.

“My mama used to say to me, What, you don’t have time to do it right, but you do have time to do it over? ”

Antan broke from her cool stare and returned to scowling at Dag.

“You’re not my patroller, Dag Bluefield. Absent gods, you’re not even anyone’s tent-kin here. If you’re so set on dealing with farmers, you can take it up anywhere you like-except within the bounds of my camp.

And whatever mess you’ve started here can chase after you, and not end up at our gates.”

“My training-” Dag began.

“You should have thought of that earlier.”

“I did.”

“Then you made your choice. So there’s no blighted point in me sitting here arguing with you, is there? Just don’t come back to New Moon. We won’t let you in again.”

He wheeled his horse away. Then his eye fell on Barr and Remo, sitting stricken on their mounts. “Ah.” He reined in. “You two. Are you coming with me, or staying with him? ”

Remo’s lips parted in surprise; he looked at Neeta and back to Antan. “Could we stay at New Moon, sir? ”

“You can apply. Your patrol leader told me that you were exceptionally disciplined patrollers.”

“Oh, not me, sir!” Barr said, in a sweetly cheery tone. “I’ve been hanging around with renegades way too long. My ground is totally corrupted, y’see. You wouldn’t want me in your patrols. Something untidy might rub off on them. Wits, maybe.”

Antan’s teeth clenched in something not much like a smile. “Right. Then you can bring Dag back his horses and gear.” His gaze swung to Remo, scythe-like. “And you? ”

Remo looked in anguish at Barr, Neeta, Dag. “I-can I have a little time to think about it, sir? ”

“You can have till your partner leaves.” Antan’s arm veered to Neeta. “You, go get your horse and catch up.” He jerked his chin at Tapp.

“Enough of this fool’s errand. Back to camp.”

As the patrollers turned away, Barr edged his horse up to the porch.

“I guess I’ll be back tomorrow with Copperhead and all. Any messages?”

“Tell Arkady…” No. Dag could hardly tell Arkady he was sorry for going out, because he still wasn’t. Only for not coming back. “Tell Arkady I’m sorry for how things worked out. But will you keep arguing for me back there as long as you can? Because Antan Bullrush isn’t the only authority at New Moon. And your mouth has nothing more to lose you at this point.”

Barr grinned like a possum and reined after the others.