Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [126]
Disconcerted, the townsman dropped his eyes before her hot frown, then looked after her with an unsettled expression on his face.
As they left the blighted town and struck east up a wagon road alongside the river, Mari asked dryly, “Satisfied with your look-see, Dag?”
He grunted in response.
Her voice softened. “You can’t fix everything in the whole wide green world by yourself, you know.”
“Evidently not.” And, after a moment, more quietly, “Maybe no one can.”
Fawn eyed him with worry as he slumped in his saddle, but he did not suggest stopping. He wanted a lot more miles between him and what lay behind him. Greenspring. Should it be renamed Deadspring on the charts, now? Mari had been right; he’d had no need for a new crop of nightmares, let alone to have gone looking for them. He was justly served. Even Fawn had grown quiet. No answers, no questions, just silence.
He rode in it as they turned north across the river, looking for the road home.
17
Some six days after striking the north road, the little patrol clopped across the increasingly familiar wooden span to Two Bridge Island. Fawn turned in her saddle, watching Dag. His head came up, but unlike everyone else, he didn’t break into whoops, and his lopsided smile at their cheers somehow just made him look wearier than ever. Mari had decreed easy stages on the ride home to spare their mounts, though everyone knew it had been to spare Dag. That Mari fretted for him troubled Fawn almost more than this strange un-Dag-like fatigue that gripped him so hard. The last day or two the easy part had silently dropped out, as the patrol pressed on more like horses headed for the barn than the horses themselves.
They paused at the split in the island road, and Mari gave a farewell wave to Saun, Griff, and Varleen. She jerked her head at Dag. “I’ll be taking this one straight home, I think.”
“Right,” said Saun. “Need a helper?”
“Razi and Utau should be there. And Cattagus.” Her austere face softened in an inward look, then she added, “Yep.” Fawn wondered if she’d just bumped grounds with her husband to alert him to her homecoming.
Dag roused himself. “I should see Fairbolt, first.”
“Fairbolt’s heard all about it by now from Hoharie and the rest,” said Mari sternly. “I should see Cattagus.”
Saun glanced at his two impatient comrades, both with families waiting, and said, “I’ll stop in and see Fairbolt on my way down island. Let him know we’re back and all.”
Dag squinted. “That’d do, I guess.”
“Consider it done. Go rest, Dag. You look awful.”
“Thankee’, Saun,” said Dag, the slight dryness in his voice suggesting it was for the latter and not the former statement, though it covered both. Saun grinned back, and the younger patrollers departed at a trot that became a lope before the first curve.
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