Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [127]
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,