Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [144]
He glanced down at Fawn, glancing up at him, and knew they were both wondering if some of those scattered bones might have been the missing Sassy. Dag hoped not. He shook his head at Fawn, to say, no knowing, and she nodded and hunkered on her seat.
“Does anyone but me see something terribly wrong with those two sets of numbers?”
The return stares held discomfort, more than a twinge of sympathy, even pity, but no enlightenment. Dag sighed and plowed on. “All right, try this.
“Bonemarsh died—people slain, animals slaughtered, that beautiful country blighted for a generation—because we failed at Greenspring. If the malice had been recognized and stopped there, it would never have marched as far as Bonemarsh.
“It wasn’t lack of patrollers or patrolling that slew Greenspring. Raintree patrol is as stretched as anyone else’s, but there would have been enough, if only. It was a lack of…something else. Talking. Knowing. Friendships, even. A whole lot of simple things that could have been different, that one man or another might have changed, but didn’t.”
“Are you blamin’ the Raintree patrol?” burst out Mari, unable to contain herself any longer. “Because that isn’t the way I saw it. Seems the farmers were told not to settle there, but they didn’t listen.” Pakona made her hand-wave again, though not with any great conviction.
“I’m not blaming either side more than the other,” said Dag, “and I don’t know the answers. And I know I don’t know. And it’s stopped me, right cold.
“But you see—once upon a time, I didn’t know dirt about patrolling, either. And half of what I thought I did know was wrong. There’s a cure for ignorant young patrollers, though—we send ’em for a walk around the lake. Turns ’em into much smarter old patrollers, pretty reliably. Good system. It’s worked for generations.
“So I’m thinkin’—maybe it’s not enough anymore just to walk around the lake. Maybe we, or some of us, or one of us, needs to walk around the world.”
The circle had grown very quiet.
Dag took a last breath. “And maybe that fellow is me. Sometimes, when you don’t know how to start, you just have to start anyway, and find out movin’ what you’d never learn sittin’ still. I’m not going to argue and I’m not going to defend, because that’s like asking me to tell you the ending before I’ve begun. There may not even be an ending. So Fairbolt, you can cast that last vote any way you please. But tomorrow, my wife and I are going to be down that road and gone. That’s all.” He gave a short, sharp nod, and sat back down.
19
Fawn let out her breath as Dag settled again beside her. Her heart was pounding as though she’d been running. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked, looking around the circle of formidable Lakewalkers.
From the restive pack of patrollers to her right, she heard Utau mutter, “You all were asking me what it felt like to be ground-ripped? Now you know.”
To which Mari returned a low-voiced, “Shut up, Utau. You don’t have the stick.”
Razi said under his breath, “No, I think we’ve just been hit with it.” She motioned him, too, to shush.
Both Pakona and Fairbolt glanced aside, not friendly-like, and the patrollers subsided. Fairbolt sat back with his arms folded and glowered at his boots.
Dag murmured to Fawn, “Give this back to Pakona, will you, Spark? I won’t be needing it again.” He handed her the little length of wood they’d called the speaking stick.
She nodded, took it carefully, and trod across the circle to the scary old woman who looked even more like Cumbia’s sister than Cumbia’s sister Mari did. Maybe it was the closer age match. Or maybe they were near-related; these