Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [41]
As the shadows deepened, the tree frogs in the woods piped a raucous descant to the deep croaking of bullfrogs hidden in the rushes. At last it was time to wave good night across the campsite at the others turning in, and drop the tent flap. By the light of a good beeswax candle, a gift from Sarri, they undressed and lay down in their bedroll. A few hours in Fawn’s company had soothed Dag’s strained nerves, but he must still have looked tense and absent, for she ran her hand along his face, and said, “You look tired. Do you…want to…?”
“I could grow less tired.” He kissed her curls away from her face and let his ground ease open a trifle. “Hm.”
“Hm?”
“Your ground is very pretty tonight. Glittery. I think your days of fertility are starting up.”
“Oh!” She sat up on one elbow. “Am I getting better, then?”
“Yes, but…” He sat half-up as well. “From what Mari said, you should be healing up inside at about the same rate as outside. Ground and flesh are still deep-damaged, and will recover slowly. From these”—he touched his lips to the carmine dimples in her neck—“my guess is your womb’s not ready to risk a child yet, nor will be for some months.”
“No. Nor is the rest of me, really.” She rolled back and stared up at their hide roof. “I never thought to have a baby in a tent, though I suppose Lakewalker ladies do. We’re not prepared for winter or anything, really. Not enough”—her hands waved uncertainly—“things.”
“We travel lighter than farmers.”
“I saw the inside of Sarri’s cabin. Tent. She doesn’t travel all that light. Not with children.”
“Well, that’s so. When all of Dar and Omba’s children were home, shifting camp in season was a major undertaking. I usually tried to be out on patrol,” he admitted ruefully.
Fawn sighed in uncertainty, and continued, “It’s past midsummer. Time to be making and saving. Getting ready for the cold and the dark.”
“Believe me, there is a steady stream of plunkins on their way to winter stores in Bearsford even as we speak. I used to ride that route as a horse boy in the summers, before I was old enough to go for patroller. Though in this season, it’s easier to move the folks to the food than the food to the folks.”
“Only plunkin?”
“The fruit and nuts will be coming on soon. A lot of the pigs we eat here. One per tent per season, so with four tents on this site, that makes four pig-roasts. Fish. Turkey, of course, and the hunters bring in venison from the woods on the mainland. I used to do that as a boy, too, and sometimes I go out with them between patrols. I’ll show you how Stores works tomorrow.”
She glanced up at him, catching her lower lip with her white teeth. “Dag—what’s our plan, here?” One small hand reached out to trace over his splinted arm. “What happens to me when you go back out on patrol? Because Mari and Razi and Utau—everyone I know—will all be gone then, too.”
He hardly needed groundsense to feel the apprehension in her. “By then, I figure, you’ll be better acquainted with Sarri and Cattagus and Mari’s daughter and her family. Cattagus is Sarri’s uncle, by the way—he’s an Otter by birth, as if you couldn’t tell. My plan is to lie up quiet, get folks used to the idea of you. They will in time, I figure, like they grew used to Sarri’s having two husbands.”
And yet…normally, when patrollers went out, they could be sure their spouses would be looked after in their absences, first by their families, then by their patrol comrades, then by the whole community. It was a trust Dag had always taken for granted, as solid as rock under his feet. It was deeply disturbing to imagine that trust instead cracking like misjudged ice.
He went on in a casual voice, “I think I might skip the next patrol going out and take some