Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [57]
“That one sure ain’t gettin’ away,” Cattagus observed, with a nod at the remains of the plunkin. “Anybody I know?”
Dag, treading over to them, smiled a bit sheepishly. “Doesn’t matter now.” He sat down with a sigh, unlatched and set aside his short bow, then picked up one of the new arrows and examined it with a judicious eye. “Better and better, Spark.”
She decided this was deliberate diversion. “You know, you keep saying I shouldn’t come with you so’s folks’ll talk frank and free, but it seems to me you might get further with some if they were to talk a little less frank and free.”
“That’s a point,” he conceded. “Maybe tomorrow.”
But the next morning ended up being dedicated to some overdue weapons practice, with an eye to the fact that Mari’s patrol would be going out again soon. Saun turned up, invited by Razi and Utau, and Fawn grew conscious for the first time of how few visitors had come to the campsite. If she and Dag were indeed a wonder of the lake, she would have thought curiosity, if not friendliness, should have brought a steady stream of neighbors making excuses to get a peek at her. She wasn’t sure how to interpret their absence: politeness, or shunning? But Saun was as nice to her as ever.
The session began with archery, and Fawn, fascinated, made herself useful trotting into the walnut grove after misses, or tossing plunkin rinds up into the air for moving targets. Her arrows seemed to work as well as her mentor’s, she saw with satisfaction. Cattagus sat on a stump and appraised the archers’ skills as freely as his breathlessness would allow. Saun was inclined to be daunted by him, but Mari gave him back as good as she got; Dag just smiled. The five patrollers moved on to blade practice with wooden knives and swords. Mari was clever and fast, but outmatched in strength and endurance, not a surprise in a woman of seventy-five, and soon promoted herself to a seat beside Cattagus to shrewdly critique the others.
The action grew hotter then, with what seemed to Fawn a great many very dirty moves, not to mention uncertainty of whether she was watching sword fighting or wrestling. The clunk and clatter of the wooden blades was laced with cries of Ow!, Blight it!, or, to Saun’s occasional gratification, Good one! Dag pushed the others on far past breathlessness, on the gasped-out but convincing theory that the real thing didn’t come with rest breaks, so’s you’d better know how to move when you couldn’t hardly move at all.
The sweat-soaked and filthy combatants then took a swim in the lake, emerging smelling no worse than usual, and assembled in the clearing to munch plunkin and try, without success, to persuade Cattagus to uncork one of his last carefully hoarded jugs of elderberry wine from the prior fall. Dag, slouched against a stump and smiling at the banter, suddenly frowned and sat up, his head turning toward the road.
“What is it?” Fawn, sitting beside him, asked quietly.
“Fairbolt. Not happy about something.”
She lowered her voice further. “Think it’s our summons from the camp council, finally?” She had lived in increasing dread of the threat.
“Could be…no. I’m not sure.” Dag’s eyes narrowed.
By the time Fairbolt’s trotting horse swung into the clearing, all the patrollers had quieted and were sitting up watching him. He was riding bareback, and his face was as grim as Fawn had ever seen. She found her heart beating faster, even though she was sitting still.
Fairbolt pulled up his horse and gave them all a vague sort of salute. “Good, you’re all here. I’m looking for Saun, first.”
Saun, startled, stood up from his stump. “Me, sir?”
“Yep. Courier just rode in from Raintree.”
Saun’s home hinterland. Bad news from there? Saun’s face drained, and Fawn could imagine his thoughts suddenly racing down a roster of family and friends.