Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [65]
Fawn wasn’t sure how seventy patrollers could seem at once so many and so few. But every one had been well kitted-up: good sturdy gear, fine weapons, good horses. Good wishes. And what she’d just seen was only a tenth of Fairbolt’s patrollers. It wasn’t hard to see where the wealth of this straitened island community was being spent.
As the tail of the company vanished around the bend, the onlookers broke up and began walking back to their tents. Almost at the last, an angular figure emerged from the cover of some straggling, sun-starved honeysuckle bushes across the road. Fawn, startled, recognized Cumbia at the same moment the Lakewalker woman saw her. She gave a nod and a polite knee-dip to her mother-in-law, wondering for a moment if this was a good chance to begin speaking with her again. It occurred to Fawn that this task might actually be easier without Dag and his nervy…well, prickliness seemed an inadequate word for it. Pigheadedness came closer. She mustered up a smile to follow, but Cumbia abruptly turned her head and began walking rapidly down the woodland road, back stiff.
It dawned on Fawn that the preparations for such dark morning departures had for long been Cumbia’s task. And Cumbia had once had a husband who hadn’t returned from patrol, or only in the form of a deathly bone blade. Was this the first time her son had ridden out without bidding her farewell? Fawn wasn’t sure if Cumbia had tried to show herself or hide herself, over there on the other side of the road, but she knew Dag hadn’t glanced that way. Dar, Fawn noted, had not come with his mother, and she wondered what it meant.
Face pinched, Fawn turned back onto the shore road. She held her hand over her marriage cord, trying for that reassuring tingle. Come on, girl, he’s not even over the bridge yet. But there, the little prickling answered her silent query nonetheless. Thataway. She took a deep breath and walked on.
In the inadequate light of their half dozen campfires flickering across this roadside clearing, Dag walked down the horse lines inspecting, but not with his eyes alone. Three horses lame. Not bad for three days of hard pushing. The company had traveled with several packhorses carrying food and precious grain. Patrol horses were normally grassfed, except now and then in farmer country where grain was easier to come by, but grazing took time and grain gave better strength. The loads of provender were rapidly dwindling; tomorrow morning, they could cache three emptied packsaddles and trade out animals, and leave no one slowing the rest by going double-mounted. Yet.
Dag had led his company miles north from Hickory Lake to pick up the straight road west, despite Saun’s pleas that he could guide them, once they’d passed the borders of Oleana into Raintree, on a shorter, swifter route. They were now, by Dag’s reckoning, a half day’s ride due north of Bonemarsh Camp. Not a direction from which relief—or, from the malice’s point of view, attack—might be expected. According to the shaken party of Lakewalker refugees, mostly women with children, that they had encountered and questioned late this afternoon, the malice had holed up at Bonemarsh. Temporarily. Dag had been waiting for such intelligence. Now he had it, it was time to commit his company to his plan. No excuses, no delays.
He sighed and began a roundabout stroll through the settling camp, touching this patroller or that on the shoulder. “Meet by my campfire in a few minutes.” Razi and Utau were both among them, and to Dag’s deeper regret, Mari and Dirla. Others from other patrols, all with skills known to him; not of bow or sword or spear, though all were proficient enough, but of groundsense control. A few were partnered, but most would be leaving their usual partners behind. They won’t like that. He wished that might prove the worst of their worries.
The night sky was misty, only a few stars showing through, and the ground was sodden. The company had ridden through miserable