Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [8]
“Is that your farmer girl?” The guard stared at Fawn as though farmer girls were a novelty out of song, like dancing bears. “Mari Redwing thought you’d been gelded by a mob of furious farmers. Fairbolt’s fuming, your mama thinks you’re dead and blames Mari, and your brother’s complaining he can’t work in the din.”
“Ah,” said Dag in a hollow voice. “Mari’s patrol get back early, did it?” “Yesterday afternoon.”
“Lots of time for everyone to get home and gossip, I see.”
“You’re the talk of the lake. Again.” The guard squinted and urged his horse closer, which made Copperhead squeal in warning, or at least in ill manners. The man was trying to get a clear look at Fawn’s left wrist, she realized. “All day, people have been giving me urgent messages to pass on the instant I saw you. Fairbolt, Mari, your mama—despite the fact she insists you’re dead, mind—and your brother all want to see you first thing.” He grinned, delivering this impossible demand.
Dag came very close, Fawn thought, to just laying his head down on his horse’s mane and not moving. “Welcome home, Dag,” he muttered. But he straightened up instead and kicked Copperhead around head to tail beside Grace. He leaned over leftward to Fawn, and said, “Roll up my sleeve, Spark. Looks like it’s going to be a hot afternoon.
2
The bridge the young man guarded was crudely cut timber, long and low, wide enough for two horses to cross abreast. Fawn craned her neck eagerly as she and Dag passed over. The murky water beneath was obscured with lily pads and drifting pond weed; farther along, a few green-headed ducks paddled desultorily in and out of the cattails bordering the banks. “Is this a river or an arm of the lake?”
“A bit of both,” said Dag. “One of the tributary creeks comes in just up the way. But the water widens out around both curves. Welcome to Two Bridge Island.”
“Are there two bridges?”
“Really three, but the third goes to Mare Island. The other bridge to the mainland is on the western end, about two miles thataway. This is the narrowest separation.”
“Like a moat?”
“In summer, very like a moat. All of the island chain backing up behind could be defended right here, if it wanted defending. After the hard freeze, this is more like an ice causeway, but the most of us will be gone to winter camp at Bearsford by then. Which, while it does have a ford, is mostly lacking in bears. Camp’s set on some low hills, as much as we have hills in these parts. People who haven’t walked out of this hinterland think they’re hills.”
“Were you born here, or there?”
“Here. Very late in the season. We should have been gone to winter camp, but my arrival made delays. The first of my many offenses.” His smile at this was faint.
Flat land and thin woods gave little to view at first as the road wound inward, although around a curve Copperhead snorted and pretended to shy as a flock of a dozen or so wild turkeys crossed in front of them. The turkeys returned apparent disdain and wandered away into the undergrowth. Around the next curve Dag twitched his horse aside into the verge, and Fawn paused with him, as a caravan passed. A gray-headed man rode ahead; following him, on no lead, were a dozen horses loaded with heavy basket panniers piled high with dark, round, lumpy objects covered in turn with crude rope nets to keep the loads from tumbling out. A boy brought up the rear.
Fawn stared. “I don’t suppose that’s a load of severed heads going somewhere, but it sure looks like it at a distance. No wonder folks think you’re cannibals.”
Dag laughed, turning to look after the retreating string. “You know, you’re right! That, my love, is a load of plunkins, on their way to winter store. This is their season. In late summer, it is every Lakewalker’s duty to eat up his or her share of fresh plunkins. You are going to learn all about plunkins.”
From his tone Fawn wasn’t sure if that was a threat or a promise, but she liked the wry grin that went along-with. “I hope to learn all about everything.”
He gave her a warmly encouraging nod and led off once more. Fawn wondered when