Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [10]
“So, patroller.”
Sorrel’s voice broke into Dag’s drift of thought, and he tilted his head forward, closed his mouth, and opened his eyes, hoping he hadn’t started to snore in his chair. As was their custom, the Bluefield clan had gathered in the parlor after dinner to share the working lights. Clover and Fletch had gone off to her folks this evening, but Tril sat in her usual place sewing; Nattie, though not needing the oil lamp, kept company plying her drop spindle; and Fawn and Whit had set up a table to make arrows, a skill Fawn had mastered this past summer.
Whit’s awful marksmanship had turned out not to be merely from his complete lack of training; his little hoard of arrows, picked up for free somewhere, was ill-made and ill-balanced. When Whit had asked plaintively if Dag couldn’t fix them the way a Lakewalker would, Dag had thought about it, nodded, and, to Whit’s temporary horror, broken them over his knee. He’d then donated Fawn and a dozen old flint points to their replacement, being wishful to conserve his best steel-tipped shafts for more urgent uses than target practice. Besides, it was good for Whit to suffer some instruction from his younger sister. He was still, in Dag’s view, too inclined to discount Fawn.
Now Dag raised his brows, tried to look awake, and answered Fawn’s papa—my tent-father?—“Sir?”
Sorrel was studying him. “I don’t believe I’ve said thank you for staying on through the harvest. You do more work with one hand than most men do with two.”
Fawn, squinting to wrap a carefully cut trio of feathers to a shaft with fine thread, dimpled in an I-told-you-so sort of way.
Sorrel continued, “I never thought much before about what Lakewalker patrollers do, but I suppose it is hard work, in its way. Harder than I rightly imagined, maybe, and not much comfort in it.”
Dag tilted his head in acknowledgment. Sorrel seemed clumsy but sincere, sorting through these new notions.
“But the thing is…I can’t help but wonder…have you ever worked for a living?”
Fawn sat up indignantly, but Dag waved her back down. “It’s not an insult, love. I know what he means. Because in a sense, the answer’s no. Out on patrol, we might hunt, cure skins, collect medicines, trade a little, keep the trails clear, but that’s all second place to hunting malice. Patrollers don’t make and save like farmers do. My camp kin did that part. At home, my bed was always made for me. Not that I ever spent long in it.”
Sorrel nodded. “But you don’t have your camp anymore.”
“…No.”
“So…how are you and Fawn planning to go on, then? Do you think to farm? Or something else?”
“I’m not sure,” said Dag slowly—honestly. “I figured I was too old to learn a whole new way of life, but I will say, these past weeks have given me more to chew on than Tril’s good cooking. I guess I never pictured having friendly folks to show me the trail.”
“A farmer Lakewalker?” murmured Tril, raising her brows. Whit made a face, though Dag was not sure why.
“By myself, no, but Fawn knows her part. Maybe together, it wouldn’t be so unlikely as it once seemed.” His other potential skill, medicine maker, was far too dangerous to attempt in farmer country, he’d been told. Repeatedly. In any case, his weakened ground made the notion futile, for now.
Sorrel said cautiously, “Would you be thinking to take up land here in West Blue?”
Dag glanced at Fawn, who gave him a slight, urgent headshake. No, she had no desire to settle a mere three miles up the road from her disastrous first love, and first hate. Dag wasn’t the only one of them who had been avoiding the village. “It’s too early to say.”
Tril looked up from her sewing, and said, “So what do you plan to do when a child comes along? They don’t keep to schedule, in my experience.