Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [138]
Her face turned up, white and wild. “What about?”
“Everything.”
Skink lunged for the rail.
He was caught by Remo and by Chicory, who had come out partway through the uproar to lean against the cabin wall and listen in baffled fascination. Chicory was quick enough to help catch Skink before he went over into the water, a hunter’s reflexes, but his face twisted up in doubt once the struggling man was held between them. “What are we doing here, Lakewalker?” he called up to Dag.
“I’m not sure, but that fellow is beguiled to the gills. I don’t know who did it, or when, or why.” Had it been on purpose?
“Oh, that’s no good,” said Hod. “Can you fix him, Dag?”
What would happen if he unbeguiled the unsavory Skink? It was gut-wrenching to imagine having to take in that repulsive ground-release, but beguilement was a hurt in its own way. If Dag would not leave a man bleeding or lying with a broken bone, could he turn away from this? “Why are you trying to run off, Skink? I won’t hurt you.”
Skink glared around madly. “Crane won’t like this!” he told Alder.
The fear from both their grounds pulsed like a stench, but Alder at least held his stance as Dag eased down from the roof and approached Skink. On my head be it. He lifted his left arm, not that he needed to touch the man at this range, but aligning body and ground helped him concentrate. The act was growing easier with practice; Dag flinched as the backwash of Skink’s agitated ground poured into him, but he forced himself to accept it.
Dag wasn’t sure what response he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t Skink’s collapse into utter shock and violent weeping, a sudden shuddering heap on the deck. “No, no, no!” he wailed. “No, no, no…”
Chicory bit his lip in appalled fascination, tense with surmise.
Yes, Dag thought. The troop captain’s seen something like this before. And so have I.
“Skink, pull yourself together!” Alder snapped. He looked around at his gaping audience, now augmented by Barr and Bearbait. “Sorry, folks, sorry. It takes him like that when the drink wears off, sometimes. I better get him back to camp…”
Any one of Alder’s lies might have been plausible; the accumulation was surely not. What truth does he fear so desperately? This was Dag’s last chance to avoid finding out. Alas, there wasn’t much to choose between regret for a disaster from a mistake, or regret for a disaster from being perfectly correct. Strike at the weakest point; strike fast.
He strode forward, yanked up Skink’s head by the hair, and bought his attention with, if not a fence post between the ears, his harshest company-captain’s voice. “Look at me.” Skink stared up, his breath catching in mid-snivel. Dag demanded, “What are you really doing here?”
“Boat bandits!” babbled Skink. “We’re supposed to check the down-bound boats, and if they’re any good, bring ’em in to Crane and the boys for the plucking. Oh, gods!”
“What?” cried Berry. “Alder, what?” She wheeled to stare in horror not at Skink, but at her betrothed.
“The man’s in a drunken delirium!”
“The man,” said Chicory thoughtfully, “reminds me a whole bunch of those fellers we used to pick off the edge of the blight bogle’s camp.”
Dag just barely kept himself from saying, It’s related. Not a parallel he wished to draw attention to. He compromised on, “Maybe, but this is human mischief, it seems.” He yanked Skink’s hair again, refusing to let him retreat into breathless weeping. “How many bandits, where?”
“Thirty. Forty. And Crane, always him.”
“Where?”
“Cave, there’s this cave up around the Elbow. Thirteen river miles around the loop, but just three across the neck. Gives time to scout out the boats and prepare, see…”
He’s spouting good, now. Keep up the pressure. “Was there ever a malice in the cave?”
“What?”
“A blight bogle.”
Skink shook his head. “Ain’t no blight bogles around here. Just Crane, that’s bad enough. And them Drum brothers. Before the Drums