Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [152]
The man’s dark eyes opened wide, astounded, as the knife dropped from his nerveless fingers. He crumpled like a blanket folding, and his head, unsupported, hit the deck with a weird double thump. He did not cry out; it was more of a questioning grunt.
Fawn, after a gasping hesitation, leaned over, snatched up the knife, and pelted inside. The big oarsman trod forward to the edge of the roof to see what was happening. He met Whit’s arrow, released from his grabbed-up bow, square on. One hand lifted to grasp the shaft half-buried in his broad gut, but as the boat shifted, he stumbled and fell over the side with a cry and a smacking splash.
Dag leaped for the gangplank, but not before he glimpsed Berry jump up from the stern to grab the short end of the steering oar, jump down again to swing on it like a tree branch, and bring the long end around in a mighty arc, smashing into Alder’s hip and sweeping him over the opposite side of the roof and into the cold creek water.
21
What Dag most wanted to do was question Crane: Fawn knew this because, putting her back on her feet after grabbing her up in a breath-stopping hug and mumbling a lot of broken words into her hair, it was the first thing he said that she could actually make out. But after one glance at Bo he reordered his plan, dispatching the panting Whit to organize the boatmen who’d been drawn by the ruckus to fish Alder and Big Drum out of the water and secure them, preferably on some boat other than the Fetch.
“What about Crane?” Whit demanded.
“Just leave him lay. He’s not going anywhere.”
Dag had the queerest look on his face as he said this, but before Fawn could figure it out, she was drafted as his hands, helping to straighten out the groaning Bo atop a blanket on a hastily cleared stretch of kitchen floor, peel away his shirt, and wash around the stab wound. Dag sat cross-legged, irritably cast off his arm harness, and fell into the healing trance that was becoming increasingly familiar to Fawn—and, she thought, to him. He was in it for a long time, while the shaken Berry, cut ropes still dangling from her wrists, tended to an even more shaken Hawthorn, who was bleeding from a broken nose and crying. Hod helped everyone as best he could.
Whit took a long time to report back. The arrow-riddled Big Drum had been easy to capture, as he’d waded to shore and put up no fight when he got there. Alder had tried to swim away. Some boatmen chased him down in a skiff and wrestled him out of the water, beating him into submission. He’d almost drowned, and Fawn, glancing at Berry’s stiff face, thought it was a pity he hadn’t. Dragging out his existence one more miserable day seemed a great waste of time, emotion, and hemp. Both men had been tied up on the Snapping Turtle, the shaft in Big Drum’s belly cut off but left in, lest botching its removal keep him from his hanging.
Fawn was wondering if she should shake Dag’s shoulder, or send someone to find Barr or Remo to do whatever it was Lakewalkers did to break unintended groundlocks, when he at last drew a long breath and sat up, animation returning to his face. He stared around blinking, found her, and cast her the ghost of a smile. Emerging from his task, he looked much less wild and distraught, as though the effort had recentered him somehow. Except that Fawn hadn’t seen him look so drained since Raintree.
Bo had been conscious throughout, but silent, watching Dag with a brow furrowed as much in wonder as in pain. “Well, Lakewalker,” he breathed at last, then muffled a cough.
“That healin’ o’ his is a thing, ain’t it?” commiserated the hunkering Hod.
“Don’t try to talk,” whispered Dag. His dry voice cracked, and he cleared it; Fawn hustled to retuck the blanket she’d put around his shoulders and to fetch him a drink. He raised the tin cup to his lips with a trembling hand, swallowed, and went on more easily. “I’ve ground-glued together the two slices through your stomach walls where the blade punched in and out, and likewise some of the bigger blood vessels in there. Crane’s knife