Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [162]
“Besides, some men were here before Crane ever arrived. And some drifted in on their own—the Drum brothers, for instance.”
Bearbait squinted at Dag. “Could you pick out which of them bandits over there was beguiled and which was lying?” He nodded toward the prisoners amongst the trees opposite.
Dag said carefully, “Do you think it should make a difference in their fates, when all of them are red to the elbows pretty much the same?”
“You’re surely not thinking of letting any of these murdering thieves go?” said Remo in a voice of indignation. “After all the trouble we went to catching them!”
Greenup grimaced. “At least one was begging to be hanged to end it.” Dag wasn’t sure what the grimace meant. Did the young boat boss prefer his bandits to be stoical? Granted, hangings were much less embarrassing that way.
Bearbait dug in the ground with the stick in his hand, then looked across at Dag. “See, the way it was, I saw folks the malice had mind-slaved up in Raintree. When the spell was broken—or outrun, anyways—they would come back to themselves. Their true selves.”
“With their memories intact,” Dag murmured.
“That was a mixed blessing, true,” sighed Bearbait.
Dag picked through his next words very carefully. “What Crane did was very different from a malice’s compulsion.” Was it? “In power, if nothing else. It’s like comparing a pebble to a landslide.”
Boss Fallowfield scratched his graying head. “Landslides’re made of pebbles. So—are you actually saying it is the same?”
Dag shrugged. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever been caught in a landslide.” He must not be drawn into being made judge of these men, selecting some to live and some to die. But if he was the only one with knowledge enough to make the judgment…“Look.” He leaned forward on his hook, gestured with his hand. “All here are either survivors of the game, or helped run it. They all had another choice once—and there are a lot of bodies up in that ravine or down in the river bottom to prove it was possible for some men to choose otherwise. I don’t think any here were so beguiled that they couldn’t have escaped, or at least tried. In fact, that’s why Crane was away from the cave last night—because he was hunting down two fellows who’d chosen to walk away from the horrors. Grant you, they didn’t make it.”
Dag paused to contemplate the unpleasant ambiguity of that. Yet it would surely be a huge injustice to those who’d died resisting this evil to let these laggards go free. Most were ruined men by now, schooled in arcane cruelties; it would be madness to unleash them on the world. The rivermen had no way to hold them as prisoners. Such was his opinion. But it shouldn’t be my judgment.
“If you’re going to hang them all the same, it’s pointless for me—or Barr or Remo”—Dag hastily stopped up that possible gap—“to pick out one from another. And if you’re not—it means farmers aren’t judging farmers anymore. Lakewalkers are. You’d just have to take our word blind, because you’d have no way of checking it yourselves. I don’t think that’s such a good idea, in the long run. If you mean to let any here go, it should be for your own reasons, on your own evidence. Farmers to farmers, the Lakewalker renegade to us.” Dag thought it important to get in that word, renegade. So who’s No-camp now?
Slate said, “Will Crane hang with the rest, then?”
Remo, unfortunately sounding up on a high horse, said, “He’s chosen to die by our own rituals. Privately.”
Greenup stared distrustfully. “You Lakewalker fellers aren’t planning to spirit him away, are you?”
Barr rolled his eyes. “With a broken neck?”
“It could be some trick,” said Slate.
Dag said, unexpectedly even to himself: “It won’t be private. You’ll see it all, every step.”
“Dag!” cried Remo and Barr together. Remo’s appalled voice tumbled on, “Dag, you can’t!”
“I can and will.” Could he? Dag’s knife maker brother, Dar, worked in careful solitude, possibly for a reason beyond Dar’s general misanthropy.
“He should hang with the rest, to be fair,” said young Greenup.
“He’s chosen to die