Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [175]
She was more worried for Dag, as he wrapped himself around her and fell into exhausted slumber that night. They hadn’t made love since before the cave. If Fawn hadn’t watched Dag convalescing after Raintree, she might have feared it meant some dwindling of his affection, but she was clear this was only profound fatigue. Yet this time he hadn’t been physically injured, or blighted, or ground-ripped. He had put out ground reinforcements—and unimaginably more complex healing efforts—till he couldn’t stand up, though, and the tally of the strange ground he’d taken in, directly or as part of unbeguiling, was daunting. Skink, Chicory, Bo, Hawthorn, who knew how many boatmen; most of all, that big wedge of Crane.
Yet Fawn wasn’t sure but what Crane had done more damage with his poisonous tongue than his dubious ground. He’d sure tried, anyhow. Dag should have paralyzed that part of the renegade, too, she decided. Had Dag’s odd outburst at dinner been some belated response to Crane, or just general accumulation?
Dag’s ground had to be in the most awful mess just now, come to think. Like a house the day after some big shindig where all the neighbors and kinfolks came, and ate and danced and drank and fought till all hours and your least favorite cousin threw up on the floor. You couldn’t hardly expect to get any work done till you’d cleaned up the place again all tidy, and you couldn’t tackle that till the hangover passed off.
Upon reflection, Fawn was profoundly thankful that Dag showed no weakness for drink. Patrollers in their cups had to make the most morose drunks in the world.
She snorted and rolled over, cuddling in tight. Please be well, beloved gloomy man.
24
The next day the Fetch floated through yet more of the bleak, treeless, unpeopled country they’d been passing for the last hundred miles. Berry promised there would only be about another day of this, then the banks of the river would grow more interesting than these endless scrubby sand bars: strange new trees, still green in the dead of winter and bearded with moss, mysterious creeper–hung side channels, an abundance of birds. Fawn mainly wondered if they would see any of those scary swamp lizards of Dag’s, and if Bo’s tales about the snakes were true. By noon the air was warm enough to go up on the roof without a jacket or boat cloak, and Fawn joined Berry, Dag, and Whit to keep company and to soak up the pale but valiant sun. With no duty to watch ahead for hazards, she was the first to look behind them.
“Hey, is that a narrow boat comin’ downstream, or—or not? If it is, that’s the biggest narrow boat I ever did see.”
Dag swung around. A slim vessel some thirty-five feet long was rapidly overtaking them. Paddles flashed in the hazy winter light, ten to a side; the occupants kept up a song to unite the rhythm of their strokes. Distance muffled the words, but Dag seemed to smile in recognition.
Barr, whose own watch was coming up soon, came out and stared over the stern rail, a half-eaten apple in his hand. “Isn’t that a Luthlian boat?” he called up excitedly.
“Yep,” said Dag. “But those aren’t Luthlians paddling, exactly. Those are southern Lakewalkers, heading home from a couple of years of exchange patrol.”
“How can you tell?” asked Fawn. “Their clothes? Their ages?”
The big narrow boat was already shooting past them—a quarter-mile off but still in the channel, as the river was a mile wide at this point. Even at that distance Fawn could see the mix of strong, young men and women, laughing and leaning into their work.
“That, and the enthusiasm. Though if you were outrunning the Luthlian winter, you’d paddle hard, too. That’s twenty or thirty new patrol leaders over there, young veterans. See, there’re areas to the south that haven’t seen a malice emergence in two, three hundred years. But the rule is, you can’t be a patrol leader till you’ve been in on at least one malice kill, preferably more. For obvious reasons.”
Fawn, who had not only seen but made a malice kill, nodded perfect understanding. Barr,