Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [60]
The keelers routinely wore knives at their belts, some of a size to rival Dag’s war knife, but not a few were also gripping stout sticks. Six of the keelers were holding up a door on their shoulders, hinges and all, and on it lay a shape bundled in blankets, whimpering. Their frowns ranged from tense to grim, their grins from wolfish to foolish. Fawn thought they seemed more excited than angry, but their numbers were disturbing. Stirred up by the noise, several men came out from the neighboring boats to lean on their side-rails and watch.
“Mark the boat carpenter says those high-and-mighty Lakewalker sorcerers refused to heal his wife. She’s in a fearsome bad way.” Boss Wain jerked a thick thumb over his shoulder at the huddled shape on the door. “So we ’uns from the Snapping Turtle took a show of hands and offered to make this one do it!”
A murmur of agreement and a surge forward rippled through the crowd, followed by a sharp cry as the door was jostled. The broad-shouldered keelers holding it up looked awkwardly at each other and steadied it with more care.
Fawn wondered if she should claim Dag wasn’t here, and if a violent search of the Fetch would follow, but before she could open her mouth, Dag ducked through the front hatch and straightened up to his full height—a good hand taller than the keeler boss, Fawn was happy to see.
“How de’,” he said, in his deep, calm, carrying voice. “What seems to be your trouble?”
The keeler’s head sunk between his shoulders, like a bull about to charge. “We got us a real sick woman, here.”
Dag’s glance flicked toward the shore. “I see that.”
With his groundsense, he doubtless saw a lot more than that, and had done so even before he’d stepped out into the torchlight. Fawn clutched that thought to herself. Did Dag know what he was doing? Maybe not. But he’d know a lot more about what everyone else was doing than they could guess.
“You healed that wagon-boy’s busted knee,” Wain went on. “He showed it around at the Bend tavern last night. A lot of us saw. We know you can help.”
Dag drew a long breath. “You know, I’m not a real medicine maker. I’m just a patroller.”
“Don’t you try and lie your way out of this!”
Dag’s head came up; the keeler stepped back half a pace at his glinting glare. “I don’t lie.” And added under his breath, “I won’t.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looked up, and sighed softly to Fawn, who had crept close under his left shoulder, “You see any horse-tails up there in the moonlight?”
The long, wispy clouds that heralded a change of weather. She followed his glance. A few faint bands like skim milk veiled the autumn stars to the west. “Yes…well, maybe.”
He smiled down at her in would-be reassurance. “Guess we’ll take our chances.” He turned his head, raised his voice, and called to the shore, “Bring her here onto the bow and set her down. No, there’s not room for the all of you! Just her husband and, um, she got any female relatives? Sister, oh good. You come up, ma’am.” The crowd rearranged itself as the keelers threw down a couple more boards to make a better gangplank, carried the door across, and grunted onto the deck.
“Whit, stay by me,” Dag whispered under the cover of this noise. “Fawn, you stick real tight.” She nodded. “That the husband?” Dag muttered on, as a pale young man with dark circles under his eyes came forward. “Crap, he’s hardly older than Whit.”
Despite the risk of dropping the woman into the mud, the move onto the boat served to thin the crowd considerably. It also shifted the visitors onto Berry’s territory, for whatever authority she might have in what was shaping up to be a dicey situation. Once they’d set the door down, Berry was able to shoo most of the keelers back to the bank for the plain reason that there was no room for them aboard. Boss Wain remained, his jaw jutting in resolve. Fawn supposed this expedition had been organized in the Pearl Bend tavern. A good deed combined with a chance