Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [8]
“It’s not long, but it’s deep,” said Fawn. “The knife blade that did it went straight to the bone and shattered. The Lakewalker medicine maker had an awful time getting all the pieces fished back out. But that’s not what’s dragging him down so.” Taking her lead from Dag, Fawn decided to stick with a much-simplified version of the truth. “The Raintree malice halfway ground-ripped him in the fight, tore up his ground all down his left arm and side. It nearly killed him. It’s like he’s walking around recovering from his own personal blight.”
“Well, how long does that take?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not sure he’s sure. Most folks who get ground-ripped just die on the spot. But Dag says when the Glassforge malice put these marks on my neck”—she rubbed at the ugly red dimples, one on the right side, four on the left—“it injured both flesh and ground. If the bruises had been just from a man’s hand, they’d have cleared up two or three months back, with nothing to show. Ground damage is nasty stuff.” Her hand crept to rub her belly as well, but she halted it, burying it in her skirt instead. Dag wasn’t the only one to carry the worst damage hidden inside.
“Huh,” said Whit, squinting at her neck. “I guess so!”
“The weakness and pain in his body don’t bother him near as much as the harm the ripping did to his groundsense, though.”
“That seeing-double thing he talks about?”
“Yes. Usually he can sense things out for near a mile away, which I gather is pretty amazing even for a Lakewalker. He says it’s down to less ’n a hundred paces right now. The medicine maker said that’s how he’ll know when his ground is better, when he can sense out far again.”
Whit blinked. “So…can he still do his groundwork? Like that bowl?”
Whit had been impressed by the bowl. Rightfully, Fawn thought. “Not yet. Not real well.” She thought of some of Dag’s other marvelous ground-tricks, still not regained, and sighed. When Lakewalkers made love they did it body and ground, with an ingenuity farmers never dreamed of, but she wasn’t about to explain that part to Whit.
Whit shook his head, frowning again at the reapers. “He looks so wrong.”
Fawn shaded her eyes with the edge of her hand. “Why? I think he’s doing pretty good with that scythe.”
“There’s that hat, for one.”
“I wove him that hat! Same as yours.”
“Ah, that explains why he won’t be parted from it. What that man does for you…! But—” Whit gestured inarticulately. “Dag looks all right up on his evil horse. He looks right with that bow of his, anyone can see—you’d think it grew there on his arm, even without how his arrows fly just where he wants. I’ve never seen him draw that big knife of his, but I sure wouldn’t want to be on the other side when he does.”
“No. You wouldn’t,” Fawn agreed.
“But stick him with a scythe or a pitchfork or a bucket, he looks as out of place as—as if you’d hitched that leggy silver mare to a plow.” He jerked his head toward the pasture fence.
Swallow, the dappled gray mare Dag had sent to West Blue as his Lakewalker-style bride-gift, pricked her curving ears alertly. She looked as elegant as moonlight on water, and as swift as a rippling stream even when she was standing still. Beyond, her black colt Darkling, as if proudly aware of collecting his due-share of admiration, kicked up his heels and danced past, tail flicking.
Grace was standing hipshot and bored along the fence line, dark bay coat looking warm and shiny in the sun. Copperhead of the uncertain temper had been left in exile in the small paddock below the old barn, but the two young plow horses Whit was bringing along, and known therefore as Whit’s team, cropped grass placidly a few paces off. Warp and Weft were nice, sturdy, useful-looking beasts, but…you would never imagine them with wings.
“Swallow was supposed to be a gift to Mama.” Fawn sighed. “I don’t suppose Mama rides her.”
Whit snorted. “Not hardly! She’s too terrified. Me, I’ve only taken that mare a few turns around the pasture,