Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

The big man was saying disgustedly, “This is just some girl’s clothes. Why didn’t you pinch those saddlebags, you fool?”

“That red brute of a horse tried to kick me, and people were looking,” the boy replied in a surly tone. “Wait, what’s that?”

The big man lifted the sharing knife sheath by its broken strap; the pouch swung, and his hand went toward the bone hilt.

“Your death, if you touch it,” Dag snarled, coming up on them. “I’ll see to that.”

The boy took one look at him, yelped, and sprang away, casting a panicked glance over his shoulder as he ran. The big man, his eyes widening, shoved to his feet, hand closing on a stout log from the pile. It was plain that they were far past the point of lame explanations and apologies, sir, about mistaken ownership, even if the burly thief had possessed the wits and nerve to try to escape that way. He came around already swinging.

Dag flung up his arm to protect his face from a blow that would have caved it in. As it was, the oak log connected with his forearm with a sickening thud, and he was bashed by his own arm-plus-log so hard as to be knocked half off his feet. Hot agony burst in his forearm. No chance to go for his knife, but the hook-and-spring presently attached to his left arm cuff doubled as a weapon of no small menace; the big man ducked back in fright as Dag’s return swing grazed his throat. Rapidly revising his chances against this unexpected unhanded reprisal—brighter than he looked?—the would-be thief dropped both knife pouch and log and galloped after his smaller partner.

Fawn and a party of three or four Lumpton locals rounded the corner as Dag staggered upright again. Quietly, he flipped a corner of the blanket over the leather pouch with a booted toe.

“Dag, are you all right?” Fawn cried in alarm. “Your nose is bleeding!”

Dag could feel a wet trickle over his lip, and licked at it, unmistakable iron tang. He tried to raise his hand to touch his throbbing face but found it would not work properly. Drawing breath through his teeth in a long hiss at the flaring pain, he searched his mind for curses and found none strong enough.

His groundsense, turned in upon himself, left him in no doubt. He wheeled away, bent over, and spat blood and fury on the ground before turning back to her. “Nose is all right,” he mumbled in frustrated wrath. “Right arm’s broken. Blight it!”

Their hostelry in Lumpton Market turned out to be an elderly inn just off the straight road north from town. Fawn thought it a sad comedown from the fine hotel in Glassforge, for it was small and grubby, if not without a certain air of shabby comfort. Further, it demanded cash money even from patrollers. In summer, however, patrons were sent out back of the kitchen to eat their dinners on plank tables and benches under some graceful old black walnut trees overlooking the side road, much better than the dank common room. Looking around curiously, Fawn saw no other Lakewalkers here tonight, just a quartet of teamsters at one table intent on their beer and, beyond them, a farm couple busy with a pack of noisy young children. Even with his height, striking looks, and splinted arm in a sling, Dag drew only brief stares, and Fawn felt reassuringly unnoticed in his shadow.

Dag slumped onto his bench with an understandably tired grunt, and Fawn slid in at his right. She plucked loose the ties of the lumpy leather wrap he’d directed she bring from his saddlebag, unrolling it to find it contained an array of extra devices for his wrist cuff. “Goodness, what are all these?”

“This and that. Experiments, or things I don’t use every day.” As she stared in bewilderment and held up a wooden bolt anchoring a curved and edged metal piece looking like a small stirrup, he added, “That’s a scraper. I spend a lot of time in the evening scraping hides, out on patrol. Boring as all get out, but one of the first jobs I took on after I got the arm harness. Forced me to strengthen the arm, which was good when I took up the bow.”

The scullion who doubled as servingwoman plunked down mugs of beer and trotted back inside. With hook and splinted hand, Dag clumsily reached, winced, and fell back, and Fawn said, “Ah! The bonesetter told you not to try and use your hand.

Five times when I was listening, and I don’t know how many more while I was out of the room. I thought he was going to slap you at one point.” The man had hardly needed Fawn’s encouragement to bind Dag’s arm with quelling thoroughness, having taken the measure of his aggravated patient very quickly. The barest tips of Dag’s fingers stuck out beyond the cotton wrappings. “You just keep it down in that sling there. We need to figure out how we’re to get along with all this.”

Hurriedly, she held the mug to his lips; he grimaced, but drank thirstily.

She managed not to splash him too badly when he nodded he was done, and whisked her handkerchief from her pocket to overtake his right arm up to mop his lips.

“And if you use your bandages for a napkin they’re going to stink long before six weeks are up, so don’t.”

He scowled sideways at her, ferociously.

“And if you keep looking at me like that, you’re going to make me break out in giggles, and then you’ll be throwing your boots at my head, and then where will we be?”

“No, I won’t,” he growled. “I need you to get the blasted boots off in the first place.”

But the corner of his mouth curled up nonetheless. Fawn was so relieved she got up on one knee and kissed the curl, which made it curve up more.

He vented a long, apologetic sigh for his touchiness. “Third from the left, there”—he nodded to the leather wrap—“should be a sort of fork-spoon thing.”

She pulled it out and examined it, an iron spoon with four short tines on the tip. “Ah, clever.”

“I don’t use it too often. A knife’s usually better, if I have anything at the table but my hook or the social hand.” That last was Dag’s name for the wooden hand-in-glove, which seemed to have little use but disguise among strangers, and not a very effective one at that.

With a slight clunk, Dag set his wooden cuff against the table edge. “Try swapping it out.”

Dag’s most commonly used device, the hook with the clever little spring strip, was set in tight. Fawn, leaning in, had to take a better grip before she was able to twist it out. The eating tool replaced it more readily. “Oh, that’s not too hard.”

Their plates arrived, piled with carrots and mashed potatoes with cream gravy and a generous portion of pork chops. After an exchange of silent looks—Fawn could see Dag working to keep his frayed temper—she leaned over and efficiently cut his meat, leaving the rest to him. The fork-spoon worked tolerably well, although it did involve his extending his elbow awkwardly. Thoughtfully, she kept the beer coming. It might just have been getting a good hot meal into him after a too-long day, but he slowly relaxed. The stout scullion then brought thick wedges of cherry pie, which threatened to push relaxation into sleep right there on the benches.

Fawn said, “So… should we stay here and rest up tomorrow, or push on and rest at West Blue? Will you be able to ride so far?” He had ridden from the bonesetter’s, his reins wrapped around his hook, but that had only been a mile.

“I’ve done more with worse. The powder will help.” He’d prudently picked up what he said was a Lakewalker remedy for pain from the medicine shop before they’d left the town square. Fawn wasn’t sure if the faint glaze in his eyes was from the drug or the ache in his arm; but on reflection, it was just as well the medicine didn’t work better, or there would be no slowing him down at all.