Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

“My face?” Her quivering fingertips probed where the simpleton had struck her.

Still a little numb, but starting to ache. “Does it show?”

He nodded.

“Oh.”

“Those gouges don’t look so good. I have some things in my saddlebags to clean them up. Come away, here, come sit down, um… away.”

From that. She eyed the corpse and swallowed. “All right.” And added, “I’m all right. I’ll stop shaking in a minute, sure. Stupid of me.”

With his open hand not coming within three feet of her, he herded her back toward the clearing like someone shooing ducks. He pointed to a big fallen log a way apart from the scuffed spot of her recent struggle and walked to his horse, a rangy chestnut calmly browsing in the weeds trailing its reins. She plunked down heavily and sat bent over, arms wrapped around herself, rocking a little.

Her throat was raw, her stomach hurt, and though she wasn’t gasping anymore, it still felt as though she couldn’t get her breath back or that it had returned badly out of rhythm.

The patroller carefully turned his back to Fawn, did something to dismantle his bow, and rummaged in his saddlebag. More adjustments of some sort. He turned again, shrugging the strap of a water bottle over one shoulder, and with a couple of cloth-wrapped packets tucked under his left arm. Fawn blinked, because he seemed to have suddenly regained a left hand, stiffly curved in a leather glove. He lowered himself beside her with a tired-sounding grunt, and arranged those legs. At this range he smelled, not altogether unpleasantly, of dried sweat, woodsmoke, horse, and fatigue. He laid out the packets and handed her the bottle. “Drink, first.”

She nodded. The water was flat and tepid but seemed clean.

“Eat.” He held out a piece of bread fished from the one cloth.

“I couldn’t.”

“No, really. It’ll give your body something to do besides shake. Very distractible that way, bodies. Try it.”

Doubtfully, she took it and nibbled. It was very good bread, if a little dry by now, and she thought she recognized its source. She had to take another sip of water to force it down, but her uncontrolled trembling grew less. She peeked at his stiff left hand as he opened the second cloth, and decided it must be carved of wood, for show.

He wetted a bit of cloth with something from a small bottle—Lakewalker medicine?—and raised his right hand to her aching left cheek. She flinched, although the cool liquid did not sting.

“Sorry. Don’t want to leave those dirty.”

“No. Yes. I mean, right. It’s all right. I think the simpleton clawed me when he hit me.” Claws. Those had been claws, not nails. What kind of monstrous birth…

?

His lips thinned, but his touch remained firm.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come up on you sooner, miss. I could see something had happened back on the road, there. I’d been trailing those two all night. My patrol seized their gang’s camp a couple of hours after midnight, up in the hills on the other side of Glassforge. I’m afraid I flushed them right into you.”

She shook her head, not in denial. “I was walking down the road. They just picked me up like you’d pick up a lost… thing, and claim it was yours.” Her frown deepened. “No… not just. They argued first. Strange. The one who was…

um…

the one you shot, he didn’t want to take me along, at first. It was the other one who insisted. But he wasn’t interested in me at all, later. When—just before you came.” And added under her breath, not expecting an answer, “What was he?”

“Raccoon, is my best guess,” said the patroller. He turned the cloth, hiding browning blood, and wet it again, moving down her cheek to the next gash.

This bizarre answer seemed so entirely unrelated to her question that she decided he must not have heard her aright. “No, I mean the big fellow who hit me. The one who ran away from you. He didn’t seem right in the head.”

“Truer than you guess, miss. I’ve been hunting those creatures all my life.

You get so you can tell. He was a made thing. Confirms that a malice—your folk would call it a blight bogle—has emerged near here. The malice makes slaves of human shape for itself, to fight, or do its dirty work. Other shapes too, sometimes.

Mud-men, we call them. But the malice can’t make them up out of nothing. So it catches animals, and reshapes them. Crudely at first, till it grows stronger and smarter. Can’t make life at all, really. Only death. Its slaves don’t last too long, but it hardly cares.” Was he gulling her, like her brothers? Seeing how much a silly little farm girl could be made to swallow down whole? He seemed perfectly serious, but maybe he was just especially good at tall tales. “Are you saying that blight bogles are real?”

It was his turn to look surprised. “Where are you from, miss?” he asked in renewed caution.

She started to name the village nearest her family’s farm, but changed it to

“Lumpton Market.” It was a bigger town, more anonymous. She straightened, trying to marshal the casual phrase I’m a widow and push it past her bruised lips.

“What’s your name?”

“Fawn. Saw… field,” she added, and flinched. She’d wanted neither Sunny’s name nor her own family’s, and now she’d stuck herself with some of both.

“Fawn. Apt,” said the patroller, with a sideways tilt of his head. “You must have had those eyes from birth.”

It was that uncomfortable weighty attention again. She tried shoving back:

“What’s yours?” though she thought she already knew.

“I answer to Dag.”

She waited a moment. “Isn’t there any more?”

He shrugged. “I have a tent name, a camp name, and a hinterland name, but Dag is easier to shout.” The smile glimmered by again. “Short is better, in the field.

Dag, duck! See? If it were any longer, it might be too late. Ah, that’s better.”

She realized she’d smiled back. She didn’t know if it was his talk or his bread or just the sitting down quietly, but her stomach had finally stopped shuddering. She was left hot and tired and drained.

He restoppered his bottle.

“Shouldn’t you use that too?” she asked.

“Oh. Yeah.” Cursorily, he turned the cloth again and swiped it over his face.

He missed about half the marks.

“Why did you call me Little Spark?”

“When you were hiding above me in that apple tree yesterday, that’s how I thought of you.”

“I didn’t think you could see me. You never looked up!”

“You didn’t act as though to wanted to be seen. It only seemed polite.” He added, “I thought that pretty farm was your home.”

“It was pretty, wasn’t it? But I only stopped there for water. I was walking to Glassforge.”

“From Lumpton?”

And points north. “Yes.”

He, at least, did not say anything about, It’s a long way for such short legs.

He did say, inevitably, “Family there?”

She almost said yes, then realized he might possibly intend to take her there, which could prove awkward. “No. I was going there to look for work.” She straightened her spine. “I’m a grass widow.”

A slow blink; his face went blank for a rather long moment. He finally said, in an oddly cautious tone, “Pardon, missus… but do you know what grass widow means?”

“A new widow,” she replied promptly, then hesitated. “There was a woman came up from Glassforge to our village, once. She took in sewing and made cord and netting. She had the most beautiful little boy. My uncles called her a grass widow.” Another too-quiet pause. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

He scratched his rat’s nest of dark hair. “Well… yes and no. It’s a farmer term for a woman pregnant or with a child in tow with no husband in sight anywhere.