Lois Bujold - Passage

Whit was taken aback when he made the discovery that grub was not provided for the drivers and loaders, but that they were expected to bring their own, a little detail of planning that had evidently escaped his notice—and Fawn’s too, in the morning’s hustle. Dag let them both flounder and recriminate for a bit before blandly fetching the provisions from his saddlebags that he’d had Sal pack up while he was shaving. He wasn’t too dry about it, but he did wait and make Whit ask, humbly, for a share before portioning it out. Just enough of a dig, Fawn thought, to make certain that neither of them were like to make a similar mistake again.

Dag enjoyed watching Fawn and Whit take in the scenes south of Glassforge, on a road new to them both, if old to Dag. He hadn’t ridden this particular stretch for several years, though. Whit kept asking if the craggy little hills cloaked in color that now rose on both sides of them were mountains yet, and Dag had to keep disillusioning him. Although Dag’s personal definition of a mountain was anything high enough to kill you if you fell off it, and thus covered any precipice from ten to a thousand feet high, so he supposed these rucked-up slopes aspired to the name. The land grew less settled as it pinched more sharply, and the hamlets clinging to the straight road fell farther apart.

Darkness overtook them several miles short of the village that was the teamsters’ usual stopping point on this route, a mishap that the one called Mape blamed, grumblingly, on their late start, but which the more tolerant Tanner chalked up to the shortening of the daylight. Everyone pulled out their dinner packets and drank from the roadside spring that had prompted the halt while the two men debated whether to rest the horses and continue on slowly—more slowly—by lantern light, or stop here and sleep under the wagons. No rain threatened, but the chill creeping from the hollows pushed consensus toward the lantern scheme; Whit blithely volunteered Dag to ride ahead with a lantern suspended from his hook, a suggestion that made Fawn grimace. The prospect of combining a burning and maybe drippy oil lantern with a cranky Copperhead, tired and bored from the day’s plod, made Dag say merely, “I’ll think about it.”

Dag walked around the spring, stretched his back, and sat down against a buckeye tree, extending both his legs and his groundsense. He’d kept closed all day in the presence of strangers and their chaotic farmer grounds. His reach was out to two hundred paces tonight, maybe? He still felt half-blinded. After pulling off Copper’s bridle and loosening the girth, Dag had turned him loose to browse under light ground contact. In the deepening shadows, Dag could better hear the ripping and munching than see with his eyes, but in his groundsense the gelding was an old familiar brightness, almost brighter than the boy Hod. Hod had gone to relieve himself up in the bushes and was now circling back. Keeping to the shadows, easing up toward Copperhead…

Dag came alert, though he did not open his eyes. Was the dimwitted boy contemplating a little attempted filching? Dag considered his responsibilities. Hod was no young patroller of Dag’s; still, if the boy was to learn a sharp lesson not to go riffling in a Lakewalker’s saddlebags, it might be better all around to be sooner than later, with Dag and not with another. It would doubtless be an embarrassing scene, but it might save Hod much worse later on. Dag withdrew his ground contact from Copperhead and settled back to let nature take its course.

Dag was expecting Copperhead’s angry squeal, head-snake, and cow-kick. He wasn’t expecting the ugly thunk or a scream of pain so loud, sharp, and prolonged. Blight it, what—? He yanked his ground-sense wide, then recoiled as the hot flush of injury swamped back in on him. Drawing breath, he wallowed to his feet.

The two teamsters pelted past him, with Whit on their heels crying warning for them to swing wide around the horse, who was snorting and backing. Fawn followed, having had the sense to pause and grab a lantern. Trying not to limp on his right leg, Dag stumbled after.

Hod was lying on the ground on his back, writhing from side to side, clutching and clawing at his leg and openly bawling. His face was screwed up in pain, mottled red and pale and popping out cold sweat. And no wonder. By whatever evil chance, Copperhead’s shod hoof had scored a direct hit on the boy’s right kneecap, shattering the bone and pulping the flesh behind it. Blight it, blight it, blight it…!

Tanner gasped. “What happened?”

Dag said, “Horse kicked him when he went to poke in my bags for grub.” Which won him a sharp look upwards from Fawn—You knew? They would deal with that aspect later. Dag surged forward.

To find himself blocked by the gray-haired and very solid Mape. “Don’t you touch him, Lakewalker!”

Whit and Tanner knelt by Hod, trying unsuccessfully to soothe and still him as he beat his fists on the ground and howled.

Dag unclenched his jaw and said to Mape, “I have some skills in field aid.”

“Let him through,” cried Fawn, at the same moment as Whit called, “Dag, help!” Reluctantly, Mape gave way.

“Fawn, get a fire going, for heat and light,” Dag instructed tersely.

“We’ll need both.”

She skittered off wordlessly. Dag knelt by Hod’s right knee, and let both hands, real and sputtering-ghostly, hover over it. Absent gods, I shouldn’t be attempting this. A quick ground match, to slow the internal bleeding—the joint was already swollen tight against the fabric of Hod’s trousers—to dull the blazing nerves…Dag’s right knee screamed in sympathy. He gritted his teeth and ignored the ground-echo. Hod stopped howling and just gasped, staring up wild-eyed at Dag.

In a few minutes that seemed much longer, the men had Hod laid out on a blanket and his trousers off, an operation he tried to resist and that made him cry some more, though whether from pain or shame Dag was not sure. He apparently owned no underdrawers; Tanner dropped a blanket over his nether parts. All four wagon-lanterns and the new fire, bless Fawn, laid golden light on the unpleasant sight of the ruined joint, bulging, mottled, and already dark with blood beneath the shiny skin. Shards of bone pressed against the skin from the inside, and each of Hod’s shudders threatened to push one through.

“Can you do anything, Lakewalker?” asked Tanner.

“’Course he can!” asserted Whit valiantly. “I’ve seen him mend broken glass!”

“This is bad,” said Dag. “The kneecap’s floating in about six pieces, and one tendon is nearly torn through. This needs a lot more than splinting and rest.” I shouldn’t even be thinking about this without another medicine maker to guard me from groundlock, or worse. There’s good reasons they work in pairs. Forty miles to the closest other Lakewalkers tonight, down the road to the ferry camp at Pearl Riffle. Eighty miles round-trip. Not even Copperhead could do it, even if a real medicine maker would come out for an injured farmer, an event so unlikely that it would make some kind of history.

“Is he gonna cut off my leg?” sobbed Hod. “Don’ let him go cuttin’ on me! Can’t work, nobody’ll give me money, can’t go back, Hopper’ll beat me again if I go back…”

Hopper? Oh, Hod’s tent-brother—brother-in-law, Dag corrected himself. Some tent-brother.

“Hurts,” wept Hod. No one doubted him.

“Dag…?” said Fawn in a small, uncertain voice. “Can you…do anything?” She made a little gesture toward his left arm. “Any groundwork?”

A simple ground reinforcement was not going to be enough here, and Dag had, absent gods knew, no prior affinity with this boy the way he did with Fawn to give him subtle routes into his body and ground. He looked into Fawn’s huge, dark, scared, trusting eyes. Swallowed. And said, “I can try.”