Lois Bujold - Passage

Remo eyed him. “You ever do that?”

“It was closer to two weeks,” Dag admitted. “After that, I took my ground drills a lot more seriously. Let’s go around again. My turn to veil. You two close your eyes, but leave your groundsenses open and try to watch me.”

Dag furled himself firmly, watching as the two obediently scrunched their eyes closed. Softly, he rose from his seat.

Barr grinned. “Hey, where’d you go?”

“Here,” he breathed in Barr’s ear.

The boy yelped and jumped sideways. “Blight! Don’t do that!”

“It’s how you get close to a malice. You need to learn, too.”

“I’ve heard an advanced malice can ground-rip you all the same,” said Remo dubiously.

“I’ve only tangled with two that strong, in my forty years of patrolling. The Wolf Ridge malice I didn’t see close-up, just heard about from the survivors of the actual attack on the lair. The Raintree malice I saw eye-to-eye. That malice opened up one of the best ground-veilers in my company as easy as you’d gut a trout.”

“How can you even take down a malice that strong?” asked Remo.

“Gang up on it. Go after it all at once with a lot of patrollers with a lot of knives, and hope one gets through. Worked at Wolf Ridge, worked the same at Raintree.” He added after moment, “Well-veiled patrollers. So let’s go around again.”

After a couple more circuits, Barr remarked, “So, are you saying if I stayed this lousy at my ground-veiling, I’d never be chosen for one of those suicide-rushes?”

“In Luthlia, we’d set you out for bait,” Dag said.

Remo sniggered. Barr grimaced at him.

“Again,” said Dag. Interestingly, Barr improved; but then, Barr had more room for improvement. Judging by his increased flickering, Remo was growing fatigued. Time to wind up.

“That’s enough for today,” said Dag, easing back onto the bench. “I think we’ll spend an hour a day in this drill from now on.”

Barr stretched and rolled his shoulders, squinting. “So much for the benefits of running away from home.”

“Depends on what you run into,” Dag drawled. “If we rode slap into a river malice around the next bend, would you be prepared?”

“No,” said Remo bitterly. “None of us has a primed knife.”

“Then your job would be to survive and run for help to the next camp. Which is where?”

“Blight,” said Barr. “I’m not even sure where we are.”

“Amma made us memorize the locations of all the camps in Oleana,” Remo offered.

“Good,” said Dag. “Too bad you’re in Raintree now.” And led the boys through a list of every Lakewalker ferry camp and its location in river miles from Tripoint to the Confluence, and made them each recite it back, individually and in chorus. Granted, the obscene version of the old memory-rhyme sped the process.

The cool morning was failing to warm, the climbing sun absorbed by graying skies. Dag glanced down the river valley to see dense mist advancing up it. Berry popped her head over the roof edge.

“If you can spare one of your patroller boys to pilot duty up here in a few minutes, I’d be much obliged,” she said. “Looks like we’re in for a real Grace Valley fog, and I don’t want to run up over it into some pasture half a mile inland like in Bo’s tale. The Fetch’d look funny on rollers.”

“I’ll come up,” said Dag. “I could do with a stretch.”

He joined Berry and Whit on the roof; Bo and Hod climbed down for a turn at the hearth.

“If I’m right in my reckoning,” said Berry, “we’re coming up on a big island around this next bend that I don’t want to get on the wrong side of.”

“Do we want the right- or left-hand channel?”

“Right-hand.”

“Will do, Boss.” Dag took a sweep and matched Whit’s slow sculling—just enough to give Berry’s rudder steering-way—which they had learned how to keep up for hours if necessary. The mist thickened about them, beading on Dag’s deerskin jacket, which Fawn had lately lined with quilting to help fit his scant summer gear for fall. They followed the main channel as it hurried around the wide bend; Dag extended his groundsense to its full mile range to locate the split in the current before they were swept wrongside-to.

“Hey,” he said. “There’s somebody on that island.”

“Can’t be,” said Berry, peering into the clinging damp. They could see maybe three boat-lengths ahead, now. “With this rise from the Beargrass, that island’s under three, maybe four feet of water.”

“That could explain why they don’t seem too happy.” Dag reached, opening himself as wide as he could, ignoring the familiar, and much louder, grounds close-by. “Seven men. Blight, I think they may be those same Raintree flatties who passed us by backwards last night.” He added after a moment, “And a bear. They’ve all taken refuge from the flood up in the trees!”

“Must be exciting for the one who’s sharing with the bear,” said Whit dubiously.

“Bear’s got his own private tree.” After a moment, Dag added, “No sign of their boats. Not moored within a mile, leastways. I think those fellows are in trouble over there, Boss. At least one ground shows signs of being hurt.”

Berry drew breath through her teeth. “Bo!” she bawled. “Hod! You patroller boys, git out here! We need to get the skiff in the water afore we float too far!”

The rest of the crew turned out onto the back deck, and Berry leaned over and explained the situation. After Dag confirmed the head-count of men stranded on the island, they decided to launch both the skiff and the narrow boat, in the hope of rescuing them all in one pass; also, Dag pointed out, so the two boats could partner each other in case of snags literal or figurative. Dag stayed with the Fetch to guide it down the channel. Whit and Remo each took an oar in the skiff; Barr paddled his narrow boat.

“You sure about those fellows, Dag?” Remo called up from the water, once they’d all clambered down and were ready to push off.

“Yep. Just over half a mile that way.” He pointed.

Barr’s head turned. “Oh, yeah, I’ve got ’em now! Follow me, Remo! It’ll be just like old times.” His boat shot away as his paddle dipped and surged.

Remo snorted, but trailed dutifully. Whit’s voice drifted back through the fog: “Beats shifting sheep, anyhow…”

“Sheep?” said Berry.

Dag shook his head.

Long minutes slid past as the Fetch slipped downstream. Floating with the current, the banks obscured, it felt as if they’d stopped altogether in a quiet, fog-walled harbor. Running full-tilt into a snag or a big rock at five miles an hour and opening the Fetch’s seams would cure that illusion right quick, Dag thought; he kept all his senses alert.

“Them Lakewalker boys’ll be able to find their way back to us, won’t they?” said Berry uneasily.

“That’s why we put one in each boat,” Dag assured her. “They’ve made it to the island; ah, good for the narrow boat! Barr can get it right in between the trees.”

“Just so’s he don’t catch it sidewise to the current and lean too far over. He could fill it in an eyeblink that way.”

“These Pearl Riffle patrollers are up to the river’s tricks, I expect,” said Dag. “Handier than I would be. And those narrow boats are made to float even full of water. Air boxes in the prow and stern, tarred up and sealed.”

“So that’s how they do that! I always wondered.” She added after a moment, “We thought it was magic.”

Fawn took Hod and Hawthorn below to help assemble a warming welcome for the expected influx of unhappy boatmen—or boatless men. It was nearly an hour before the narrow boat appeared out of the fog astern. Two cold, wet strangers crouched in a miserable huddle in the center, clutching the thwarts nervously, but a third sat up in the bow, helping Barr paddle. Bo and Hod gave them hands to climb stiffly out—one nearly dumped the boat over in his clumsiness, but Barr kept it upright.