Lois Bujold - Passage

“I’m not sure, but that fellow is beguiled to the gills. I don’t know who did it, or when, or why.” Had it been on purpose?

“Oh, that’s no good,” said Hod. “Can you fix him, Dag?”

What would happen if he unbeguiled the unsavory Skink? It was gut-wrenching to imagine having to take in that repulsive ground-release, but beguilement was a hurt in its own way. If Dag would not leave a man bleeding or lying with a broken bone, could he turn away from this? “Why are you trying to run off, Skink? I won’t hurt you.”

Skink glared around madly. “Crane won’t like this!” he told Alder.

The fear from both their grounds pulsed like a stench, but Alder at least held his stance as Dag eased down from the roof and approached Skink. On my head be it. He lifted his left arm, not that he needed to touch the man at this range, but aligning body and ground helped him concentrate. The act was growing easier with practice; Dag flinched as the backwash of Skink’s agitated ground poured into him, but he forced himself to accept it.

Dag wasn’t sure what response he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t Skink’s collapse into utter shock and violent weeping, a sudden shuddering heap on the deck. “No, no, no!” he wailed. “No, no, no…”

Chicory bit his lip in appalled fascination, tense with surmise.

Yes, Dag thought. The troop captain’s seen something like this before. And so have I.

“Skink, pull yourself together!” Alder snapped. He looked around at his gaping audience, now augmented by Barr and Bearbait. “Sorry, folks, sorry. It takes him like that when the drink wears off, sometimes. I better get him back to camp…”

Any one of Alder’s lies might have been plausible; the accumulation was surely not. What truth does he fear so desperately? This was Dag’s last chance to avoid finding out. Alas, there wasn’t much to choose between regret for a disaster from a mistake, or regret for a disaster from being perfectly correct. Strike at the weakest point; strike fast.

He strode forward, yanked up Skink’s head by the hair, and bought his attention with, if not a fence post between the ears, his harshest company-captain’s voice. “Look at me.” Skink stared up, his breath catching in mid-snivel. Dag demanded, “What are you really doing here?”

“Boat bandits!” babbled Skink. “We’re supposed to check the down-bound boats, and if they’re any good, bring ’em in to Crane and the boys for the plucking. Oh, gods!”

“What?” cried Berry. “Alder, what?” She wheeled to stare in horror not at Skink, but at her betrothed.

“The man’s in a drunken delirium!”

“The man,” said Chicory thoughtfully, “reminds me a whole bunch of those fellers we used to pick off the edge of the blight bogle’s camp.”

Dag just barely kept himself from saying, It’s related. Not a parallel he wished to draw attention to. He compromised on, “Maybe, but this is human mischief, it seems.” He yanked Skink’s hair again, refusing to let him retreat into breathless weeping. “How many bandits, where?”

“Thirty. Forty. And Crane, always him.”

“Where?”

“Cave, there’s this cave up around the Elbow. Thirteen river miles around the loop, but just three across the neck. Gives time to scout out the boats and prepare, see…”

He’s spouting good, now. Keep up the pressure. “Was there ever a malice in the cave?”

“What?”

“A blight bogle.”

Skink shook his head. “Ain’t no blight bogles around here. Just Crane, that’s bad enough. And them Drum brothers. Before the Drums come, Alder was Crane’s right-hand man, but he likes them better now, and even Alder’s not crazy enough to be jealous of them two Drums.”

Dag shook Skink again, leaning down on his shoulder as if Skink were a leather water-bag and Dag was trying to squeeze out the last drops. “So you lure in the boats with offers of piloting, and then what? Steal their valuables? What do you do to the crews?”

“That wasn’t how they got my boat. When I first come, the cave was still fixed up as Brewer’s Cavern Tavern. Bring us in, get us drunk, set on us while we was in a stupor…except the ones Crane saved out for his game…oh, the blood and pitifulness of it all!”

Very quietly, Bo and Barr had moved in on either side of Alder, Dag was glad to see. Berry had stepped back, her face drained, cold, distant. Fawn gripped her bloodless hand, in support or restraint or both.

“What happens to the crews nowadays?” Dag kept on.

“Kill ’em in their sleep or from behind, if we can. Can’t let any run off to tell. Ride ’em down if they run. Crane can always find ’em. Burn the boats or hide them in the blocked channel back behind the island. Can’t let any boats go down to be recognized, either. Brewer used to do that, but Crane is cannier. Brewer invented the game, too, but Crane won it in the end.”

“And the bodies?”

“Used to plant ’em in the ravine, till Little Drum showed how you could slit their bellies and load ’em with rock, and sink ’em in the river so’s they don’t come up. Faster than buryin’. Oh, gods. See, them Drum boys don’t always kill ’em first…”

Was this enough? Too much. Dag knew their urgent danger now, and surely decanting more grotesque details—what was the game? — could wait till they were not in front of Fawn, Berry, Hawthorn, and Hod. One more. “Who is Crane?”

“The Lakewalker. Our Lakewalker.”

Barr and Remo both took that in immediately; Dag could tell by the way their grounds snapped shut like mussels. A renegade? A madman? A malice’s pawn? “Where did he come from?” Dag pressed relentlessly.

“Don’t know. He was here already when I come along. Oleana somewheres, I guess.”

“Did he start the gang?”

“No! Fellow named Brewer, I said.”

“Was Brewer a Lakewalker?” Surely not, with that name.

“No, ’course not! Before me—before Alder—Crane was just a passenger on a down-bound flatboat that Brewer lured in to the Cavern Tavern. Somehow he talked Brewer out of killing him, and then he was Brewer’s right-hand man for a time, and then…no more Brewer. Just Crane.” Skink hesitated. “Brewer, they say he just wanted to get filthy rich, but nobody can figure out what Crane wants.”

“He’s alone?”

“No, there’s about thirty or forty of us, depending.”

“I mean, no other Lakewalkers with him?” Dag clarified.

“Oh. Yeah. Alone like that, I guess.”

“Where is he right now, do you know?” Nowhere within a mile, but a mile seemed suddenly much too short a distance between this madness and Spark.

Skink shook his head. “Cave, last I seen.” Alder seemed to cringe inward. Dag looked up and eyed him in cold speculation.

Berry swallowed and said to Dag, “Ask him if they took…saw the Tripoint Steel.”

“Them struttin’ keelers?” Skink snorted. “They was through here last week. Crane, he said to lie low and just let them fools float on by. Which they did.”

Dag met Berry’s eyes and read the message: No help there. But it set his mind to spinning. The Fetch’s complement was outnumbered by at least two to one, but other boats came behind in a steady stream. Clever of the bandits to take only the richest and let most pass unmolested, but even so their crimes could not go unmarked much longer. How much time did the Fetch have to prepare? Prepare what?

Some of the Raintree flatties had taken over the oars, or the Fetch would have drifted into a sand bar. They were much closer now to that feeder creek with the good lookout just above it. Dag motioned to Chicory and Bearbait. “Did you ever have the hunting of bandits up in Raintree?”

“Once,” Chicory admitted, scratching his head. “It was only a couple, not thirty or forty. Brought them in alive to be tried before the village clerk, but we didn’t have to stay for the hangings. Not my favorite sort of hunting, but it needed doin’.”