Lois Bujold - Passage

Fawn swallowed. It wasn’t as if there would ever be a better time or place to tell Berry the truth. “He said not.”

A long inhalation. “I sort of realized it must be that way, after a while. Or Dag would’ve released him along with Skink.” Cold haze trickled from her lips. “I can’t think which way is worse. Ain’t neither is better.”

“No,” agreed Fawn.

“I don’t see no good way out of this.”

“No,” agreed Fawn.

They huddled together in silence for a long time, waiting for light or word, but the cold drove them inside before either came.

Dag braced one knee on a fallen log, checked the seating of his bow in his wrist cuff, and locked the clamp. He opened himself for another quick cast around, cursing, not for the first time, his ground-sense’s inability to penetrate more than a hand’s breadth into solid rock. Barr and two of Chicory’s bowmen had reached their position on the opposite side of the cave mouth. Remo and another Raintree hunter were creeping up on the opening in the cave roof, through which a trickle of wood smoke, steel-gray in the light from the rising half-moon, made its escape. It would be Remo’s job to see that nothing else escaped by that route. Lastly, Dag checked on Whit, clutching his own bow at Dag’s side. Whit’s face, striped by the shadows from the bare tree branches, was nearly as pale and stony as the moon, entirely drained of all his wearing humor. The effect was not as much of an improvement as Dag would have thought.

He choked back anger, not only at the cruelty of the bandits, but at finding them here, now, in the middle of the journey he’d intended as Fawn’s belated wedding gift. She’d been terrorized once by the bandits at Glassforge, and he’d sworn that no such horror would touch her again. Granted, she hadn’t seemed terrified tonight, just tense and resolute. He would keep the ugliness well away from her this time, if he could. He tried not to think about the fact that her monthly fertile days were starting up, a lovely sparkle in her ground, normally the signal for them to switch to subtler Lakewalker bed customs. Far from bandits of any sort. Don’t dwell on that threat, old patroller, you’ll just make yourself crazy. Crazier. But he was determined that none should escape this cave trap to trouble her, or Berry, or anyone else. He bit his lip in frustration, unable to make a count of targets through the shielding rock walls.

Wonder of wonders, the two trampling gangs of boatmen, one led around the upstream side by Chicory, the other around the downstream side by Boss Wain, nearly joined again by the entrance to the cave before the guard there woke from his drunken stupor and yelled alarm. Too late, thought Dag in satisfaction. His groundsense flexed open and shut, wavering between picking up events and blocking the flares of the targets’ injuries. All his fooling around with medicine making seemed to have left him much more sensitive to such…he cringed, taking in the sizzle of a knife cut, the explosive flash of a thump with a cudgel, still searching for his true target.

Where was this Crane, blight it? They must have caught the Lakewalker leader asleep inside, just as Dag had hoped, or else the boatmen would never have crept this close before being spotted. Because none of the Fetch’s Lakewalkers had bumped grounds with him outside, not within a mile.

Cries, crashes, and screams sounded from the cave mouth, borne outward in the orange flickering from torch fire and wildly wavering lantern light. A bandit trying to lift himself out the smoke hole was knocked back in by Remo’s partner, like a man hammering down a peg. Remo followed, disappearing from both view and groundsense. Good, Dag had at least one scout inside to help the rivermen deal with the renegade. He ruthlessly stifled worry for Remo’s inexperience as a group of five bellowing bandits clumped together and fought their way out the cave mouth past Wain’s men, breaking and running toward Dag and Whit.

“See ’em?” said Dag, raising his bow and drawing hard.

“Yep,” said Whit through dry lips, and mimicked him. Both steel-tipped arrows flew together; both found targets.

“Great shot!” said Dag. Beginner’s luck, more likely. Dag’s second arrow was on its way before Whit’s shaking hands could nock his next. It wasn’t a disabling hit, lodging in the bandit’s thigh; the man was not felled but only slowed. This bunch must realize how little mercy they could expect from their boatmen prey-turned-hunters. The three still on their feet turned back and began running, or limping, the other way, around the cave mouth and up onto Barr’s position. None made it past.

Dag waited a few more minutes, but no more fugitives broke free. Archers’ task accomplished, he eased forward and led Whit down the slope, more anxious now to reach the cave than to keep Whit away from it. One of their victims lay dead, an arrow through his eye. The other whimpered and shuddered in the fallen leaves, clutching a shaft that was lodged deep in his gut.

“Should we—?” Whit began uncertainly.

“Leave him for now. He won’t be running off,” murmured Dag. He would worry about men due to be hanged in the morning only after he had tended to the injured on their own side. If there was time or any of himself left over for the task.

“But I—which one did I hit?” Whit stared back over his shoulder.

“Yours was that brain-shot. Clean, very quick.”

“Oh.”

Whit’s expression teetered between triumph and revulsion, and Dag realized it wasn’t just Barr and Remo he ought to meet with when this was all over, to check for damage due to leaks from targets. And who will check my ground? Never mind, first things first. Reeling, disarmed bandits were already being passed out through a gauntlet of boatmen and tied to trees. Dag trusted the rivermen knew their knots.

The inside of the cave was arrested chaos. Benches and crates lay knocked over, bedrolls kicked around. Goods of all kinds were strewn across the floor, including an inordinate number of bottles and jugs, broken and whole. The cave seemed to be composed of two chambers, one behind the other, each about twenty feet high and forty across. The fire beneath the smoke hole spouted up around a broken keg, emitting a glaring light. Burning oil from a broken lantern spread and sputtered, but already a boatman was stamping it out. Some men lay groaning on the ground, others were being tied up; there seemed to be at least two boatmen standing for every live bandit left—good. Dag winced, trying to hold his groundsense open long enough to get an accurate head-count. He still couldn’t find the Lakewalker leader. Was Crane ground-veiled and hidden amongst the others? No…Remo was upright and uninjured, though, better still.

Bearbait sprang up at his elbow and grabbed him by the arm; Dag controlled a reflexive strike at him. “Lakewalker, quick! You have to help!”

He jerked Dag toward the cave wall, a little out of the way of the noisy mob. Two boatmen lay there on hastily tossed-down blankets. A kneeling friend held his hands frantically to the neck of one of them; blood spurted between his tight fingers. The other was Chicory, lying stunned, breathing irregularly, his face the color of cold lard. Oh, no! Dag let his groundsense lick out. The Raintree hunter had taken a cudgel blow on the left side of his skull, fracturing it just above the ear. Bad…

Bearbait wet his lips and said, “He’d took on two with his spear, see, when a third one got him from behind. I wasn’t quick enough…”

The one with the cut to the neck was now or never. Dag dropped to his knees, unlocked and tossed his bow aside, and let his hands real and ghostly slide over those of the frightened friend, one of the Silver Shoals fellows. “Don’t move,” he murmured. “Keep holding tight, just like that.” The man gulped and obeyed.