Lois Bujold - Legacy

Dar leaned back for a low-voiced exchange with their frowning mother. Cumbia had run out of cord to play with; her hands now kneaded the fabric of her shift along her thin thighs. A grimace, a short nod. Dar turned back. “Yes, we accept,” he replied.

“Dag, you?”

“Yes…,” said Dag slowly. He glanced aside at Fawn, watching him in trusting bewilderment, and gave her a little nod of reassurance. “Go ahead.”

Dar, expecting more argument, looked at him in sharp surprise. Dag remembered Fairbolt’s word picture of the sitting tactician. Wise man, Fairbolt. He settled back to watch the candle burn down as Pakona started down the row.

“Ogit?”

“No! No farmer spouses!” Well, that was clear.

“Tioca?”

A slight hesitation. “Yes. I can’t reconcile it with my maker’s conscience to say that’s not a good making.”

Rigni, called upon, looked plaintively at Tioca and at last said, “Yes.”

Laski, after a bit of a struggle, said, “No.”

Pakona herself said, “No,” without hesitation, and added, “if we let this in, it’s going to be every kind of mess, and it will go on and on. Dowie?”

Dowie looked down the row and made a careful count on her fingers, and looked appalled. A no from her would finish the matter. A yes would create a tie and throw it onto Fairbolt. After a long, long pause, she cleared her throat, and said, “Yes?”

Fairbolt gave her palpable cowardice a slow, blistering, and ungrateful glare. Then he sighed, sat up, and stared around. A longer silence stretched.

You know they’re good cords, Fairbolt, Dag thought. Dag watched the struggle in the captain’s face between integrity and practicality, and admired how long it was taking the latter to triumph. In a way, Dag wished the integrity would pull ahead. It wasn’t going to make a bit of difference in the end, after all, and Fairbolt would feel better about himself later.

“Fairbolt?” said Pakona, cautiously. “Camp captain always goes last to break the tie votes. It’s a duty.”

Fairbolt waved this away in a Yeah, yeah, I know gesture. He cleared his throat. “Dag? You got anything more to say?”

“A certain amount, yes. It will seem roundabout, but it will go to the center in the end. Makes no never mind to me whether it’s before or after you have your say, though.”

Fairbolt gave him a little nod. “Go ahead, then. You have the stick.”

Pakona looked as though she wanted to override this, but thought better of annoying Fairbolt while his vote hung in the breeze. She crossed her arms and settled back. Dar and Cumbia were frowning in alarm, but Dag certainly had all their attention.

Dag’s mind was heavy, his head ached, but his heart felt light, as if it were flying. Might just be falling. We’ll know when we hit the ground. He set the speaking stick aside, reached down, gripped his hickory staff, and stood up. Full height.

“Excepting the patrollers who just came back from Raintree with me, how many folks here have heard the name of a farmer town called Greenspring?”

An array of blank looks from the center and left, although Dirla’s aunt Rigni, after a glance at her patroller niece, hesitantly raised her hand for a moment. Dag returned her a nod.

“I’m not surprised there are so few. It was the town in Raintree where that last malice started up, unchecked. No one told me the name either, when I was called out to ride west. Now, partly that was due to the confusion that always goes with such a scramble, but you know—partly, it wasn’t. No one knew, or said, because it didn’t seem important to them.

“So how many here—not my patrollers—know the numbers of dead at Bonemarsh?”

Ogit Muskrat said gruffly, “We’ve all heard them. ’Bout fifty grown-ups and near twenty youngsters.”

“Such a horror,” sighed Tioca.

Dag nodded. “Nineteen. That’s right.” Fairbolt was watching him curiously. No, I’m not taking your advice about boasting, Fairbolt. Maybe the reverse. Just wait. “So who knows how many died at Greenspring?”

The patrollers to his right looked tight-lipped, holding back the answer. The majority of the councilors just looked baffled. After a stretch, Pakona finally said, “Lots, I imagine. What has this to do with your counterfeit wedding cords, Dag?”

He let that counterfeit slide unchallenged, too. “I said it was roundabout. Of a thousand townsfolk—roughly half the population of Bonemarsh—Greenspring lost about three hundred grown-ups and all—or nearly all—of their youngsters. I counted not less than one hundred sixty-two such bodies at the Greenspring burying field, and I know there were the bones of at least three more at the Bonemarsh mud-men feast we cleaned up after. Didn’t mention those three to the townsmen doing the burying. It wouldn’t have helped, at the time.”

He glanced down at Fawn, glancing up at him, and knew they were both wondering if some of those scattered bones might have been the missing Sassy. Dag hoped not. He shook his head at Fawn, to say, no knowing, and she nodded and hunkered on her seat.

“Does anyone but me see something terribly wrong with those two sets of numbers?”

The return stares held discomfort, more than a twinge of sympathy, even pity, but no enlightenment. Dag sighed and plowed on. “All right, try this.

“Bonemarsh died—people slain, animals slaughtered, that beautiful country blighted for a generation—because we failed at Greenspring. If the malice had been recognized and stopped there, it would never have marched as far as Bonemarsh.

“It wasn’t lack of patrollers or patrolling that slew Greenspring. Raintree patrol is as stretched as anyone else’s, but there would have been enough, if only. It was a lack of…something else. Talking. Knowing. Friendships, even. A whole lot of simple things that could have been different, that one man or another might have changed, but didn’t.”

“Are you blamin’ the Raintree patrol?” burst out Mari, unable to contain herself any longer. “Because that isn’t the way I saw it. Seems the farmers were told not to settle there, but they didn’t listen.” Pakona made her hand-wave again, though not with any great conviction.

“I’m not blaming either side more than the other,” said Dag, “and I don’t know the answers. And I know I don’t know. And it’s stopped me, right cold.

“But you see—once upon a time, I didn’t know dirt about patrolling, either. And half of what I thought I did know was wrong. There’s a cure for ignorant young patrollers, though—we send ’em for a walk around the lake. Turns ’em into much smarter old patrollers, pretty reliably. Good system. It’s worked for generations.

“So I’m thinkin’—maybe it’s not enough anymore just to walk around the lake. Maybe we, or some of us, or one of us, needs to walk around the world.”

The circle had grown very quiet.

Dag took a last breath. “And maybe that fellow is me. Sometimes, when you don’t know how to start, you just have to start anyway, and find out movin’ what you’d never learn sittin’ still. I’m not going to argue and I’m not going to defend, because that’s like asking me to tell you the ending before I’ve begun. There may not even be an ending. So Fairbolt, you can cast that last vote any way you please. But tomorrow, my wife and I are going to be down that road and gone. That’s all.” He gave a short, sharp nod, and sat back down.

F awn let out her breath as Dag settled again beside her. Her heart was pounding as though she’d been running. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked, looking around the circle of formidable Lakewalkers.

From the restive pack of patrollers to her right, she heard Utau mutter, “You all were asking me what it felt like to be ground-ripped? Now you know.”