Lois Bujold - Sharing Knife 4 Horizon

Remo brightened slightly at this prospect of an honorable bolt hole if his return went ill, which Dag thought profoundly unlikely. In any case, when Barr shook his reins and started off, Remo followed. Finch and Ash called their good-byes and fell in behind, pack animals trailing.

Dag watched them out of earshot before he said to Sumac, “You really intend to inflict that pair on Fairbolt? ”

“Fairbolt has nothing to do with it. I promised the Crow girls when I exchanged last fall that I would bring them back some cute men. As it seems Rase is bespoke already, I have to make my word good somehow.”

Dag considered Fairbolt and Massape’s array of black-haired granddaughters, lovely one by one, formidable in a mob.

“There’s enough of them, one’s bound to like a gloomy boy and another a flitter-wit,” Sumac went on cheerfully. “Feed them to the Crows, I say.”

“What a fate,” murmured Dag, brows rising at this riveting vision.

“Just so’s the girls don’t get them switched the wrong way around,” said Fawn. “Again.”

“I trust Massape,” said Sumac.

–-

Berry was by this time wildly anxious for Clearcreek, so they picked up the pace.

“I hope the place is still standing,” she said, kicking her horse along between Copperhead and Magpie. “Papa leaves-left-two of his cousins to look after it-aunts, I call them, ’cause they’re older than me, one’s a widow and one’s never married. The widow has a son who comes around a couple of times in the week to help with the heavy work.”

Fawn pictured a Clearcreek version of Ash Tanner, and nodded encouragement.

“I wrote two letters-Whit helped me-one after Crooked Elbow and one after we was married in Graymouth, and sent them upriver with keeler friends. Bad news and good. I hope they got there.” She added after a reflective moment, “In the right order.”

“If Clearcreek’s as much of a river town as you say, the word about Crooked Elbow will have got there one way or another ages ago,” Fawn pointed out. “They’ll have had months to get over the bad news. If the good news only arrives when you do, well, that’ll likely be all right.”

Berry nodded, and slowed good-naturedly when Fawn complained that if they did any more trotting, either she or Nattie-Mari was going to start hiccupping.

Nevertheless, Clearcreek came into view over the lip of a steep wooded climb the next afternoon, with two hours to spare till sunset.

The valley spread out in gold-green splendor before Fawn’s eager eyes, with long blue shadows growing from the western hills. Off to the left, the broad Grace River gleamed beyond the feeder-creek’s mouth. A tidy village… homesteads scattered up the vale with evening cook fires sending up gilded threads of smoke… and a stream, Fawn saw as they descended the long slope and clopped across it on a timber span, that earned its name. Fawn stood in her stirrups and gazed out under the flat of her hand as Berry eagerly pointed out landmarks of her childhood.

Even Sumac and Arkady, riding behind engrossed mainly in each other, closed up to listen.

They rode along a split-rail fence enclosing a narrow pasture, with a craggy, tree-clad hill rising behind. “Look, there’s the pond!” Fawn said in delight. And a placid-looking cow, a few goats, and some chickens.

They rounded a stand of chestnut trees into a short lane also lined with split rails, and the house spilled into view.

It was an unpainted warren, looking as if a hive of flatboat carpenters had worked on it for years. Instead of having its stories neatly stacked, like the house in West Blue, it was as if a load of crates had been tossed down the hill, connected by chance one to another. Half a dozen chimneys stuck up here and there. It must have held a much larger family a few generations ago, and looked as if it hoped to again. What a splendid place to grow up in. For all its rambling oddity, it had quite a proper front porch, long and railed and roofed, and if it looked a little like a boat deck, well, that was all right.

Hawthorn whooped and galloped ahead. Hod stuck close to Bo, looking shy and hopeful. Fawn could only think that Berry’s letters must have got here in the right order, because two stout women ran out onto the porch, both looking excited but not surprised, and waved vigorously. Hawthorn jumped from his horse and bounded up the steps, and one of the women dried her hands on her apron, hugged him, and made universal signs to head and hip and heart, My, how you’ve grown!

The other shaded her eyes; Berry grinned fit to split her face and pointed emphatically at Whit, This one’s the husband!

The aunt in the apron clasped her hands over her head and shook them in a gesture of shared, if not downright lewd, female triumph that actually made Whit blush. As they rode close enough at last for voices to carry, she cupped her hands to her mouth and called, “Welcome home!”

Fawn glanced at Dag, who was looking very bemused and a little bit wary-just like a Lakewalker dropped down among strange farmers.

Welcome home to a place we’ve never seen before. But if a place was home because it held your past, wasn’t it equally so if it held your future?

She stretched out her hand to him; he shifted his reins to his hook and grasped it in a swift squeeze.

In the sunset light, his gold eyes glinted like fire.

Footsteps clumped on the stoop; at the knock on the kitchen door, Fawn grabbed a cloth, pulled her pot on its iron hook away from the hearth fire, and hurried to answer. She hoped it wasn’t another emergency. But the door swung open onto a damp and chilly afternoon, and Barr. He wore patroller togs, smelled of horse and the outdoors, and walked without a stick. Mist beaded in his dun-blond hair, gleaming in the watery light.

“Hey, Fawn!”

“Well! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes! Come in, come in!”

He shouldered through into the pungent warmth, staring around.

Fawn spared a look-see out at the sodden brown landscape. Warmer air had moved up the valley of the Grace last night, breathing wisps of lowlying fog across the sad streaks of dirty snow. The gray tailings wouldn’t be lasting much longer. If not quite spring, this was definitely the tag end of winter. No other riders were waiting in the yard, nor approaching on the part of the road she could see from here. She shut the door and turned to her unexpected guest.

Barr rubbed chapped red hands and moved gratefully toward the fire, reminding her of the very first time she’d ever met him. He was much less wet and cold and distraught this time, happily. He sniffed the air. “What are you cooking? ”

“Medicine.”

“Oh, whew! I thought it was dinner, and was worried.”

Fawn laughed, and pointed to the volume propped open on the kitchen table. “Remember that blank book Hawthorn ’n Hod gave me back on my nineteenth birthday in Graymouth? I used it to write down all the recipes for the remedies they were making up in the medicine tent at New Moon Cutoff, and drew pictures of the plants and made notes about the herb maker’s groundwork, too. It came with me in my saddlebags when we went north, you bet. Arkady was so surprised when I pulled it out. He hadn’t realized how much I had in there. ”

Barr eased out of his deerskin jacket and hung it over the back of a chair to dry. “Yeah, I ran into Sumac when I went to put my horse away in your barn. She looked downright cheerful. And, um, bulky. Floating around like those boats we saw down on the sea.” He made hand gestures to indicate a bellying sail.

“It’s the feather quilt I padded her coat with, when Arkady got to fretting about how much time she spends out with the horses in the cold. She’s less alarming out of it. It won’t be long till their baby comes, though.” She smiled. “It would make you laugh how much Arkady fusses for her, if you didn’t know his history. Instead it’s sort of sad and hopeful all at once. I must say, I suspect it’s no bad thing for a man to wait till he’s older to have his children. He seems to appreciate things more.”