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 Oh. Fawn, looking back through clouds of regret, had not even thought ahead
to her future fertility.  Does that happen to some women, after a
miscarriage?
 Sometimes. Or after a bad birth. Delicate parts in there. It amazes me the
process works at all, when I think about all the things I ve seen can go
wrong.
Fawn nodded, then reached to put away Dag s blue-hilted knife, still lying on
her bedroll atop her spare clothes.
 So, said Mari in a carefully bland tone,  who s the other half owner sides
you of that knife s priming? Some farm lout?
Fawn s jaw set.  Just me. The lout made it very clear he was giving it all to
me. Which was why I was out on the road in the first place.
 Farmers. I ll never understand  em.
 There are no Lakewalker louts?
 Well&  Mari s long, embarrassed drawl conceded the point.
Fawn reread the faded brown lettering on the bone blade.  Dag meant to drive
this into his own heart someday. Didn t he. This Kauneo had intended that he
should.
 Aye.
Now he couldn t. That was something, at least.  You have one, too.
 Someone has to prime. Not everyone, but enough. Patrollers understand the
need better.
 Was Kauneo a patroller?
 Didn t Dag say?
 He said she was a woman who d died twenty years ago up northwest someplace.
 That s a bit close-mouthed even for him. Mari sighed.  It s not my place to
tell his tales, but if you are to have the holding of that knife, farmer girl,
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you d better understand what it is and where it comes from.
 Yes, said Fawn firmly,  please. I m so tired of making stupid mistakes.
Mari twitched a provisionally approving eyebrow at this.  Very well. I ll
give you what Dag would call the short tale. Her long inhalation suggested it
wasn t going to be as short as all that, and Fawn sat cross-legged again,
intent.
 Kauneo was Dag s wife.
A tremor of shock ran through Fawn. Shock, but not surprise, she realized.  I
see.
 She died atWolfRidge .
 He hadn t mentioned anyWolfRidge to me. He just called it a bad malice war.
Though there could be no such thing as a good malice war, Fawn suspected.
 Farmer girl, Dag doesn t talk aboutWolfRidge to anyone. One of his several
little quirks you have to get used to. You have to understand, Luthlia is the
biggest, wildest hinterland of the seven, with the thinnest population of
Lakewalkers to try to patrol it. Terrible patrolling cold swamps and trackless
woods and killing winters. The other hinterlands lend more young patrollers to
Luthlia than to anywhere, but they still can t keep up.
 Kauneo came from a tent of famously fierce patrollers up that way. She was
very beautiful I guess courted by everyone. Then this quiet, unassuming young
patrol leader from the east, walking around the lake on his second training
tour, stole her heart right out from under all of them. A hint of pride
colored her voice, and Fawn thought,Yes, she s really his aunt .  He made
plans to stay. They were string-bound you farmers would say, married and he
got promoted to company captain.
 Dag wasn t always a patroller? said Fawn.
Mari snorted.  That boy should have been a hinterland lieutenant by now, if
he hadn t& agh, anyway. Most of our patrols are more like hunts, and most turn
up nothing. In fact, it s possible to patrol all your life and never be in on
a malice kill, by one chance or another. Dag has his ways of improving those
odds for himself. But when a malice gets entrenched, when it goes to real war&
then we re all making it up as we go along.
She rose, stalked across the bedchamber to her washstand, poured a glass of
water, and drank it down. She fell to pacing as she continued.
 Big malice slipped through the patrol patterns. It didn t have many people
to enslave up that way, no bandits like the malice you slew here. There are no
farmers in Luthlia, nor anywhere north of theDeadLake , save now and then some
trapper or trader slips in that we escort out. But the malice did find wolves.
Itdid things to wolves. Wolf-men, man-wolves, dire wolves as big as ponies,
with man-wits. By the time the thing was found, it had grown itself an army of
wolves. The Luthlian patrollers sent out a call-up for help from neighbor
hinterlands, but meanwhile, they were on their own.
 Dag s company, fifty patrollers including Kauneo and a couple of her
brothers, was sent to hold a ridge to cover the flank of another party trying
to strike up the valley at the lair. The scouts led them to expect an attack
of maybe fifty dire wolves. What they got was more like five hundred.
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Fawn s breath drew in.
 In one hour Dag lost his hand, his wife, his company all but three, and the
ridge. What he didn t lose was the war, because in the hour they d bought, the
other group made it all the way through to the lair. When he woke up in the
medicine tent, his whole life was burned up like a pyre, I guess. He didn t
take it well.
 In due course his dead wife s tent folk despaired of him and sent him home.
Where he didn t take it well some more. Then Fairbolt Crow, bless his
bones our camp captain, though he was just a company captain back then got
smart, or desperate, or furious, and dragged him off to Tripoint. Got some
clever farmer artificer he knew there to make up the arm harness, and they
went round and round on it till they hit on devices that worked. Dag practiced
with his new bow till his fingers bled, pulled himself together to meet
Fairbolt s terms, and let me tell you Fairbolt didn t cut him any slack, and
was let back on patrol. Where he has been ever since.
 Some ten or twelve sharing knives have passed through Dag s hand
since people keep giving them to him because they re pretty sure to get
used but he always kept that pair aside. The only mementos of Kauneo I know of
that he didn t shove away like they scorched him. So that s the knife now in
your keeping, farmer girl.
Fawn held it up and drew it through her fingers.  You d think it would be
heavier. Did I really want to know all this ?
 Aye. Mari sighed.
Fawn glanced curiously at Mari s gray head.  Will you ever be a company
captain? You must have been patrolling for a long time.
 I ve had far less time in the field than Dag, actually, for all I m twenty [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]