Beguilement (39 page)

“Did she say why?” Dag asked, to buy a moment more to think.

Rush took a couple of breaths to invent an answer, apparently having expected Dag to leap up without delay. “Some wedding thing or other,” he replied. “She didn’t say, but she wants you right now.”

Dag scratched his temple gently with his hook, glad that he had mostly stuck to the deeply ingrained habit of not discussing Lakewalker abilities with anyone here, Fawn and Nattie excepted. He was now one move ahead in this game; he tried to figure how not to squander that advantage, because he suspected it was the only one he had. It would be amusing to just sit here and watch Rush dig himself deeper concocting more desperate reasons for Dag to walk down the hill into what was shaping up to be a neat little ambush. But that would leave the whole pack of them running around loose all night to evolve other plans. As little as Dag wanted to deal with this tonight, still less did he want to deal with it in the morning. And most especially did he not want it to impinge on Spark in any way.

His brotherly enemies, it seemed, were looking after that angle for him just now. So.

He let his groundsense play lightly over the lower woods, which he had crossed several times on foot in the past days, looking for… yes. Just exactly that.

A

flush, not of excitement, but of that very peculiar calm that came over him when facing a bandit camp or a malice lair jerked his mind up to another level.

Targets, eh. He knew what to do with targets. But would targets know what to do with him? His lips drew back. If not, he would teach them.

“Um… Dag?” said Rush uncertainly.

He wasn’t wearing his war knife. That was fine; he had no hand to wield it.

He stood up and shook out his left arm. “Sure, Rush. Where did you say, again?”

“Down by the road,” said Rush, both relieved and the reverse. Absent gods, but the boy was a poor liar. On the whole, that was a point in his favor.

“You coming with me, Rush?”

“In a minute. You go along. I have to get something in the house.”

“All right,” said Dag amiably, and trod off down the hill to the lane. He descended it for a few hundred paces, then cut over to the wooded hillside, plotting his routes. He needed to surprise his ambushers on the correct side for his purpose. He wondered how fast they could run. His legs were long; theirs were young. Best not to cut it too close.

Mari would beat me for trying this fool stunt. It was an oddly comforting thought. Familiar.

Dag ghosted down the hill at an angle until he was about fifteen feet behind the four young men hiding in the shadows of the trees and keeping watch on the lane.

Looks like Sunny took my advice. It was still early twilight; Dag’s groundsense would give him considerable advantage in the dark, but he wanted his quarry to be able to see him. “Evening, boys,” he said. “Looking for me?”

They jumped and whirled. Sunny’s gold head was bright even in the shadows.

The others were more nondescript: one stout, one as muscular as Sunny, and one skinny; young enough to be foolish and big enough to be dangerous. It was an unpleasant combination. Three were armed with cudgels, for which Dag had a new respect. Sunny had both a stick and a big hunting knife, the latter still in the sheath at his belt. For now.

Sunny got his breath back and growled, “Hello, patroller. Let me tell you how it’s going to be.”

Dag tilted his head as if in curiosity.

“You’re not wanted here. In a few minutes Rush is going to bring down your horse and your gear, and you’re going to get on and ride north. And you don’t come back.”

“Amazing!” Dag marveled. “How do you figure you’re going to make that happen, son?”

“If you don’t, you get the beating of your life. And we’ll tie you on your horse and you’ll still ride north. Only without your teeth.” Sunny’s grin showed white in the shadows, to emphasize this threat. His friends shifted, a little too tense and worried to quite share the amusement, although one tried a huffy sort of laugh to show support.

“Not to find fault, but I see a few problems with your plan. First would be a notable absence of horse. I ‘spect Rush is going to have a trifle of difficulty handling Copperhead.” Dag let his groundsense spread briefly as far as the old barn. Rush’s troubles were indeed beginning. He decided he did not have the attention to spare on managing his horse at this distance, and withdrew the link. The entire family had been told, at the dinner table in front of Sorrel and Tril, to leave Copperhead alone unless Dag was there. Rush was on his own.

Dag tried not to smile too much.

“Patroller, Fawn can handle your horse.”

“Indeed she can. But, you know, you sent Rush. Unfortunate, that.”

“Then you can start walking.”

“After a beating? You have a high opinion of my stamina.” He let his voice go softer. “Think the four of you can take me?”

They glanced at his sling, at his handless left arm, at each other. Dag was flattered that they didn’t all burst into laughter at this point. He thought they should have, but he wasn’t about to say so. The stout one, in fact, looked just a shade ashamed. Sunny, granted, was more guarded. That hunting knife was a new ornament.

“Just to make it clear, I decline your invitation to the road. I don’t care to miss my wedding. Now, it does look as if you have the numbers on your side.

Are you prepared to kill me tonight? How many of you are ready to die to make that happen? Have you thought how your parents and families will feel about it tomorrow? How the survivors are going to explain to them what happened?

Killing gets a lot messier than you’d think, and the mess doesn’t end with burying the corpses. I speak from long experience.”

He had to stop this; by their uncertain expressions, his words were getting through to at least two of them, and that hadn’t exactly been his intent when he’d started babbling, here. Run and chase, that was the game plan.

Fortunately, Sunny and the other muscular one were starting to try to stalk him, moving apart and around to get into position for a rush. To encourage them, he started to back up. And called, “No wonder Fawn calls you Stupid Sunny.”

Sunny’s head jerked up. From the side, one of his friends muffled a guffaw; Sunny shot a glare at him and snapped to Dag, “Fawn’s a slut. But you know that.

Don’t you, patroller.”

Right, that’s done it. “You’ll have to catch me first, boys. If you’re as slow-footed as you are slow-witted, I shouldn’t have a problem—”

Sunny lunged, his stick whistling through the air. Dag was not there.

Dag stretched his legs, driving up the hill, dodging around trees, boots slipping on old leaves and damp limestone lumps and green-black rolling round hickory husks. By the thump and pained grunt, at least one of his pursuers was finding the footing equally foul. He didn’t actually want to lose the boys in the woods, but he wanted a good head start by the time he arrived…

Here.

Ah. Hm.

His chosen tree turned out to be a shagbark hickory with a trunk a bit less than a foot and a half wide. And no side branches for twenty feet straight up.

This was a mixed blessing. It would certainly be a challenge for the boys to follow him up it. If he could get up it. He pulled his right arm from the sling and let it swing out of his way, reached up with his left, jammed in his hook, clapped his knees around the trunk, and began shinnying. Yanked the hook out again, reached, jammed, shinnied. Again. Again. He was about fifteen feet in the air when the pursuit arrived, winded and swearing and waving their cudgels. It occurred to him, in a meditative sort of way as he dragged his body skyward, that even without the unpleasant searing feeling in his left shoulder muscles, he was putting an awful lot of trust in a small wooden bolt and some stitching designed to pull out. The rough bark strips crackled and split beneath his gripping knees, small bits raining down in an aromatic shower. If his hook gave way and he slid down, the bark would have an interesting serrated effect between his legs, too.

He made it to the first sturdy side branch, put an arm and a leg over, winched himself up, and stood. He searched for his objective. Absent gods, another fifteen feet to go. Up, then. A dry branch gave way under one foot, which was partly useful, for he was then able to kick it free and drop it on the upturned face of the skinny fellow who was being urged up the tree in Dag’s wake by his friends. He yelped and fell back, discouraged for a moment. Dag didn’t need too many more moments.

To his delight, a rock whistled up past him, then another. “Ow!” he cried realistically, to lure more of them. A couple more missiles rose and fell, followed by a meaty clunk and an entirely authentic “OW!” from below. Dag made sure they could hear his evil laugh, even though he was wheezing like a smithy’s bellows by now.

Almost to goal. Absent gods, the blighted thing was well out on that side branch. He extended himself, gripping the branch he was half-lying across under his right armpit, feet sliding along the wobbly bough below it, wishing for almost the first time in his life for more height and reach. Overbalance at this elevation, and he could swiftly prove himself stupider than Stupid Sunny. A

little more, a little more, get his hook around that attachment… and a good yank.

Dag clung hard as the rough gray paper-wasp nest the size of a watermelon parted from the branch and began its thirty-five foot-drop. Most of the nest’s residents were home for the evening, his groundsense told him, settling down for the night. Wake up! You’re under attack! His feeble effort to stir up the wasps with his ground seemed redundant when the plummeting object hit the dirt and ruptured with a loud and satisfying thwack. Followed by a deep angry whine he could hear all the way up here.

The first screams were a deal more satisfying, though.

He cuddled back against the trunk of the tree, feet braced on some less flexible side branches, gasping for breath and applying himself to a few refinements.

Persuading the furious wasps to advance up trouser legs and down collars proved not as difficult as he’d feared, although he could not simply bounce them like mosquitoes, and they were much less tractable than fireflies. A matter of practice, Dag decided. He set to it with a will.

“Ah! Ah! They’re in my hair, they’re in my hair, they’re stinging meee!” came a wail from below, voice too high-pitched to identify.

“Augh, my ears! Ow, my hands! Get them off, get them off!”

“Run for the river, Sunny!”

The shuffling sounds of retreat filtered up through the leaves; the pell-mell flight wouldn’t help them much, for Dag made sure they left under full guard.

Even without groundsense, though, he could tell when his trouser-explorers made it all the way to target by the earsplitting shrieks that went up and up until breath was gone.

“Limp for the river, Sunny,” Dag muttered savagely, as the frantic cries trailed away to the east.

Then came the matter of getting down.

Dag took it slowly, at least till the last ten feet when his hook slipped free and scored a long slash down the trunk in the wake of the flying bark bits from under his knees. But he did manage to land on his feet and avoid banging his splint very much on anything on the way. He staggered upright, gasping. “It was easier… when I could just… gut them…”

No. Not really.

He sighed, and did his best to tidy himself up a trifle, brushing bark and sticks and wide papery leaves from his clothing and hair with the back of his hook, and gratefully slipping his throbbing right arm back into its sling. A

few stray wasps buzzed near in investigative menace; he sent them off after their nest mates and slithered back down the slope to where the horses were tied.

He picked apart their ties and did his best to loop up their reins so they wouldn’t step on them, led them out onto the road, and pointed them south, trying to plant horsey suggestions about barns and grain and home into their limited minds. They would either find their way, or Sunny and his friends could have a fine time over the next few days looking for them. Once the boys could get their swollen selves out of bed, that is. A couple of the would-be bullies, including Sunny—Dag had made quite sure of Sunny on that score—would definitely not be wishing to ride home tonight. Or for many nights to come.

As he was wearily climbing back up the lane, he met Sorrel hastening down.

Sorrel gripped a pitchfork and looked thoroughly alarmed.

“What in thunder was that awful screeching, patroller?” he demanded.

“Some fool young fellows trespassing in your woods thought it would be a grand idea to chuck rocks at a wasp nest. It didn’t work out the way they’d pictured.”

Sorrel snorted in half-amused vexation, the tension draining out of his body, then paused. “Really?”

“I think that would be the best story all around, yes.”

Sorrel gave a little growl that reminded Dag suddenly of Fawn. “Plain enough there’s more to it. Have it in hand, do you?” He turned again to walk up the lane side by side with Dag.

“That part, yes.” Dag extended his groundsense again, this time toward the old barn. His future brother-in-law was still alive, though his ground was decidedly agitated at the moment. “There’s another part. Which I think is your place and not mine to deal with.” It was not one patrol leader’s job to correct another patrol leader’s people. On the other hand, teaming up could sometimes be remarkably effective. “But I think we might get forward faster if you’d be willing to take some direction from me.”

“About what?”

“In this case, Reed and Rush.”

Sorrel muttered something about, “… ready to knock their fool heads together.”

Then added, “What about them?”

“I think we ought to let Rush tell us. Then see.”

“Huh,” said Sorrel dubiously, but he followed as Dag turned aside from the lane at the old barn.