Fawn came up beside him, peering in fascination. “Was that the pure flight? My stars, it did look like something!”

“Almost,” Dag said in satisfaction. “Right workmanlike, leastways. You can go fetch those, Whit.”

Whit trotted off. Dag sensibly decided to quit while he was ahead. He did off his equipment and turned the makeshift range back over to Whit. Hawthorn was ruthlessly set aside when Berry, watching from a seat on the gangplank, barely hinted that she might like to try her hand. Dag gave himself over to an indolent seat on the log and a cozy cuddle with his wife. It was getting chilly; he’d favor going in soon.

Fawn nudged him and pointed, grinning. Remo was now standing up talking to Whit, earnestly demonstrating some fine point of gripping a bow. Dag replied with a finger laid to the side of his nose and a lift of his eyebrows. His lips twitched up. When next it came time to collect Berry’s misses, Remo waved Dag back and went with Whit.

A loud thump from the boat turned both Berry’s and Dag’s heads around. “What was that?” said Berry. But as no more noises followed, she turned back to watch Whit and Remo.

Dag stayed twisted, brows knotted. Hod. What’s the fool boy gone and done now?

In another few moments Bo stuck his head through the front hatch, and called, “Lakewalker, you want to come in here for a minute?”

No, I don’t, Dag could not answer. He rose, waving the concerned Berry back to the game with Whit and Remo. Fawn gave him a sharp look and tagged along.

In the kitchen and bunk space, he found Hod sitting on the floor in front of the hearth with his right trouser leg rolled up, rocking and whimpering.

“What happened?” Dag asked.

“I fell down out on the back deck,” sniveled Hod. “Hurt my knee. Fix, can’t you fix it again, please?”

Fawn drew breath in ready sympathy. Dag sighed, knelt, and let his palm hover above the joint, opening himself briefly. The damage was not deep, but Hod had definitely re-cracked one of the healing fissures in his kneecap, blight it.

Fawn said sternly, “Hod, were you trying to carry too much at a time again? Remember what I told you about a lazy man’s load?”

“No, I just fell down,” Hod protested. He seemed to think a moment.

“I was trying not to step on the raccoon.”

A quick groundsense check found the kit snoozing peacefully in Dag and Fawn’s bedroll. Dag looked up and frowned.

Bo caught his gaze and lifted his hairy brows. After a long, considering pause, he said slowly, “Actually, that kit was nowhere around. Didn’t sound like Hod tripped on the deck, either. I think he slammed into the back wall.”

Hod blurted in a flustered voice, “You didn’t see me!” Then added belatedly, “Yeah, that’s right. I tripped and fell against the wall.”

Dag sat back on his heels, taking in the ugly implications. “Hod, tell me the truth. Did you just go and knock your own knee into the wall on purpose?”

Hod would not meet his gaze. “Fell,” he muttered belligerently.

Dag drew a long breath. Hod’s was a real injury, but not a real emergency. There was no need for hasty stopgaps. Dag could take time, slow down, think. That didn’t feel like his best skill, right now, but maybe, like bow-work, it took practice. I wonder if my brain will bleed?

Hod seemed stupid and surly, but maybe those were just other words for inarticulate and terrified. Dag had won this trouble by making assumptions about Hod. When his own habits of concealment met Hod’s mute bewilderment, it wasn’t any wonder that enlightenment didn’t generally follow.

“Hod, you were standing right there on the front deck when I did the groundwork on Cress’s belly-hurt. Did you hear what I said to her and Mark about beguilement? Did you understand it?”

Hod managed somehow to shake his head yes and no at the same time. Dag couldn’t tell if that meant he hadn’t heard, hadn’t understood, or was just uncertain if it was safe to admit to either.

“Do you even know what beguilement is?” Did Dag? It seemed he was finding out.

Hod shook his head again, but then offered, “Lakewalker magic? They make people give them bargains. Or make the girls”—he shot a glance at Fawn and turned red—“want to go out to the woodpile with ’em.”

The latter, Dag guessed, being a Hod-ism, or perhaps Glassforge slang, for seduction. “It’s not either of those things,” he asserted, possibly untruthfully. At least it wasn’t either of those in this case, and he didn’t want those slanderous—or cautionary, pick one—notions cluttering up Hod’s thinking. Or his own. “You and I are both finding out just what beguilement really is, because I beguiled you by accident when I healed your smashed knee. It seems to happen when a farmer—that’s you—experiences Lakewalker groundwork and wants it to happen again. Wants it so bad he or she will do crazy things to get it.” He let his finger tap the swollen skin over the knee; Hod whimpered.

“Hurts,” said Hod. Complaint, or placation?

“No doubt. What I want to know is why you want a ground reinforcement again so bad you’d go and hurt yourself to coax one out of me?”

Hod looked as panicked as a possum in a leg-hold trap. He gulped, but kept his lips clamped.

“It’s not a trick question, blight it!” Hod jumped; Dag gentled his tone. “Lakewalkers give each other ground reinforcements all the time—well, often—and they don’t work like that on us. I have to know. Because I’ve a notion, a dream, leastways, that I’d really like to settle down with Fawn someplace and be a medicine maker who heals farmers, but I sure can’t do that if I’ll make all my patients crazy. I’m really hoping you can help me figure it out.”

“Oh,” said Hod. In a voice, absent gods, of Hoddish enlightenment. “Me, help you? Me?” He looked up at Dag and blinked. “Why didn’t you say?”

Why hadn’t he said? Maybe he should go out to that back deck and hit, say, his head against the wall…He glanced up to find Fawn looking at him with her arms crossed and her brows up as if she quite seconded Hod’s question.

Evading answering, Dag went on, “First off, this has to stop. You can’t go on hurting yourself just to get a ground reinforcement.”

Hod looked up in hope. “Would you give me one without me hurting?”

“I don’t think I’d better give you any more at all. I’m not sure if beguilement wears off over time or not, but I’m pretty sure repeating makes it worse.”

“Oh.” Hod gingerly petted his knee and blinked tears. “You gonna make me…wait?”

“If only I had two hurt Hods, I could make one wait and one not, and compare, and then I’d know.”

“Which one would I get to be?”

Dag couldn’t quite figure out an answer to this. He ran his hand through his hair.

Fawn put in, “In a way, you do have another Hod to do the waiting. Cress. If we ever get back to Pearl Bend, say, next spring, you could check up on her.”

“Good point, Spark.”

Hod, too, brightened. He looked at Fawn almost favorably.

“I guess that frees me up to try something else.” Dag squinted into the fire. He hated to interrupt the first voluntary interchange Remo had enjoyed with his boat-mates since the start of this trip, but needs must.

“Fawn, would you go ask Remo to come inside for a moment, please?”

Her brows twitched up, but she nodded and went off. In a few minutes, Remo shouldered through the shadowed supplies into the firelight and lantern glow of the kitchen area, Fawn trailing. He frowned at Hod and looked his question at Dag, What’s this?

“Ah, Remo,” said Dag. “Glad you’re here. Have you been taught how to give minor ground reinforcements, out on patrol?”

“Verel taught all of us who had the knack,” said Remo cautiously. “I’ve never had a chance to try it out for real.”

“Good, then it’s time you had some practice. I would like you to put a reinforcement into Hod’s hurt knee, here.”

Remo stared, shocked. “But he’s a farmer!”