“It’s not very deep,” said Barr, “but I imagine they’ll pile some river stones on top. Some of the boatmen were for making the bandits dig it themselves, but finally decided it was more trouble guarding them than it was worth.”

Remo added morosely, “One of the keelers had kin on one of the boats the bandits took a month or so back. He found out just what exactly had happened to them, I guess. Wain let him cut off Big Drum’s head personally. Little Drum’s, too, even though he was dead already. They’re going to put them up on poles in front of the cave as a warning to others.”

“We left right after that,” said Barr.

Healthy young men or no, to Fawn’s eye both looked as shaken as she felt, and not just from the extra sensitivity lent by groundsenses possibly not closed tight enough during these proceedings. Barr wandered out into the meadow to pat a horse, too, a tidy piebald mare.

“Hey,” he called back over his shoulder after a moment, “this one’s in foal! Whoever takes her is going to get a bonus horse!”

Remo walked out to see, and Fawn tagged after. She was reminded of Grace, left back in West Blue, and was washed by an unexpected wave of homesickness. How could you be homesick for a horse? But she suddenly missed her own mare fiercely, wondering how she was getting along, and if Grace’s round barrel looked any rounder yet. She stretched her hands and ran them over the black-and-white belly, speculating how far along this mare was. Dag’s horse-raising tent-sister Omba could have told exactly, with her groundsense. Maybe Barr shared the talent.

Remo put his hand on the mare’s withers and looked across at Barr, who had started picking burrs out of her mane. Remo pitched his voice low. “Wain said we were due a share of the salvage rights. We could take a couple of these horses. Ride back to Pearl Riffle before the snow flies.”

Barr looked up in surprise. “Huh! When did you change your mind?”

“Crane…was pretty awful. I’m thinking now it’s not such a good thing for a Lakewalker to be exiled from his kin. Even if they do badger him half to death. Maybe we should just go take our lumps.”

Fawn, stroking the mare’s warm flank, observed, “I don’t think it’s good for anyone to become outcast, Lakewalker or farmer. Look at all those bandits.”

“Speaking of ending up in a pit of your own digging, yeah,” said Barr. He picked at another brown, spiky burr, carefully separating the coarse hairs from it. “I thought you wanted to see the sea. Or else go drown yourself in it.”

“Neither one, anymore.” Remo’s voice went lower. “The world is uglier than I’d ever dreamed. I’ve had enough. Let’s go home.”

This hopeless world, Crane had said. And Crane had certainly done more than his share to make it worse.

“Not all of it’s that bad,” Barr said mildly. He glanced across the meadow; Fawn followed his gaze to Dag, still leaning head-back, looking utterly spent. “Thing is…I think I’ve changed my mind, too. And even if I hadn’t, I don’t think it’d be so good to let him”—he jerked his head Dag-ward—“go walking around out there all by himself, either. In fact,” he added judiciously, “I think that might be worse than the worst snag-brained thing I’ve ever done.” He raised his eyes. “And you know I’ve done some champion snag-brained things.”

Fawn cleared her throat. “Dag does have a partner,” she pointed out. She held up her cord-wrapped left wrist, drawing their eyes and maybe groundsenses as well. “We’re as roped together as any two Luthlian patrollers out on the ice. And I’m not about to let him go drown in the dark and cold, neither.”

Remo rubbed his lips. Barr undid another burr. Neither argued.

I’ve taken everything Dag was, and thought the trade fair because he did. But he needs more than just me. She stood straighter and said, “Still, I really think having you two along has been good for him. An anchor in the old when he’s straining and reaching for something so new no one has ever grasped it before. Because he’s not really a patroller anymore, not in his ground. He’s trying to turn into something else.”

Remo nodded. “Yes, medicine maker.”

“Or knife maker,” said Barr more doubtfully. “And if he’s going to be that, we sure enough have a duty to guard him. Camp or no camp!”

Fawn shook her head, though not in disagreement with that last. “First thing a new maker has to do is make himself. I think it’s hard for any youngster to do that, even apprenticed to a mentor in a chosen craft, but Dag’s trying to do it all on his own, somewhere in midair. I’ve seen him mend a busted glass bowl, and a lot of hurt people, and a lost sharing knife, and what he did in Raintree I can’t begin to describe, but what he really wants to mend is the world.”

Remo stared at her, appalled. “No one can do that!”

“No one, no. I ’spect Dag would say the world’s big and we’re small and I guess we all break in the end. But when all the old arguments about farmers and Lakewalkers have gone ’round and ’round ’bout sixteen times and plowed into exhaustion, the problem of Greenspring will still be sitting there.” Fawn swallowed. “We may not be able to win that toss, either, but it’d sure be nice to have some company while we’re losin’. That’s one.”

Remo’s lips moved, but no sound came out. He blinked rapidly.

Fawn drew breath and went on: “Cracking that beguilement mystery open was worth your coming along all on its own. That’s two. And I don’t know how many more boats and lives those bandits would have destroyed before the end if we hadn’t chanced along to stop them. That’s three. Three good reasons are good enough for going on with, Dag says.”

She glanced aside. I could wish it was less hard on Berry. But the boat boss was sitting on the log next to Whit, finally beginning to talk a bit. Whit was listening attentively. He had an arm around her waist in a comforting sort of way, and she was making no move to shrug it off. Berry’s strength still impressed Fawn, but she was glad that maybe she didn’t have to be strong so all-by-herself, now. Because that could be wearing on a woman.

“I don’t know,” said Remo. “I don’t think I know anything anymore.”

“Blight, I never did,” said Barr. “It hasn’t stopped me!” He blinked cheerily, and fell into his old, wheedling voice. “You’ve got to come along, Remo, to keep me from falling into the sea. Or to push me in, whichever.”

Remo scratched his head, and said wryly, “Hard choices.”

“Hey…!”

Leaving them to take up their comfortable, habitual squabbling, Fawn made her way back to Dag, satisfied.

A while after the last unnerving noises stopped drifting over the ridge, they all made their way back to the Fetch the long way around, back of the cave, avoiding both the woods and the new poles down by the shore. Fawn expected she’d go peek at those gruesome standards later, and then be sorry she had. She definitely wasn’t going to venture into the winter-bare woods until the crop hanging there had been harvested and planted. And maybe not even then.

Dag thought Berry would have been glad to shove off that very afternoon, as the Fallowfield family’s flatboat did, but they were all held there by the boatmen’s demands on Dag for medicine work. Yet by the following morning Chicory was doing better than Dag had anticipated, sitting up and eating, if wincing at his tender skull and throbbing headache. The Raintree men made plans to camp at the cave for a few more days, then ride home in gentle stages, taking the bandits’ horses and horse gear for their salvage share. Fawn opined that it was a good idea to get Chicory back into the hands of Missus Chicory as soon as might be to finish recovering. In all, Dag thought the Raintree hunters would be trailing home with fuller bags than if they’d managed to successfully complete their original river venture, and much sooner, so Missus Chicory might forgive the broken head. If perhaps not let anyone forget it for a good long time, or so Bearbait feared.