Barr put in, “Some sort of pretended not to notice us, which felt odd. Some would nod greeting. This patrol had a regular string of farmers’ barns we put up at, or campsites in their woodlots. The farmers expected a few coins for the use of them, which the patrol leader doled out.”

“So-the farmers around here aren’t so ignorant of patrollers as I was back in West Blue? ” said Fawn.

Remo scratched his head. “I guess not.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m not so sure.” Encouraged by Dag’s opened hand, Remo went on, “It seemed like there was nothing much for them to be ignorant of. We were no more than a hunting party.”

“More party than hunting,” said Barr, his brow furrowing. “It wasn’t how the New Moon patrollers all slipped in and out of camp at night. I didn’t mind that. It was how they were walking their patterns. They were noisy. They broke formation all the time to talk to each other. They sang. While walking. Blight, you’d never flush a mud-man that way. Our patrol captain back at Pearl Riffle always said that could be your first sign there was a malice nearby, even without the blight. She’d have had our tongues on a toasting fork for coughing during a pattern, but here they just let the ruckus roll on.” He looked up at Dag. “Are all southern patrols like that, or was it just this one? ”

Dag swallowed his bite, and chased it with tea. “I’ve only patrolled down here one season, ’bout four years back. I gather that the areas where they’ve found a sessile within living memory aren’t quite so, ah, loose, but there’s no question that the more pressing likelihood of malices shapes us in the north.”

“Shapeless…” said Remo. “Yes, that’s what this patrol felt like.”

“That’s why it’s so important that southern patrollers exchange north,” said Dag, with a glance at the now-frowning Arkady. “Not just for the extra hands they lend us, but for the training they bring back home. Without them, the southern patrol would be falling apart.” Faster.

“Neeta’s more valuable for coming home than any two volunteers who stay on in Luthlia.”

“I’m not sure she knows that,” said Remo slowly. “This was her first patrol after coming back here with new eyes. She was… it’s like… she was the only one there who realized what we saw. And she was ashamed for her patrol mates. And she hadn’t expected to be.”

“Wouldn’t your patrol leader have trained in the north?” asked Fawn. “I thought they had to.”

“He’s been back a long time,” said Remo. “Decades. I got the impression he’d sort of given up.” He glanced up at Dag. “Was the patrol you walked with here like that? ”

“Not after a season with me along.”

Barr snorted tea through his nose.

Remo ignored him to say, “But you weren’t the patrol leader.”

“You don’t have to be.”

Remo chewed a bite of stew, swallowed. “Huh.”

–-

It seemed to Fawn that word of Dag’s new, or old, fame spread around New Moon Cutoff Camp at an unsettlingly fast clip. She supposed twenty-five gossiping patrollers dispersed to twenty-five tents added up, atop all the folks who’d met them both in the medicine tent by now.

Dag wasn’t just Arkady’s peculiar project anymore, but a man of, apparently, more than local fame. It made her wonder just what all else was in those ballads Neeta had been passing along-Fawn had only ever heard the one, back in Oleana, and it had named no names.

Dag hated it, she could tell. But as the longest-tempered man Fawn had ever met, he endured politely, mostly. Well, he did give pretty daunting shrift to the merely curious, unless it was a patient he was doing groundwork on, when he turned the questions more gently. Children got straight, if brief, answers out of him, but no one else could.

For the first time since they’d arrived, Dag began to get invitations to visit tents around the camp for something other than Arkady’s medicine walks. Any that didn’t include Fawn he refused bluntly. Any that did, he took pains to point out to the issuer that Fawn was confined to Arkady’s place and the medicine tent by camp council order.

Then came an invitation that could not be refused.

“Dinner at the camp captain’s tent?” Dag said in confusion that Fawn shared: New Moon patrol’s captain was a member of the council. “Both of us? ”

“All of us. Your patroller boys and me, as well,” Arkady told him. “I expect most of the camp council will be there.”

Dag blinked. “You think we should go? ”

“Of course you should go. This could be your chance.”

“Chance to do what? ”

Arkady paused. “Fit in better,” he said at last.

“I thought we were fittin’ in fairly good. For practical purposes.”

“Yes, well,” said Arkady vaguely.

They went.

It was a pig roast, all outside at the tent-house, really-of the camp captain, making it seem to Fawn quite like Hickory Lake for a change.

Captain Antan Bullrush and his maker wife were older folks, their children grown, but there was still a crowd for dinner: three tent-heads, all mature women who were council members this season; spouses and families and grandchildren; and, since one of the council women was aunt to Tavia, both partners. Neeta looked especially pleased. The cookout could almost have been a farmer clan picnic, with different women bringing their dishes to share. But when everyone was stuffed, and the children gone off to play along the lakeside, and lanterns hung in the trees, a more select group gathered on a circle of upturned stumps. And began to interrogate Dag.

They asked about Captain Dag Wolverine of the Wolf War. What they got told about was Captain Dag Bluefield of the Raintree malice outbreak, with a side order of Greenspring. The Wolf War was ruthlessly relegated to background, though it had to come in a little to help explain how Dag’s company had been able to go through the Raintree malice like, in Fawn’s informed view, a hot knife through butter. But if the alternate tale was meant to turn aside interest in Dag’s patrolcaptaining career, Fawn didn’t think it was working all that well.

Arkady chewed his thumb and said little, watching his protege getting turned on this spit, and sometimes spitting back. He studied the faces of the council quorum, and only winced now and then. It was plain that he wished Dag would take a more compromising tone. It was plain to Fawn that Dag wasn’t going to waste such a captive audience.

He sure didn’t sound like he had a mouth full of pebbles tonight.

At length, the circle broke up to seek desserts. And, judging from the bent heads, to exchange franker opinions privately.

Dag murmured to Arkady, “Any objection if Fawn and I slip away early? ”

Arkady pursed his lips. “No, in fact. That would be fine. I need to stay awhile and talk to some folks.”

Dag nodded. Fawn refused to go without thanking Missus Bullrush properly, but once that duty was done, she allowed him to lead her off.

They stopped by patrol headquarters to check on their horses, idling in the paddock there eating New Moon’s fodder since their arrival, then continued down the shore road in the darkening chill.

“So,” Fawn said hesitantly. “What was that all about? ”

Dag scratched his head gently with his hook. “I’m not just sure. We were being inspected, right enough. You’d think they could come to the medicine tent for that.”

“Do you think they’re deciding whether to let us stay for your two years? ”

“Maybe.” He chewed his lip. “Maybe more.”

“Dag Bluefield New Moon Cutoff? ” She shaped the name in her mouth. Camp names didn’t just tell your place of residence. If you bore one, it marked you a member of some greater whole, and even after the better part of a year trailing after Dag, Fawn didn’t know all the subtleties that implied. “Is that… something you would like? ”

“Strange,” he sighed. “At the end of last summer, that could have been the sum of my ambitions. It was exactly what I wanted from Hoharie. Train up as a medicine maker together with you, serve in camp. Let my tired feet rest from patrolling. But Hoharie choked on you, and that was the end of it. I think I’ve made it clear enough to these New Moon folks that we come as partners or not at all-they won’t make her mistake.”