Dag gave her a polite duck of his head. “Miss S—Bluefield’s mostly, ma’am. My apologies for filching your linens. I’ve been throwing another bucket of water on them each time I go by. I’ll try to get them cleaned up better before we leave.”
We not I, some quick part of Fawn’s mind noted at once, with a catch of relief.
“Mostly?” The farmwife cocked her head at him, squinting. “How’d she get hurt?”
“That would be her tale to tell, ma’am.”
Her face went still for an instant. Her eye flicked up to Fawn and then back, to take in his empty cuff. “You really kill that bogle that did all this?”
He hesitated only briefly before replying, precisely but unexpansively, “We did.”
She inhaled and gave a little snort. “Don’t you be troubling about my laundry.
The idea.”
She turned back to, or upon, her menfolk. “Here, what are you all doing standing about gabbing and gawking like a pack of ninnies? There’s work to do before dark. Horse, see to milking those poor cows, if they ain’t been frightened dry.
Sassa, fetch in the firewood, if those thieves left any in the stack, and if they didn’t, make some more. Jay, put away and put right what can be, what needs fixin’, start on, what needs tomorrow’s tools, set aside. Tad, help your grandpa with the horses, and then come and start picking up inside. Hop to it while there’s light left!”
They scattered at her bidding.
Fawn said helpfully, pushing up, “The mud-men didn’t find your storage cellar—”
And then her head seemed to drain, throbbing unpleasantly. The world did not go black, but patterned shadows swarmed around her, and she was only dimly aware of abrupt movement: a strong hand and truncated arm catching her and half-walking, half-carrying her inside. She blinked her eyes clear to find herself on the feather pallet once more, two faces looming over her, the farmwife’s concerned and wary, Dag’s concerned and… tender? The thought jolted her, and she blinked some more, trying to swim back to reason.
“—flat, Spark,” he was saying. “Flat was working.” He brushed a sweat-dampened curl out of her eyes.
“What happened to you, girl?” demanded Petti.
“ ‘M not a girl,” Fawn mumbled. “ ‘M twenty…”
“The mud-men knocked her around hard yesterday.” Dag’s intent gaze on her seemed to be asking permission to continue, and she shrugged assent. “She miscarried of a two-months child. Bled pretty fierce, but it seems to have slowed now. Wish one of my patrol women were here. You do much midwifery, ma’am?”
“A little. Keeping her lying down is right if she’s been bleeding much.”
“How do you know if she… if a woman is going to be all right, after that?”
“If the bleeding tails off to nothing within five days, it’s a pretty sure bet things are coming back around all right inside, if there’s no fever. Ten days at the most. A two-months child, well, that’s as chance will happen. Much more than three months, now, that gets more dangerous.”
“Five days,” he repeated, as if memorizing the number. “Right, we’re still all right, then. Fever… ?” He shook his head and rose to his feet, wincing as he rubbed his left arm, and followed the farmwife’s gaze around her kitchen.
With an apologetic nod, he removed his arm contraption from her table, bundled it up, and set it down at the end of the tick.
“And what knocked you around?” asked Petti.
“This and that, over the years,” he answered vaguely. “If my patrol doesn’t find us by tomorrow, I’d like to take Miss Bluefield to Glassforge. I have to report in. Will there be a wagon?”
The farmwife nodded. “Later on. The girls should bring it tomorrow when they come.” The other women and children of the Horseford family were staying in town with Sassa’s wife, it seemed, sorting out recovered goods and waiting for their men to report the farm safe again.
“Will they be making another trip, after?”
“Might. Depends.” She scrubbed the back of her neck, staring around as if a hundred things cried for her attention and she only had room in her head for ten, which, Fawn guessed, was just about the case.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” Dag inquired.
She stared at him as if taken by surprise by the offer. “Don’t know yet.
Everything’s been knocked all awhirl. Just… just wait here.”
She marched off to take a look around her smashed-up house.
Fawn whispered to Dag, “She’s not going to get settled in her mind till she has her things back in order.”
“I sensed that.” He bent over and took up the knife pouch, lying by the head of the pallet. Only then did Fawn realize how careful he’d been not to glance at it while the farmwife was present. “Can you put this somewhere out of sight?”
Fawn nodded, and sat up—slowly—to flip open her bedroll, laid at the pallet’s foot. Her spare skirt and shirt and underdrawers lay atop the one good dress she’d packed along to go look for work in, that hasty night she’d fled home.
She tucked the knife pouch well away and rolled up the blanket once more.
He nodded approval and thanks. “Best not to mention the knife to these folks, I think. Bothersome. That one worse than most.” And, under his breath, “Wish Mari would get here.”
They could hear the farmwife’s quick footsteps on the wooden floors overhead, and occasional wails of dismay, mostly, “My poor windows!”
“I noticed you left a lot out of your story,” said Fawn.
“Yes. I’d appreciate it if you would, too.”
“I promised, didn’t I? I sure don’t want to talk about that knife to just anyone, either.”
“If they ask too many questions, or too close of ones, just ask them about their troubles in turn. It’ll usually divert them, when they have so much to tell as now.”
“Ah, so that’s what you were doing out there!” In retrospect, she could spot how Dag had turned the talk so that they had learned so much of the Horsefords’
woes, but the Horsefords had received so little news in return. “Another old patroller trick?”
One corner of his mouth twitched up. “More or less.”
The farmwife came back downstairs about the time her son Tad came in from the barn, and after a moment’s thought she sent the boy and Dag off together to clean up broken glass and rubble around the house. She surveyed her kitchen and climbed down into her storage cellar, from which she emerged with a few jars for supper, seeming much reassured. After setting the jars in a row on the table—Fawn could almost see her counting stomachs and planning the upcoming meal in her head—she turned back and frowned down at Fawn.
“We’ll have to get you into a proper bed. Birdy’s room, I think, once Tad gets the glass out. It wasn’t too bad, otherwise.” And then, after a pause, in a much lower voice, “That patroller fellow tell the straight story on you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Fawn.
The woman’s face pinched in suspicion. “ ‘Cause he didn’t get those scratches on his face from no mud-man, I’ll warrant.”
Fawn looked back blankly, then said, “Oh! Those scratches. I mean, yes, that was me, but it was an accident. I mistook him for another bandit, at first. We got that one straightened out right quick.”
“Lakewalkers is strange folk. Black magicians, they say.”
Fawn struggled up on one elbow to say hotly, “You should be grateful if they are. Because blight bogles are blacker ones. I saw one, yesterday. Closer than you are to me now. Anything patrollers have to do to put them down is all right by me!”
Petti’s thoughts seemed to darken. “Was that what—did the blight bogle…
blight you?”
“Make me miscarry?”
“Aye. Because girls don’t usually miscarry just from being knocked around, or falling down stairs, or the like. Though I’ve seen some try for it. They just end up being bruised mothers, usually.”
“Yes,” said Fawn shortly, scrunching back down. “It was the bogle.” Were these too-close questions? Not yet, she decided. Even Dag had offered some explanations, just enough to satisfy without begging more questions. “It was ugly. Uglier than the mud-men, even. Bogles kill everything they touch, seemingly. You should go look at its lair, later. The woods are all dead for a mile around. I don’t know how long it will take for them to grow back.”