Most of the animals had collected in the upper end of the pasture, away from the disturbing intruder. The bay mare raised her head and snuffled at him as he approached. He paused, wiped his knife dry on her warm side, sheathed it, and scratched her poll, which made her flop her ears sideways, droop her lip, and sigh contentedly. The farmwife’s tart suggestion of last night that he take the mare and ride off surfaced in his memory. Tempting idea. Yes. But not alone.

He climbed the fence, crossed the yard, and made his way up onto the porch.

Fawn gazed up at him with nearly as worshipful an expression as Tad, only with keener understanding. The farmwife had her arms crossed, torn between gratitude and glowering.

Dag was suddenly mortally tired of mistrustful strangers. He missed his patrol, for all their irritations. He almost missed the irritations, in their comfortable familiarity.

“Hey, Little Spark. I was going to wait for the wagon and take you to Glassforge lying flat, but I got to thinking. We might double up and ride out the way we came in the other day, and you wouldn’t be jostled around any worse.”

Her face lit. “Better, I should think. That lane would rattle your teeth, in a wagon.”

“Even taking it slowly and carefully, we could reach town in about three hours’

time. If you think it wouldn’t overtire you?”

“Leave now, you mean? I’ll pack my bedroll. It’ll only take a moment!” She twirled about.

“Put my arm harness in it, will you? Along with the other things.” Arm harness, knife pouch, and the linen bag of shattered bone and dreams—everything else that he’d arrived in, he was wearing; everything he’d borrowed was put back.

She paused, lips pursing as if following the same inventory, then nodded vigorously. “Right.”

“Don’t bounce. Don’t scamper, either. Gently!” he called after her. The kitchen door shut on her trailing laugh.

He turned to find Petti giving him a measuring look. He raised his brows back at her.

She shrugged, and said on a sigh, “Not my business, I suppose.”

He bit back rude agreement, converting the impulse to a more polite nod, and turned to collect the mare.

By the time he’d reaffixed the rope to the halter for reins and led the horse to the porch, murmuring promises of grain and a nice stall in Glassforge into the fuzzy flicking ears, Fawn was back out, breathless, with her bedroll slung over her shoulder, pelting Petti with good-byes and thank-yous. The honest warmth of them drew an answering smile from the farmwife seemingly despite herself.

“You be a lot more careful of yourself, now, girl,” Petti admonished.

“Dag will look after me,” Fawn assured her cheerily.

“Oh, aye.” Petti sighed, after a momentary pause, and Dag wondered what comment she’d just bit back. “That’s plain.”

From the mounting block of the porch, Dag slid readily aboard the mare’s bare back. Happily, the horse had wide-sprung ribs and no bony back ridge, and so was as comfortable to sit as a cushion; he needed to beg neither saddle nor pads from the farm. He stiffened his right ankle to make a stirrup of his foot for Fawn, and she scrambled up and sat across his lap as before. Wriggling into place, she smoothed her skirts and slipped her right arm around him. A little to his surprise, Petti shuffled forward and thrust a wrapped packet into Fawn’s hands.

“It’s only bread and jam. But it’ll keep you on the road.”

Dag touched his temple. “Thank you, ma’am. For everything.” His hand found the rope reins again.

She nodded stiffly. “You, too.” And, after a moment, “You just think about what I said, patroller. Or just think, anyways.”

This seemed to call for either no answer at all, or a long defensive argument; Dag prudently chose the first, helped Fawn tuck the packet in her bedroll, nodded again, and turned the horse away. He extended his groundsense to its limit in one last check, but nothing resembling an aggravated patroller beating through the bushes stirred for a mile in any direction, nor more distraught dying mud-men either.

The bay mare’s hooves scythed through the wiry chicory, its blossoms looking like bits of blue sky fallen and scattered along the ruts, and the nodding daisies. The farm men were dragging the mud-man’s corpse into the woods as they rode down the fence line. They all waved, and Sassa trotted over to the end of the lane in time to say, “Off to Glassforge already? I’ll be going in soon.

If you see any of our folks, tell them we’re all right! See you in town?”

“Sure!” said Fawn, and “Maybe,” said Dag. He added, “If any of my people turn up here, would you tell them we’re all right and that I’ll meet them in town too?”

“ ‘Course!” Sassa promised cheerily.

And then the track curved into the woods, and the farm and all its folk fell out of sight behind. Dag breathed relief as the quiet of the humid summer morning closed in, broken only by the gentle thump of the mare’s hooves, the liquid trill of a red-crest, and the rain-refreshed gurgle of the creek that the road followed. A striped ground squirrel flickered across the track ahead of them, disappearing with a faint rustle into the weeds.

Fawn cuddled down, her head resting on his chest, and allowed herself to be rocked along, not speaking for a while. Ambushed again by the deep fatigue of her blood loss after the dawn’s spate of excitement, Dag judged; like other injured younglings he’d known, she seemed likely to overestimate her capacity, swinging between imprudent activity and collapse. He hoped her recovery would be as swift. She made a warm and comfortable burden, balanced on his lap. The mare’s walk was certainly smoother than a wagon would have been in these muddy ruts, and he had no intention of jostling either of them with a trot. A few mosquitoes whined around them in the damp shade, and he gently bumped them away from her fair skin with a flick of his ground against theirs.

The scent of her skin and hair, the moving curve of her breasts as she breathed, and the pressure of her thighs on his stimulated him, but not nearly so much as the light, the contentment, and the flattering sense of safety swirling through her complex ground. She was not herself aroused, but her air of openness, of sheer physical acceptance of his presence, made him unreasonably happy in turn, like a man warmed by a fire. The deep red note of her inmost injury still lurked underneath, and the violet shadings of her bruises clouded her ground as they did her flesh, but the sharp-edged glints of pain were much reduced.

She could not sense his ground in turn; she was unaware of his lingering inspection. A Lakewalker woman would have felt his keen regard, seeing just as deeply into him if he did not close himself off and keep closed, trading blindness for privacy. Feeling guiltily perverse, he indulged his inner senses upon Fawn without excuse of need—or fear of self-revelation.

It was a little like watching water lilies; rather more like smelling a dinner he was not allowed to eat. Was it possible to be starved for so long as to forget the taste of food, for the pangs of hunger to burn out like ash? It seemed so. But both the pleasure and the pain were his heart’s secret, here.

He was put in mind, suddenly, of the soil at the edge of a recovering blight; the weedy bedraggled look of it, unlovely yet hopeful. Blight was a numb gray thing, without sensation. Did the return of green life hurt? Odd thought.

She stirred, opening her eyes to stare into the shadows of the woods, here mostly beech, elm, and red oak, with an occasional towering Cottonwood, or, in more open areas around the stream, stubby dogwood or redbud, long past their blooming. Splashes of the climbing sun spangled the leaves of the upper branches, sparking off lingering water drops.

“How will you find your patrol in Glassforge?” she asked.