“In one hour Dag lost his hand, his wife, his company all but three, and the ridge. What he didn’t lose was the war, because in the hour they’d bought, the other group made it all the way through to the lair. When he woke up in the medicine tent, his whole life was burned up like a pyre, I guess. He didn’t take it well.

“In due course his dead wife’s tent folk despaired of him and sent him home. Where he didn’t take it well some more. Then Fairbolt Crow, bless his bones—our camp captain, though he was just a company captain back then—got smart, or desperate, or furious, and dragged him off to Tripoint. Got some clever farmer artificer he knew there to make up the arm harness, and they went round and round on it till they hit on devices that worked. Dag practiced with his new bow till his fingers bled, pulled himself together to meet Fairbolt’s terms, and let me tell you Fairbolt didn’t cut him any slack, and was let back on patrol. Where he has been ever since.

“Some ten or twelve sharing knives have passed through Dag’s hand since—people keep giving them to him because they’re pretty sure to get used—but he always kept that pair aside. The only mementos of Kauneo I know of that he didn’t shove away like they scorched him. So that’s the knife now in your keeping, farmer girl.”

Fawn held it up and drew it through her fingers. “You’d think it would be heavier.” Did I really want to know all this?

“Aye.” Mari sighed.

Fawn glanced curiously at Mari’s gray head. “Will you ever be a company captain? You must have been patrolling for a long time.”

“I’ve had far less time in the field than Dag, actually, for all I’m twenty years older. I walked the woman’s path. I spent four or five years training as a girl—we must train up the girls, for all that fellows like Dag disapprove, because if ever our camps are attacked, it’ll be us and the old men defending them. I got string-bound, got blood-bound—had my children, that is—and then went back to patrolling. I expect to keep walking till my luck or my legs give out, five more years or ten, but I don’t care to deal with anything more fractious than a patrol, thank you. Then back to camp and play with my grandchildren and their children till it’s time to share. It will do, as a life.”

Fawn’s brow wrinkled. “Did you ever imagine another?” Or being thrown into another, as Fawn had been?

Mari cocked her head. “Can’t say as I ever did. Though I’d have my boy back first if I were given wishes.”

“How many children did you have?”