Dag could feel a wet trickle over his lip, and licked at it, unmistakable iron tang. He tried to raise his hand to touch his throbbing face but found it would not work properly. Drawing breath through his teeth in a long hiss at the flaring pain, he searched his mind for curses and found none strong enough. His groundsense, turned in upon himself, left him in no doubt. He wheeled away, bent over, and spat blood and fury on the ground before turning back to her. “Nose is all right,” he mumbled in frustrated wrath. “Right arm’s broken. Blight it!”

13

Their hostelry in Lumpton Market turned out to be an elderly inn just off the straight road north from town. Fawn thought it a sad comedown from the fine hotel in Glassforge, for it was small and grubby, if not without a certain air of shabby comfort. Further, it demanded cash money even from patrollers. In summer, however, patrons were sent out back of the kitchen to eat their dinners on plank tables and benches under some graceful old black walnut trees overlooking the side road, much better than the dank common room. Looking around curiously, Fawn saw no other Lakewalkers here tonight, just a quartet of teamsters at one table intent on their beer and, beyond them, a farm couple busy with a pack of noisy young children. Even with his height, striking looks, and splinted arm in a sling, Dag drew only brief stares, and Fawn felt reassuringly unnoticed in his shadow.

Dag slumped onto his bench with an understandably tired grunt, and Fawn slid in at his right. She plucked loose the ties of the lumpy leather wrap he’d directed she bring from his saddlebag, unrolling it to find it contained an array of extra devices for his wrist cuff. “Goodness, what are all these?”

“This and that. Experiments, or things I don’t use every day.” As she stared in bewilderment and held up a wooden bolt anchoring a curved and edged metal piece looking like a small stirrup, he added, “That’s a scraper. I spend a lot of time in the evening scraping hides, out on patrol. Boring as all get out, but one of the first jobs I took on after I got the arm harness. Forced me to strengthen the arm, which was good when I took up the bow.”