Fawn answered briskly, “A sneak thief at Lumpton Market lifted my bedroll yesterday. Dag got it back, but his arm was broken in the fight before the thieves got scared and ran off. Dag gave a real good description to the Lumpton folks, though, so they might catch the fellows.” Her jaw set just a trifle. “So I kind of owe him for the arm.”

“Oh,” said Rush. Reed and Whit stared across the table with renewed, if daunted, interest.

Tril Bluefield, looking hungrily and now more carefully at her restored daughter, frowned and let her hand drift to Fawn’s cheek where the four parallel gouges were now paling pink scars. “What are those marks?”

She glanced sidelong at Dag; he shrugged, Go on. She said, “That’s where the mud-man hit me.”

“The what?” said her mother, face screwing up.

“A…sort of bandit,” Fawn revised this. “Two bandits grabbed me off the road near Glassforge.”

“What? What happened?” her mother gasped. The assorted brothers, too, sat up; on Dag’s right, he could feel Fletch tense.

“Not too much,” said Fawn. “They roughed me up, but Dag, who was tracking them, came up just then and, um. Ran them off.” She glanced at him again, and he lowered his eyelids in thanks. He did not especially wish to begin his acquaintance with her family with a listing of all the dead bodies he’d left around Glassforge, the human ones at least. Far too many human ones, this last round. “That’s how we first met. His patrol had been called to Glassforge to deal with the bandits and the blight bogle.”

Rush asked, “What happened to the bandits after that?”

Fawn turned to Dag, who answered simply, “They were dealt with.” He applied himself to his stew, good plain farm food, in the hope of avoiding further expansion on this subject.

Fawn’s mother bent her head, eyes narrowing; her hand went out again, this time to the left side of Fawn’s neck and the deep red dent and three ugly black scabs. “Then what are those nasty-looking things?”

“Um…well, that was later.”

“What was later?”

In a desperately bright voice, Fawn replied, “That’s where the blight bogle lifted me up. They make those sorts of marks—their touch is deadly. It was big. How big, would you say, Dag? Eight feet tall, maybe?”

“Seven and a half, I’d guess,” he said blandly. “About four hundred pounds. Though I didn’t have the best vantage. Or light.”

Reed said, in a tone of growing disbelief, “So what happened to this supposed blight bogle, if it was so deadly?”

Fawn’s look begged help, so Dag replied, “It was dealt with, too.”

“Go on, Fawn,” said Fletch scornfully. “You can’t expect us to swallow your tall tales!”

Dag let his voice go very soft. “Are you calling your sister a liar…sir?” He let the and me? hang in implication.