Dag blinked once, slowly, to cover the fact that he’d just snapped open his groundsense to its full range. Fawn, he determined first, was not down by the end of the lane, but nearly out of his perceptions to the west, up over the ridge. Not alone—with Reed?—she seemed not to be in any special distress, however. So why was Rush lying? Ah. The woods below were not unpeopled. Concealed among the trees near the road were the smudges of four horses, standing still—tied? Four persons accompanied them. Three blurred grounds he did not know, but the fourth he recognized as Stupid Sunny. Was it so wild a guess to think that the other three were also husky young farm boys? Dag thought not.

“Did she say why?” Dag asked, to buy a moment more to think.

Rush took a couple of breaths to invent an answer, apparently having expected Dag to leap up without delay. “Some wedding thing or other,” he replied. “She didn’t say, but she wants you right now.”

Dag scratched his temple gently with his hook, glad that he had mostly stuck to the deeply ingrained habit of not discussing Lakewalker abilities with anyone here, Fawn and Nattie excepted. He was now one move ahead in this game; he tried to figure how not to squander that advantage, because he suspected it was the only one he had. It would be amusing to just sit here and watch Rush dig himself deeper concocting more desperate reasons for Dag to walk down the hill into what was shaping up to be a neat little ambush. But that would leave the whole pack of them running around loose all night to evolve other plans. As little as Dag wanted to deal with this tonight, still less did he want to deal with it in the morning. And most especially did he not want it to impinge on Spark in any way. His brotherly enemies, it seemed, were looking after that angle for him just now. So.

He let his groundsense play lightly over the lower woods, which he had crossed several times on foot in the past days, looking for…yes. Just exactly that. A flush, not of excitement, but of that very peculiar calm that came over him when facing a bandit camp or a malice lair jerked his mind up to another level. Targets, eh. He knew what to do with targets. But would targets know what to do with him? His lips drew back. If not, he would teach them.

“Um…Dag?” said Rush uncertainly.

He wasn’t wearing his war knife. That was fine; he had no hand to wield it. He stood up and shook out his left arm. “Sure, Rush. Where did you say, again?”

“Down by the road,” said Rush, both relieved and the reverse. Absent gods, but the boy was a poor liar. On the whole, that was a point in his favor.