“Now, Rush,” said Dag. “I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be. I am actually prepared to forgive and forget your brotherly plan to beat me crippled or dead and buried in your pa’s woods on the night before my wedding. The fact that you also seriously endangered the lives of your friends—because I would not, facing that death, have held back in defending myself—I leave to your pa to take up with you two. I’ll even forgive your lies to me.” Dag’s voice dropped to a deadly register that made Sorrel glance aside in alarm. “What I do not forgive is the malice of your lies to Fawn. You’d planned for her to wake up joyful on her wedding morning and then tell her I’d scunnered out in the night, make her believe herself shamed and betrayed, humiliate her before her friends and kin, set her to weeping—although I think her real response might have surprised you.” He glanced aside. “You like that picture, Sorrel? No? Good.” Dag took a long breath. “Whatever reasons your parents tolerated your torment of your sister in the past, it stops tomorrow. You claim Reed was afraid of me? He wasn’t near afraid enough. Either of you so much as look cross-eyed at Fawn tomorrow, or anytime thereafter, I will give you reason to regret it every day for the rest of your lives. You hear me, Rush? Look at me.” Dag hadn’t used that voice since he was a company captain. He was pleased to note it still worked; Rush nearly fell from his perch. Copperhead shied. Even Sorrel stepped backward. Dag hissed, “You hear me?”

Rush nodded frantically.

“All right. I will halter Copperhead, and you will climb down from there. Then you will pick up every bit of my gear and put it back where you found it. What’s broken, you and your brother can fix, what’s been rolled through the manure you can scrub—which will keep you two out of further mischief for the rest of the evening, I think—what can’t be fixed, you’ll replace, what can’t be replaced, I leave you to work out with your pa.”

“You heard the patroller, Rush,” said Sorrel, in a deeply paternal snarl. Really, it was almost as good as the company-captain voice.

Dag extended his ground to his horse, a familiar reach long practiced; he’d been saddled with this chestnut idiot for about eight years, now. Disappointed at the loss of his toy, Copperhead lowered his head to the stall floor and began lipping straw, pretending that it all never happened. Dag thought he had a lot in common with Rush, that way. “You can get down,” said Dag.

“He isn’t haltered,” said Rush nervously.