This was in the months just before the wolf war broke. We tried two months running, and missed. Third month, I was away on my duties at the vital time; for the life of me I can’t now remember what seemed so important about them. I can’t even remember what they were. Riding out and checking on something or other. And in the fourth month, the wolf war was starting up, and we were both caught up in the rush.” He drew a long, long breath. “But if I could have made Kauneo pregnant by then, she would have stayed in camp, and not led out her patrol to Wolf Ridge. And whatever else had happened, she and the child would both have lived. If not for that lost month.”

Fawn’s heart felt hot and strange, as if his old wound were being shared through the very ground of his words. Not a good secret to lug around, that one. She tried the obvious patch. “You can’t know that.”

“I know I can’t. I don’t think there’s a second thought I can have about this that I haven’t worn out by now. Maybe Kauneo’s leadership, down at the anchor end of the line, was what held the ridge that extra time after I went down. Maybe…A patroller friend of mine, his first wife died in childbed. I know he harbors regrets just as ferocious for the exact opposite cause. There is no knowing. You just have to grow used to the not knowing, I guess.”

He fell quiet for a time, and Fawn, daunted, said nothing. Though maybe the listening had been all he’d needed. She wondered, suddenly, if Dag was doubting whether he could sire children. Fifty-five years was a long time to go without doing so, for a man, although she had the impression that it wasn’t that he’d been with so many women, before or after Kauneo, as that he’d paid really good attention when he had. In the light of her own history, if no child appeared when finally wanted, it would seem clear who was responsible. Did he fear to disappoint?