The two women followed his stare uneasily.
“Look, now,” he said, as if in persuasion, “if Utau, Razi, Mari, and Dag are all still alive, the company can’t be in that much trouble. Because you know that bunch’d find the manure pile first.”
Sarri blew out her breath in not quite a laugh, accepting the thin reassurance as much, Fawn guessed, for his sake as her own.
“’Specially Dag,” Cattagus added under his breath. “You wonder what Fairbolt thought he was about, to put…”
“Cattagus.” Fawn took a deep breath and thrust out her arm. “My cord feels funny. Can you figure out anything from it?”
His gray brows rose. “Not likely.” But he took her wrist gently in his hand anyway. His lips moved briefly as if in surprise, but then schooled away a scowl to some more guarded line. “Well, he’s alive. There’s that. Can’t have got himself ground-ripped if he’s alive.”
More Lakewalker secrets no one had bothered to mention? “What’s ground-ripped?”
Cattagus exchanged a look with Sarri, but before Fawn could grit her teeth in frustration, relented, and said, “Same as what that malice down in Glassforge did to your childie, I take it. ’Cept Lakewalkers-grown can resist, close their grounds against it. If the malice is a sessile, or is not too strong yet.”
“What if it is strong?” Fawn asked in worry.
“Well…they say it’s a quick death. No chance to share, though.” Cattagus frowned sternly. “But, see here, girlie, don’t you go imagining things all night. Your boy’s alive, isn’t he now, eh?”
Fawn had trouble thinking of Dag as a boy, but the your part she clutched hard to her heart, her wrists crossed over her chest. Dag’s mine, yes. Not some blighting malice’s.
“Maybe it’s over,” said Sarri in a low voice. “I hope it’s over.”
“When would we know?” asked Fawn.
Cattagus shrugged his ropy shoulders. “From the middle of Raintree, good news could get here in three days. Bad news in two. Very bad news…well, we won’t worry about that. Ah, go back to bed, girlies!” He shook his head and set the example by ducking back inside, wheezing. Pointedly, Fawn thought.
Sarri shook her head in unwitting echo of her testy uncle, sighed deeply, and made her way back to her tent and her sleeping children. Fawn picked her way slowly back to little Tent Bluefield.
She dutifully lay down, but returning to sleep was beyond futile. After tossing for a time, she rose again and took out her drop spindle and a bundle of plunkin flax, and went out in the moonlight to clamber up on her favorite tall spinning-stump. At least she might have something to show for her night-restlessness. The tap of the gold beads flicking on her wrist as she spun was normally cheerful and soothing, but tonight felt more like fingers drumming. Flick, spin, shape.
She wished she could put spells for protection into her trouser cloth, the way a Lakewalker wife likely could. She could spin her thread strong, weave it tight, sew it soundly, double-stitched and secure. She could make with all her heart, but it would only give the ordinary expected armoring of cloth on skin. Not enough. Flick, spin, shape.
Three days till any news, huh. I don’t like this waiting part. Not one bit. The helpless anxiety was worse than she’d expected it to be, and she felt pushed off-balance. No more do Sarri or Cattagus like it, either, that’s plain enough, but you don’t catch them carrying on about it, do you? Her own unease wasn’t special just for being new to her. She felt she suddenly had more insight into Lakewalker moodiness. Her assurances to Dag before he’d ridden off seemed in retrospect unduly blithe and—well, if not stupid, a word he’d tried to forbid her, certainly ignorant. I’m learning now. Again. Flick, spin, shape.
If Dag died on patrol—her eyes went to her wrist cord, still alive, yes, it was a safely theoretical thought. She could dare to think it. If something happened to him out there, what would become of me? Despite Hickory Lake’s fascinations, without Dag she knew she had no roots here. While these Lakewalkers seemed unlikely to cast her out naked, she had no doubt Fairbolt would whisk her back to West Blue in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, likely with a patroller to make sure she arrived. Seemed like his idea of responsible. But she had no roots in West Blue now either; she’d cut them off, if not without a pang, without compunction. Twice. Cutting them a third time wasn’t a task she wished to face. If she couldn’t stay here, and she wouldn’t go back…
It was a measure, perhaps, of what this sometimes-horrendous year had done for her that she found this thought curiously undaunting. There was Glassforge. There was Silver Shoals, beyond on the Grace River, an even finer town by Dag’s descriptions. There was a world of possibility for an un—grass widow with determination and her wits held close about her. She was practical. She knew how to walk down strange roads, now. She’d come this far. She didn’t have to cling to Dag like a drowning woman clutching the only branch in the torrent.
Everybody, it seemed, wanted Dag for something. Fairbolt Crow wanted him for a patroller. His mother wanted him to demonstrate the high value of her bloodline, maybe, to prove her worth through his. His brother Dar wanted him to not make a fuss or be a distraction—to stay quiet, safe inside the rules, ignorable. Fawn wasn’t sure but what she should add herself into that tally, because she certainly wanted Dag for the father of her children someday, except Dag seemed to be thinking along those lines himself, so maybe that one was mutual and didn’t count. Didn’t anyone want Dag just for Dag? Without justification, like a milkweed or a water lily or, or…a summer night with fireflies.
Because later, in some very dry places, the memory of that hour was enough for going on with.
She had to stop spinning then, because she couldn’t see through the silver light blurring in her eyes. She dashed her hand against her hot eyelids to clear her vision. Twice. Then just let the tears run down, sitting bent to her knees with her wrist cord pressed to her forehead. It took a long time to make her breathing stop hitching.
My heart’s prize my best friend my true consolation…what trouble have you gone and found this time?
Her arm was still throbbing, though more faintly. Alive, yes, but…she might be just a farmer girl, without a speck of groundsense in her body, she might be any one of a hundred kinds of fool. She might be ignorant of a thousand Lakewalkerish things, but of this she was increasingly certain. This is not good. This is something very wrong.
The insides of his eyelids were red. Not black. There was light out there somewhere, warm dawn or warm fire. His curiosity as to which was not enough to make him drag open the heavy weights his lids had become.
He remembered panicked voices, and thinking he should get up and fix the cause, whatever it was. He should. Someone had been shouting about Utau, and Razi—of course it would be Razi—trying to match grounds. Mari’s voice, sharp and scared, Try to get in! Blight it, I’m not losing our captain after all that! Fairbolt was here? When had that happened? Someone else, I can’t! His ground’s too tight! and later, Can’t, oh gods that hurts! And, So if it does that to you, what do you figure it’s doing to him? — Mari’s tart voice at its least sympathetic; Dag felt for her victim, whoever he was. More gasping, I can’t, I can’t, I’m sorry… The panicked voices had faded then, and Dag had been glad. Maybe they would all go away and leave him be. I’m so tired…
He breathed, twitched; his gluey eyes opened on their own. Half-dead tree branches laced the paling blue of a new dawn. On one side, orange flames crackled up from a roaring campfire, deliciously warm. Dawn and fire both, ah, that solved the mystery. On his other side, Mari’s face wavered into view between him and the sky.
Her dry voice spoke: “’Bout time you reported for duty again, patroller.”
He tried to move his lips.
Her hand pressed his brow. “That was a joke, Dag. You just lie there.” Her hand went to his, under blankets it seemed. “Finally warming up, too. Good.”
He swallowed and found his lost voice. “How many?”
; “Eh?”
“How many died? Last night?” Assuming the malice kill was last night. He had mislaid days before, under unpleasantly similar conditions.
“Now you’ve seen fit to grace us with your gloomy face again—none.”
That couldn’t be right. Saun, what of Saun, left with the horses? Dag pictured the youth attacked in the dark by mud-men, alone, bloodied, overwhelmed…“Saun!”
“Here, Captain.” Saun’s anxiously smiling face loomed over Mari’s shoulder.
That must have been a dream or a hallucination. Or this was. Did he get to pick which? He drew breath enough to get out, “What’s happened?”
“Dirla took the malice—” Mari began.
“I got that far. Saw you drop your knife to her.” Mari’s son’s bone. He managed to moisten his lips. “Didn’t think you’d ever let that out of your hand.”
“Aye, well, I remembered your tale of how you and the little farmer girl got the Glassforge malice. Dirla was closer, and the malice was intent on Utau. I saw the chance and took it.”
“Utau?” he repeated urgently. Yes, the malice had been about to rip the ground from his body…
Mari gripped his shoulder through the blankets. “Malice grazed him, no question, but Razi brought him home. You, now—that’s the closest I’ve ever heard tell of anyone getting his ground ripped without actually dying. Never seen a man look more like a corpse and still breathe.”
“Drink?” said Saun, putting an arm under Dag’s shoulders to lift him a bit.
Oh, good idea. It was only stale water from a skin, but it was wonderfully wet water. Wettest he’d ever drunk, Dag decided. “Thankee’.” And after a moment, “How many of us lost…?”
“None, Dag,” said Saun eagerly. Mari frowned.
“Go on.”
“Eh, after that, it was all over but the shoutin’, of which there was the usual,” said Mari. “Sent two pairs to retrieve Saun and the horses, and kept the rest close to guard our camp from hazard. Let four off to sleep a bit ago.” She nodded across the fire toward some sodden unmoving bundles stretched on bedrolls. Dag raised his head to look. Beside one of them, Razi sat cross-legged; he smiled tiredly at Dag and sent him a vague salute.
“What of the farmer-slaves?”
“There weren’t as many right by here as we’d thought. Seems the malice had sent most of its slaves and mud-men marching off through the woods for some dawn attack on a town just northwest of Farmer’s Flats. I imagine they’re having a right mess down there this morning. Gods know what those poor farmers thought when the malice fog lifted from their minds and their mud-men scampered. I haven’t much tried to herd the folks we found here, though we did check out their camp, and suggest no one try to travel home alone. Most of ’em have gone off by now to try and find friends and family.”
Understandable; welcome, even. It might be cowardice, but Dag didn’t want to try to deal with distraught farmers this morning, atop everything else. Let the Raintree Lakewalkers take care of their own.
Dag’s brow wrinkled. “How many did we lose last night?”
Mari drew a long breath and leaned forward to peer into his face. “Dag, are you tracking me at all?”
“’Course I’m tracking you.” Dag unwound his left arm from his blankets and waved his hook at her. “How many fingers am I holding up?” Except it occurred to him that, on some very disturbing level, he did not know the answer.
Mari rolled her eyes in exasperation. Saun, bless him, looked adorably confused.
“Well, we still don’t know about those makers we left at Bonemarsh,” Saun offered hesitantly.
Mari turned to glare at him. “Saun, don’t you dare start that up again with him now.”
Yes, that was his missing piece, the thing he’d been trying so desperately to remember. Dag sighed, if not exactly in satisfaction.
“We haven’t heard from Obio and the company yet,” said Mari, “but there’s scarcely been time. They might have reached there hours ago.”
“They might have taken some other route,” said Saun stubbornly.
It looked to turn into a bright day. People tied up outdoors in such heat without drink or food could die of exposure in a surprisingly short time, even without the added stress of whatever the malice’s groundlock—or ground link—had done to them. If even one prisoner could release himself, he’d surely free the rest, but suppose none could…? The throbbing headache of nightmare crept back up the base of Dag’s skull. “We have to go back to Bonemarsh.”
Saun nodded in eagerness. “I’ll ride ahead.”
“Not alone you won’t!” said Mari sharply.
Dag got out, “I left them…yesterday. Because I could count. But today I can go back.” Yes, as quickly as might be. “There was something wrong, and I knew it, but there was no time, and I knew that too. I have to get back there.” Enough human sacrifice for one malice, enough.
Mari sat back, dubious. “Make you a deal, Dag. If you can get your fool self up on your fool horse all by yourself, I’ll let you ride it. If not, you’re staying right here.”
Dag grinned wanly. “You’ll lose that bet. Saun, help me sit up.”
The boy slid an arm under his shoulders again. Dag’s head drained nearly to blackness as he came upright, but he kept his blinking eyes open somehow. “See, Mari? I wager there’s not a mark on me.”
“Your ground’s so tight it’s cramping. You can’t tell me you didn’t take hurt under there.”
“What does it feel like?” asked Saun diffidently. “A ground rip, that is?”
Dag squinted, deciding Saun was due an honest answer. “Right now, a lot like blood loss, truth to tell. It doesn’t hurt anywhere in particular”—just everywhere generally—“but I admit I’m not my best.”
Mari snorted.
If he ate, perhaps he would gain strength enough to…eat. Hm.
Mari went off to deal with less intractable people, and Saun, as anxious for the Bonemarsh makers as Dag, made it his business to get Dag ready to ride. While Saun fed him, Dag took counsel with Mari and Codo to split the patrol, sending six south to find the Raintree Lakewalkers and report on the malice kill, and the rest north with him to, with luck, rendezvous with the rest of the company at Bonemarsh.
In the event, Dag half cheated and used a stump to mount Copperhead. Mari, mounting from another stump, eyed him narrowly but let it pass. The horse was too tired to fight him, which was fortunate, because he was way too tired to fight back. He let Saun take the lead in the ride back north, swifter for the daylight, the lack of need for stealth, and the knowing where they were going, but slower for everyone’s exhaustion. Dag sat his horse and wavered in and out of awareness, pretending to be dozing while riding like any good old patroller. Utau, slumping in his saddle and closely shepherded by Razi, looked almost as laid waste as Dag felt.
Dag let his groundsense stay shut, as it seemed to want; it reminded him of the way a man might walk tilted to guard a wound. Maybe, as for blood loss, time and rest would provide the remedy. He tried once to sneak out his ghost hand, but nothing occurred.
The thought of the tree-bound makers he had so ruthlessly abandoned yesterday haunted his hazy thoughts. He searched the memory of his glimpse of the malice’s mind for a hint of them, but could recover only a sense of overwhelming confusion. The makers’ fate seemed to hang in the air like some absent god’s cruel revenge upon his wild hope, scarcely admitted even to himself. If only…
If only I could get through this captaincy without losing anyone, I could stop.
If only he could balance the long weight of Wolf Ridge? Would it? Dag was dubious of his mortal arithmetic. In the long run no one gets out alive, you know that.
They passed into, and out of, a slate-lined ravine, letting the horses drink as they crossed the creek. He could swear they’d passed this same ford not twelve hours ago, pointed the other way. Dizzied, he pressed Copperhead forward into the hot summer morning.
12
D ag knew they were approaching Bonemarsh again by the growing dampness of the soil and air, and a brightening in the corner of his eye as the flat woods opened out into flatter water meadows. He had been staring at nothing but the coarse rusty hairs of Copperhead’s mane for the past hour, but looked up as Saun muffled an oath and kicked his tired horse into a canter. Above the Bonemarsh shore, life of a sort had returned: a flock of turkey vultures, the fingerlike fringes of their wing tips unmistakable on their black silhouettes as they wheeled. His impulse to canter after Saun was easily resisted, as neither he nor Copperhead was capable of more than a trot right now, the jolting of which would have tormented his sagging back. And…he didn’t want to look. He let his horse walk on.
As they neared the south margin of the marsh, Dag straightened, squinting in guarded hope. The vultures were circling over the woods back behind the village, not over the boggy patch along the shore. Maybe they’d merely found the unburied carcasses from the mud-men’s feast. Maybe…
The rest of his veiled patrol turned onto the shore track, and Dag craned his neck, heart thumping. There were several horses tethered around the scrubby trees, Saun’s now among them. The rest of the company had made it, good! Some of them, at least. Enough. Dag could see figures moving in the shade, then his heart clenched again at the glimpse of several long lumps on the ground. He couldn’t tell if the faces were covered or not. Bedrolls, please, let it be bedrolls and not shrouds… Had the company only just arrived? Because surely the next task would be to move the rescued makers off this half-blighted ground to some healthier campsite. But Obio was here, thank all the absent gods, striding out to wave greeting as they rode up.
“Dag!” Obio cried. “You’re here—absent gods be praised!” His voice seemed to hold more than just relief to see Dag alive. It had the shaken timbre of a man with a crisis desperately seeking someone else to hand it to. One of us is thanking the absent gods too soon, I think.
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