“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.
Dag tried to get both eyes open at once and brace his spine. At least enough to dismount, after which he was determined not to climb back into that saddle again for a long, long time. He slid down and clung to his stirrup leather for a moment, partly for support as he woozily adjusted to standing again, partly because he could barely remember what he was trying to do.
Saun’s anxious voice brought him back to the moment. “You have to see this, Captain!”
He turned, moistened his lips. Got out, “How many? Did we lose.” He felt too close to weeping, and he feared frightening Saun with his fragility. He wanted to explain, reassure: Fellows get like this after, sometimes. You’ll see it, if you’re around long enough.
But Saun was babbling on: “Everyone’s alive that was yesterday. Except now there’s a new problem.”
In a dim effort to fend it all off for just a moment longer, like a man pulling his blanket over his head when called from his bedroll by raucous comrades, Dag blinked at Obio, and asked in a voice raspy with fatigue, “When did you get here?”
“Last night.”
“Where is everyone?”
“We’ve set up a camp about a mile east, just off the blight.” Obio waved toward a distant, greener tree line. “I rested the company yesterday morning, then sent scouts out after you. I started us all toward here at midafternoon, closing up the distance in case, you know. We were getting pretty worried toward dusk, when my scouts hadn’t come back and my flankers ran into a couple of mud-men. They did for them pretty quick, but it was plain you hadn’t got the malice when you’d planned.”
“No. Later. Couple hours after midnight, about twenty miles south.”
“So Saun just said. But if—well, here’s Griff, my scout who found this. Let him tell.”
A worried-looking fellow of about Dirla’s age came up and gave Dag a nod. Griff had been walking for ten years, and in Dag’s experience was levelheaded and reliable. Which made his current rumpled, wild-eyed appearance just that much more disturbing.
“Gods, Dag, I’m so glad you’re here!”
Dag controlled a wince, leaning his arm along Copperhead’s back for secret support. “What happened?” And added prudently, as Griff’s distraught look deepened, “From the beginning.”
Griff gulped and nodded. “The two pairs of us scouts came down here to Bonemarsh late yesterday afternoon. We could track where your veiled patrol had passed through, right enough. We figured—well, hoped—that the malice had moved off and you all had moved after it. Then we found these makers tied to the trees”—he glanced over his shoulder—“and then we thought maybe you must have been captured, instead.”
Because good patrollers don’t abandon their own? Charitable, Griff. “No. We left them tied, passed them by,” Dag admitted.
Griff straightened; to Dag’s surprise, the look on his face was not horror or contempt, but respect. He asked earnestly, “How did you know it was a trap?”
Trap? What? Dag shook his head. “I didn’t. They were a sacrifice to pure tactics. I didn’t want to chance warning the malice there were patrollers coming up this close behind it.”
“You said there was something really wrong,” Saun corrected this, frowning. “And to keep our grounds shut tight when we were touching them.”
“That wasn’t exactly a stretch of my wits by that point, Saun. Go on, Griff.”
“We could see they were groundlocked. Seemed to be. So Mallora did what you do to someone groundlocked, reached in and bumped grounds to break them out of the trance. Except—instead of her waking them up, the groundlock just seemed to, to reach out and suck her in. Her eyes rolled back, and she crumpled up in a heap. The mud-puppies all out in their pots over there”—Griff waved toward the bog—“made these strange bubbling noises and flopped around when it happened. Made us jump, in the dusk. I didn’t notice how silent it all really was, till then. Mallora’s partner Bryn panicked, I think—she reached out for her, tried to drag her back. And she got sucked in after. I grabbed my partner Ornig before he could reach for Bryn.”
Dag nodded, provisionally, but Griff’s face was tightening in something like despair. Dag murmured, “It used to happen up in Luthlia sometimes in the winter, someone would fall through rotten ice. And their friends or their kin would try to pull them out, and instead be pulled in after. One after another. Instead of running for help or a rope—though the smart patrollers there always wore a length of rope wrapped around their waists in the cold season. Except if someone’s slipped under the ice—well, never mind. The hardest thing…the hardest thing in such a string of tragedy was to be the one who stopped. But you bet the older folks understood.”
Griff blinked back tears, ducking his head in thanks. He swallowed for control of his voice, and went on, “Ornig and I agreed he would stay, and I would go for help. And I rode hard! But I think I should have stayed, because when we made it back”—he swallowed again—“the makers were all cut down from the trees, as if Ornig had tried to make them more comfortable, but Ornig was all in a heap. He must have…tried something.” He added after a moment, “He’s sweet on Bryn, see.”
Dag nodded understanding, and stepped away from Copperhead to get a closer look at what was going on in the grove. If only he could find a tree to lean against—not that honey locust, bole and branches bristling with clusters of nasty triple-headed spines—his hand found a low branch from a young wild cherry, and he gripped it and peered. Three or four patrollers, at least one of whom Dag recognized as one of the company’s better medicine makers, moved among bedrolls laid out where space permitted. He counted eight. More and more at risk. Someone had a campfire going, though, and something heating in pots—drinking water, medicine?
All good, but there was something deeply wrong with the picture…oh. “Why haven’t you moved them off this blighted ground?”
Mari, Dirla, and Razi had dismounted during Griff’s recitation, moving closer to listen. Razi still held the reins of Utau’s horse; Utau drooped over his saddlebow, squinting. Dag wasn’t sure how much of this he was taking in.
“We tried,” said Obio. “Soon as you carry someone more than about a hundred paces away, they stop breathing.”
“Must have been a thrill finding that out,” Mari said.
“Oh, aye,” agreed Obio, fervent. “In the middle of the night last night.”
“And if you kill one of the mud-men in their mudholes,” Griff added morosely, “the people scream in their sleep. It’s pretty blighted unnerving. So we stopped that, too.”
“I figured,” said Obio, “that if—when—someone caught up with the malice, the groundlock would break on its own. I intended to detail a few folks to look after them and take the company on, as soon as enough scouts came back to give me a guess what we ought to try next. Except…you say you all did for the malice, but that ugly groundlock’s still holding tight.”
“Dirla did,” said Dag. “With Mari’s sharing knife. Your first personal kill, I believe, Dirla?” It was a shame that the congratulations and celebration that should have been hers were being overwhelmed in this new crisis.
Dirla nodded absently. She frowned past Dag at the unmoving figures in the shaded bedrolls. “Could there be more than one malice? And that’s why this link didn’t break last night?”
Dag tried to think this utterly horrible idea through logically, but his brains seemed to be slowly turning to porridge. His gut said no, right enough, but he couldn’t for the life of him say why, not in words.
Mari came to his rescue: “No. Because our malice would have turned all it had toward fighting the second, instead of chasing after farmers and Lakewalkers. Malices don’t team up—they eat each other.”
Well, that w
as true, too. But that’s not it.
“That’s what I thought,” said Dirla. “But then why didn’t this stop when the malice died, like what it does to the farmers and the mud-men?”
Maddening question. Lakewalkers, it must have to do with Lake-walkers…“All right,” sighed Dag. “I’m thinking…we got water down those folks yesterday. If we can get more water and some sort of food—gruel, soup, I don’t know—down them again, we can buy a little time, maybe.”
“Been doing that,” said Obio.
Bless your wits. Dag nodded. “Buy time to think. Keep a close eye, wait for the scouts—then decide. Depending, I’m thinking we might split the company—send some volunteers to help the Raintree folks with the cleanup, and the rest home maybe as early as tomorrow morning.” So that Oleana might not, due to Fairbolt’s robbed pegboard, find itself facing a similar runaway malice war next season.
The creeping alarm of this unnatural groundlock upon a bunch of already-nervy patrollers was clearly contagious. At this point, Dag could scarcely tell if his own sick unease was from the makers or their distraught caretakers. “Blight it, I wish I had Hoharie here. She works with people’s grounds all the time. Maybe she’d have an idea.” He might as well wish for that flock of turkey vultures to spiral down, grab him, and fly him away home, while he was at it. He sighed and cast an eye over his exhausted, bleary comrades. “Everyone who was with my veiled patrol is now off duty. Ride on over to the camp—get food, sleep, a wash, whatever you want. Utau, you’re on the sick list till I say otherwise.” Speaking of reasons to wish for the medicine maker.
Utau roused himself enough to growl, “I like that! If that malice scored me, it scored you a lot worse. I know what I feel like. Why are you still walking around?”
A question Dag didn’t care to probe just now, even if his wits had been working. Utau, it occurred to him, had been the only other patroller with his groundsense open, if involuntarily, in those moments of confused terror last night when Dag and the malice had closed on each other. What had he perceived? Evidently not Dag’s disastrous attempt to rip the malice in return. Dag temporized, “Until Razi says otherwise, then.” Razi grinned and cast him an appreciative half salute; Utau snorted. Dag added, “I’m going to lay me a bedroll down here, shortly.”
“On this blight?” said Saun doubtfully.
“I don’t want to be a mile away if something changes suddenly.”
Mari tugged Saun’s sleeve, and murmured, “If that one’s actually volunteerin’ for a bedroll, don’t argue the details.” She gave him a significant jerk of her head, and his eyes widened in enlightenment; he stepped over to Dirla.
“I had more sleep last night than you did, Mari,” said Dag.
“Dag, I don’t know what that was last night after you went down, but it sure wasn’t sleep. Sleeping men can be waked up, for one.”
“Wait, what’s all this?” said Obio.
Utau pushed up on his saddlebow and looked down at Dag a tad ironically. “Malice nearly ripped my ground last night. Dag jumped in and persuaded it to go after him, instead.”
“Did it rip you?” Obio asked Dag, eyebrows climbing.
“A little bit,” Dag admitted.
“Isn’t that something like being a little bit dead?”
“Seemingly.”
Obio smiled uncertainly, making Dag wonder just how corpselike he did look at the moment. He was not lovely, that was certain. Would he make Spark’s eyes happy all the same? I bet so. A bright picture came into his head of the thrill that would flower in her face when he walked into their campsite, when this was all over. Would she drop her handwork and run to his arms? It was the first heartening thought he’d had for hours. Days.
Dag wondered if he’d started to fall asleep standing when a voice broke up this vision, which ran away like water though his hands. He almost cried to have the dream back. Instead, he forced himself to breathe deeply and pay attention.
“…can send couriers with the news, now,” Obio was saying. “I’d like to catch Fairbolt before he sends off the next round of reinforcements.”
“Yes, of course,” murmured Dag.
Dirla had been talking closely with Mari; at this, she lifted her face, and called, “I’d like to volunteer for that, sir.”
You’re off duty, Dag started to object, then realized this task would certainly get Dirla home first. Better—she was eyewitness to the malice kill, none closer. If he sent her, Dag wouldn’t have to try to pen a report in his present groggy state. She could just tell Fairbolt all about it. “You took the malice. You can do any blighted thing you please, Dirla.”
She nodded cheerfully. “Then I will.”
Obio, his eyes narrowing, said, “In that case, I’ve a fellow in mind to send with her for partner. His wife was about to have a baby when we left. Absent gods willing, she might still be about to.”
Which would cover events from the other part of the company for Fairbolt, too. Good.
“Excellent,” agreed Mari. “That’s a courier who won’t dawdle, eh?” “You’ll need to trade out for fresher horses—” Dag began.
“We’ll take care of it, Dag,” Razi promised.
“Right. Right.” This was all routine. “Dirla. Tell Spark—tell everyone we’ll be home soon, eh?”
“Sure thing, Captain.”
Obio boosted Mari back on her horse, and she led the rest of the patrol, save Saun and Dirla, off east toward the promised camp. To reassure Obio and Griff, Dag pretended to make an inspection tour of the grove and the bog, for as much good as his eyes could do with his groundsense still clamped down tight.
“There was a dead woman, yesterday,” Dag began to Obio.
Obio grunted understanding. “We cut her down and wrapped her, and put her in one of the tents in the village. I’m hoping some of the Bonemarsh folk might come back and identify her before we have to bury her. In this heat, that’ll have to be by tomorrow, though.”
Dag nodded and trudged on.
The distorting animals trapped in their mud pots were much the same repellent sight as yesterday. The five surviving makers and three patrollers, more inexplicably trapped, were at least physically supported now, as comfortable as they might be made in bedrolls on the ground in the warm summer shade. The other patrollers taking turns to lift them and spoon liquids into them must also be ground-closed and walking blind, Dag realized.
Even apart from the hazard of this peculiar sticky ground-snare, he had the irrational apprehension that opening his ground would be like a man pulling a dressing from a gut wound; that all his insides might spill out. He found that while his back was turned, Saun and Dirla had unsaddled Copperhead and set up Dag’s possessions and bedroll in a flat, dry spot raked clear of debris. They’d been awake as long as he had, blight it, why were they so blighted perky? Blighted children…The moment his haunches hit his blanket, Dag knew he wasn’t getting up again. He sat staring blankly at his bootlaces, transported in memory back to the night after his last malice kill, with Spark on the feather tick in that farmhouse kitchen.
He was still staring when Saun knelt to undo one boot, and Dirla the other. It was surely a measure of…something, that he let them.
“Can I bring you anything to eat? Drink?” asked Dirla.
Dag shook his head. While riding he had gnawed down a number of leathery strips of dried plunkin, on the theory that he might so dispose of two tedious chores at the same time. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t anything.
Saun set his boots aside and squinted out into the afternoon light upon the silent, wasted marsh. “How long do you suppose till this place recovers? Centuries?”
“It looks bad now,” said Dag, “but the malice was only here a few days, and the blight’s not deep. Decades at most. Maybe not in my life, but in yours, I’d say.”
Saun’s eyes pinched, and he traded an unreadable look with Dirla. “Can I get—do you want anything at all, Captain?”
I want Spark. A mistake to allow himse
lf the thought, because it bloomed instantly into a near-physical ache. In his heart, yes—as if there were any part of him not hurting already. Instead, he said, “Why am I captain all at once, here? You call me Dag, I call you Hey, you, boy. It’s always worked before.”
Saun grinned sheepishly, but didn’t answer. He and Dirla scrambled up; Dag was asleep before the pair left the grove.
Fawn, who hadn’t been able to fall to sleep till nearly dawn, woke in the midmorning feeling as though she had been beaten with sticks. Mint tea and plunkin did little to revive her. She turned to her next hand task, weaving string from her spun plunkin flax to make wicks for a batch of beeswax candles Sarri was planning. An hour into it her eyes were blurring, and the throbbing in her left hand and arm was a maddening distraction that matched the throbbing in her head. Was it her heartbeat or Dag’s that kept the time? At least his heart’s still beating. She set down her work, walked up the road to where the path to Dar’s bone shack led off, and stood in doubt.
Dag’s his brother. Dar has to care. Fawn considered this proposition in light of her own brothers. No matter how furious she might be with them, would she drop her gripe if they were hurt and needed help? Yes. Because that’s what family was all about, in her experience. They pulled together in a crisis; it was just too bad about the rest of the time. She set her shoulders and walked down the path into the green shade.
She hesitated again at the edge of the sun-dappled glade. If she was truly parading about ground-naked, as Cumbia accused, Dar must know she was here. Voices carried around the corner of the shack. He wasn’t, then, deep in concentration upon some necromantic spell. She continued around to find Dar sitting on the top porch step with an older woman dressed in the usual summer shift, her hair in a knot. Dar was holding a sharing knife. He drew a peeved breath and looked up, reluctantly acknowledging Fawn.