“If those fellows are from here, they’ve just had some very bad days, by all the signs,” Dag said, whether in a tone of warning or mere observation Fawn was not certain. “Stay calm and quiet, till they’re sure I’m no threat.”
“How could they think that?” said Fawn indignantly. She straightened her spine against the house wall, twitching the white folds of her overabundant gown tighter about her, and frowned.
“Well, there’s a bit of history, there. Some bandits have claimed to be patrollers, in the past. Usually we leave bandits to their farmer-brethren, but those we string up good, if we catch ‘em at it. Farmers can’t always tell. I expect these’ll be all right, once they get over being jumpy.”
Dag stayed seated on the porch edge as the men neared, though he too sat up straighter. He raised his right hand to his temple in what might have been a salute of greeting or just scratching his head, but in either case conveyed no threat. “Evenin’,” he rasped.
The men sidled forward, looking ready either to pounce or bolt at the slightest provocation. The oldest, a thickset fellow with a bit of gray in his hair and the pitchfork in his grip, stepped in front. His glance at Fawn was bewildered. She smiled back and waved her fingers.
Provisionally polite, the thickset man returned a “How de’.” He grounded the butt of his pitchfork and continued more sternly, “And who might you be, and what are you doing here?”
Dag gave a nod. “I’m from Mari Redwing’s Lakewalker patrol. We were called down from the north a couple of days ago to help deal with your blight bogle. This here’s Miss Sawfield. She was kidnapped off the road yesterday by the bogle I was hunting, and injured. I’d hoped to find folks here to help her, but you were all gone. Not willingly, by the signs.”
He’d left out an awful lot of important complications, Fawn thought. Only one was hers alone to speak to: “Bluefield,” she corrected. “M’ name’s Fawn Bluefield.”
Dag glanced over his shoulder, eyebrows rising. “Ah, right.”
Fawn tried to lighten the frowns of the farmers by saying brightly, “This your place?”
“Ayup,” said the man.
“Glad you made it back. Is everyone all right?”
A look of thankfulness in the midst of adversity came over the faces of all the men. “Ayup,” the spokesman said again, in a huff of blown-out breath. “Praise be, we didn’t suffer no one getting killed by those, those… things.”
“It was a near chance,” muttered a brown-haired fellow, who looked to be a brother or cousin of the thickset man.
A younger man with bright chestnut hair and freckles slid around to Dag’s left, staring at his empty shirt cuff. Dag feigned not to notice the stare, but Fawn thought she detected a slight stiffening of his shoulders. The man burst out, “Hey—you wouldn’t be that fellow Dag all those other patrollers are looking for, would you? They said you couldn’t hardly be mistook—tall drink of water with his hair cropped short, bright goldy eyes, and missing his left hand.” He nodded in certainty, taking inventory of the man on the porch.
Dag’s voice was suddenly unguarded and eager. “You’ve seen my patrol? Where are they? Are they all right? I’d expected them to find me before now.”
The red-haired fellow made a wry face, and said, “Spread out between Glassforge and that big hole back in the hills those crazy fellows were trying to make us dig, I guess. Looking for you. When you hadn’t turned up in Glassforge by this morning, that scary old lady carried on like she was afraid you were dead in a ditch somewheres. I had four different patrollers buttonhole me with your particulars before we got out of town.”
Dag’s lips lifted at that apt description of what Fawn guessed must be his patrol leader, Mari. The boy and the skinny graybeard on the horse, once the fence rails were replaced, drifted up to the edge of the group watch and listen.
The thickset man gripped his pitchfork haft tighter again, although not in threat. “Them other patrollers all said you must have killed the bogle. They said that had to be what made all them monsters, mud-men they calls ‘em, run off like that yesterday night.”
“More or less,” said Dag. A twitch of his hand dismissed—or concealed—the details. “You’re right to travel cautious. There might still be a few bandits abroad—that’ll be for the Glassforge folks to deal with. Any mud-men who escaped my patrol or Chato’s will be running mindless through the woods for a while, till they die off. I put down two yesterday, but at least four I know of got away into the brush. They won’t attack you now, but they’re still dangerous to surprise or corner, like any sick wild animal. The malice’s—bogle’s—lair was up in the hills not eight miles due east of here. You all were lucky to escape its attentions before this.”
“You two look like you collected some attentions yourselves,” said the thickset man, frowning at their visible bruises and scrapes. He turned to the lanky boy. “Here, Tad—go fetch your mama.” The boy nodded eagerly and pelted back down the lane toward the woods.
“What happened here?” Dag asked in turn.
This released a spate of increasingly eager tale-telling, one man interrupting another with corroboration or argument. Some twenty, or possibly thirty, mud-men had erupted out of the surrounding woods four days ago, brutalizing and terrifying the farm folk, then driving them off in a twenty-mile march southeast into the hills. The mud-men had kept the crowd under control by the simple expedient of carrying the three youngest children and threatening to dash out their brains against the nearest tree if anyone resisted, a detail that made Fawn gasp but Dag merely look more expressionless than ever. They had arrived at length at a crude campsite containing a couple dozen other prisoners, mostly victims of road banditry; some had been held for many weeks. There, the mud-men, uneasily supervised by a few human bandits, seemed intent on making their new slaves excavate a mysterious hole in the ground.
“I don’t understand that hole,” said the thickset man, eldest son of the graybeard and apparent leader of the farm folk, whose family name was Horseford. The stringy old grandfather seemed querulous and addled—traits that seemed to predate the malice attack, Fawn judged from the practiced but not-unkind way everyone fielded his complaints.
“The malice—the blight bogle—was probably starting to try to mine,” said Dag thoughtfully. “It was growing fast.”
“Yes, but the hole wasn’t right for a mine, either,” put in the red-haired man, Sassa. He’d turned out to be a brother-in-law of the house, present that day to help with some log-hauling. He seemed less deeply shaken than the rest, possibly because his wife and baby had been safely back in Glassforge and had missed the horrific misadventure altogether. “They didn’t have enough tools, for one thing, till those mud-men brought in the ones they stole from here. They had folks digging with their hands and hauling dirt in bags made out of their clothes. It was an awful mess.”
“Would be, at first, till the bogle caught someone with the know-how to do it right,” said Dag. “Later, when it’s safe again, you folks should get some real miners to come in and explore the site. There must be something of value under there; the malice would not have been mistaken about that. This part of the country, I’d guess an iron or coal seam, maybe with a forge planned to follow, but it might be anything.”
“I’d wondered if they were digging up another bogle,” said Sassa. “They’re supposed to come out of the ground, they say.”
Dag’s brows twitched up, and he eyed the man with new appraisal. “Interesting idea. When two bogles chance to emerge nearby, which happily doesn’t occur too often, they usually attack each other first thing.”
“That would save you Lakewalkers some trouble, wouldn’t it?”
“No. Unfortunately. Because the winning bogle ends up stronger. Easier to take them down piecemeal.”
Fawn tried to imagine something stronger and more frightening than the creature she had faced yesterday. When you were already as terrified as your body could bear, what difference could it make if something was
even worse? She wondered if that explained anything about Dag.
Movement at the end of the lane caught her eye. Another plow horse came out of the woods and trotted ponderously up to the farmyard, a middle-aged woman riding with the lanky boy up behind. They paused on the other side of the well, the woman staring down hard at something, then came up to join the others.
The red-haired Sassa, either more garrulous or more observant than his in-laws, was finishing his account of yesterday’s inexplicable uproar at the digging camp: the sudden loss of wits and mad flight of their captor mud-men, followed, not half an hour later, by the arrival from the sunset woods of a very off-balance patrol of Lakewalkers. The Lakewalkers had been trailed in turn by a mob of frantic friends and relatives of the captives from in and around Glassforge. Leaving the local people to each other’s care, the patrollers had withdrawn to their own Lake walkerish concerns, which seemed mainly to revolve around slaying all the mud-men they could catch and looking for their mysterious missing man Dag, who they seemed to think somehow responsible for the bizarre turn of events.
Dag rubbed his stubbled chin. “Huh. I suppose Mari or Chato must have thought this mining camp might be the lair. Following up traces from that bandit hideout we raided night before last, I expect. That explains where they were all day yesterday. And well into the night, sounds like.”
“Oh, aye,” said the thickset man. “Folks was still trailing into Glassforge all night and into this morning, yours and ours.”
The farmwife slid down off the horse and stood listening to this, her eyes searching her house, Dag, and especially Fawn. Fawn guessed from the farm men’s talk that she must be the woman they’d called Petti. Judging by the faint gray in her hair, she was of an age with her husband, and as lean as he was thick, tough and strappy, if tired-looking. Now she stepped forward. “What blood is all that in the tub out by the well?”
Dag gave her a polite duck of his head. “Miss S—Bluefield’s mostly, ma’am. My apologies for filching your linens. I’ve been throwing another bucket of water on them each time I go by. I’ll try to get them cleaned up better before we leave.”
We not I, some quick part of Fawn’s mind noted at once, with a catch of relief.
“Mostly?” The farmwife cocked her head at him, squinting. “How’d she get hurt?”
“That would be her tale to tell, ma’am.”
Her face went still for an instant. Her eye flicked up to Fawn and then back, to take in his empty cuff. “You really kill that bogle that did all this?”
He hesitated only briefly before replying, precisely but unexpansively, “We did.”
She inhaled and gave a little snort. “Don’t you be troubling about my laundry. The idea.”
She turned back to, or upon, her menfolk. “Here, what are you all doing standing about gabbing and gawking like a pack of ninnies? There’s work to do before dark. Horse, see to milking those poor cows, if they ain’t been frightened dry. Sassa, fetch in the firewood, if those thieves left any in the stack, and if they didn’t, make some more. Jay, put away and put right what can be, what needs fixin’, start on, what needs tomorrow’s tools, set aside. Tad, help your grandpa with the horses, and then come and start picking up inside. Hop to it while there’s light left!”
They scattered at her bidding.
Fawn said helpfully, pushing up, “The mud-men didn’t find your storage cellar—” And then her head seemed to drain, throbbing unpleasantly. The world did not go black, but patterned shadows swarmed around her, and she was only dimly aware of abrupt movement: a strong hand and truncated arm catching her and half-walking, half-carrying her inside. She blinked her eyes clear to find herself on the feather pallet once more, two faces looming over her, the farmwife’s concerned and wary, Dag’s concerned and… tender? The thought jolted her, and she blinked some more, trying to swim back to reason.
“—flat, Spark,” he was saying. “Flat was working.” He brushed a sweat-dampened curl out of her eyes.
“What happened to you, girl?” demanded Petti.
“ ‘M not a girl,” Fawn mumbled. “ ‘M twenty…”
“The mud-men knocked her around hard yesterday.” Dag’s intent gaze on her seemed to be asking permission to continue, and she shrugged assent. “She miscarried of a two-months child. Bled pretty fierce, but it seems to have slowed now. Wish one of my patrol women were here. You do much midwifery, ma’am?”
“A little. Keeping her lying down is right if she’s been bleeding much.”
“How do you know if she… if a woman is going to be all right, after that?”
“If the bleeding tails off to nothing within five days, it’s a pretty sure bet things are coming back around all right inside, if there’s no fever. Ten days at the most. A two-months child, well, that’s as chance will happen. Much more than three months, now, that gets more dangerous.”
“Five days,” he repeated, as if memorizing the number. “Right, we’re still all right, then. Fever… ?” He shook his head and rose to his feet, wincing as he rubbed his left arm, and followed the farmwife’s gaze around her kitchen. With an apologetic nod, he removed his arm contraption from her table, bundled it up, and set it down at the end of the tick.
“And what knocked you around?” asked Petti.
“This and that, over the years,” he answered vaguely. “If my patrol doesn’t find us by tomorrow, I’d like to take Miss Bluefield to Glassforge. I have to report in. Will there be a wagon?”
The farmwife nodded. “Later on. The girls should bring it tomorrow when they come.” The other women and children of the Horseford family were staying in town with Sassa’s wife, it seemed, sorting out recovered goods and waiting for their men to report the farm safe again.
“Will they be making another trip, after?”
“Might. Depends.” She scrubbed the back of her neck, staring around as if a hundred things cried for her attention and she only had room in her head for ten, which, Fawn guessed, was just about the case.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” Dag inquired.
She stared at him as if taken by surprise by the offer. “Don’t know yet. Everything’s been knocked all awhirl. Just… just wait here.”
She marched off to take a look around her smashed-up house.
Fawn whispered to Dag, “She’s not going to get settled in her mind till she has her things back in order.”
“I sensed that.” He bent over and took up the knife pouch, lying by the head of the pallet. Only then did Fawn realize how careful he’d been not to glance at it while the farmwife was present. “Can you put this somewhere out of sight?”
Fawn nodded, and sat up—slowly—to flip open her bedroll, laid at the pallet’s foot. Her spare skirt and shirt and underdrawers lay atop the one good dress she’d packed along to go look for work in, that hasty night she’d fled home. She tucked the knife pouch well away and rolled up the blanket once more.
He nodded approval and thanks. “Best not to mention the knife to these folks, I think. Bothersome. That one worse than most.” And, under his breath, “Wish Mari would get here.”
They could hear the farmwife’s quick footsteps on the wooden floors overhead, and occasional wails of dismay, mostly, “My poor windows!”
“I noticed you left a lot out of your story,” said Fawn.
“Yes. I’d appreciate it if you would, too.”
“I promised, didn’t I? I sure don’t want to talk about that knife to just anyone, either.”
“If they ask too many questions, or too close of ones, just ask them about their troubles in turn. It’ll usually divert them, when they have so much to tell as now.”
“Ah, so that’s what you were doing out there!” In retrospect, she could spot how Dag had turned the talk so that they had learned so much of the Horsefords’ woes, but the Horsefords had received so little news in return. “Another old patroller trick?”
One corner of his mouth twitched up. “More or less.”
The
farmwife came back downstairs about the time her son Tad came in from the barn, and after a moment’s thought she sent the boy and Dag off together to clean up broken glass and rubble around the house. She surveyed her kitchen and climbed down into her storage cellar, from which she emerged with a few jars for supper, seeming much reassured. After setting the jars in a row on the table—Fawn could almost see her counting stomachs and planning the upcoming meal in her head—she turned back and frowned down at Fawn.
“We’ll have to get you into a proper bed. Birdy’s room, I think, once Tad gets the glass out. It wasn’t too bad, otherwise.” And then, after a pause, in a much lower voice, “That patroller fellow tell the straight story on you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Fawn.
The woman’s face pinched in suspicion. “ ‘Cause he didn’t get those scratches on his face from no mud-man, I’ll warrant.”
Fawn looked back blankly, then said, “Oh! Those scratches. I mean, yes, that was me, but it was an accident. I mistook him for another bandit, at first. We got that one straightened out right quick.”
“Lakewalkers is strange folk. Black magicians, they say.”
Fawn struggled up on one elbow to say hotly, “You should be grateful if they are. Because blight bogles are blacker ones. I saw one, yesterday. Closer than you are to me now. Anything patrollers have to do to put them down is all right by me!”
Petti’s thoughts seemed to darken. “Was that what—did the blight bogle… blight you?”
“Make me miscarry?”
“Aye. Because girls don’t usually miscarry just from being knocked around, or falling down stairs, or the like. Though I’ve seen some try for it. They just end up being bruised mothers, usually.”
“Yes,” said Fawn shortly, scrunching back down. “It was the bogle.” Were these too-close questions? Not yet, she decided. Even Dag had offered some explanations, just enough to satisfy without begging more questions. “It was ugly. Uglier than the mud-men, even. Bogles kill everything they touch, seemingly. You should go look at its lair, later. The woods are all dead for a mile around. I don’t know how long it will take for them to grow back.”