She stared at his throat, at her hands.
“If the job has to be done, it’ll be at the last moment, because, well, because. But that means you won’t be able to hesitate. Can you do the needful? ”
“I . . . don’t know,” she answered honestly.
He nodded. “You’ll find your way if you have to.” He made his voice confident, unwavering, bland. Such situations had come up before, of course, though more common in legend than fact. For the first time he wondered if any of those prior ill-fated heroes had been as desperately unwilling to share as he was right now. Likely. A year ago, this would have been easy, his barren future scant grief to give up. Things seemed to be coming at him out of their time.
Fatherhood, for one. He wanted to watch over his late-come little girl as a live papa, not as a dead legend. Not even as a living absence, as his own father had been. I want to see how her tale comes out . . . The sudden thought of her at the mercy of strangers, as Owlet now was at his, made his heart go hollow.
No need to burden Tavia with these reflections, no, nor any fraught last words, either. “The malice,” he said, “will give you all the gumption you need. Trust me on this.”
She nodded unhappily.
———
It was upwards of an hour before Sumac dragged back. Whit almost shot her.
Fawn looked up from the far side of the little fire where she was attempting to help Calla attempt to help Arkady with Barr. As the ominous shape loomed out of the dark and the dual gleam could be made out as Sumac’s eyes, Whit lowered his quivering crossbow. “Give some warning, why don’t you? ” he gasped.
“I bumped grounds with Neeta,” Sumac said, voice flat. Neeta was off in the woods somewhere, trying to guard their whole perimeter by herself. Sumac’s hair was in disarray, her face branch-whipped and strained. She added tightly, “You can see that blighted fire for a hundred paces through the trees. And smell it. Put it out.”
“Not yet,” said Arkady in a blurry voice, from deep in his trance.
“Need the boiled water . . .” Sumac looked around, taking in the scene in some dismay, Fawn thought.
Barr lay on a blanket, right boot off and trouser leg cut away, his lower leg held across a towel on Arkady’s lap. Arkady’s hands hovered over the bloody mess. The hideous pink bone ends that had been sticking out through his burst skin earlier had been pushed beneath it once more, mating up under Arkady’s most powerful groundsetting. The maker had seemed unshaken by the bone break—the worst Fawn had ever seen or imagined—but had complained bitterly, back when he’d still been able to speak, about all the dirt he had to work in. Barr’s face was the color of suet, and he looked as if he wished he could pass out again, as he had a couple of times so far. Remo gripped his white-knuckled hand and wiped his sweating forehead with a wet cloth.
The rest of the group was scattered back under the trees, taking care of the animals and one another. When the last of the mud-bats had vanished over the eastern ridge, the shaken company had pushed forward a quarter mile into deeper woods, then turned off the road at a shallow stream and struggled up it as far as they could drag the wagons.
The boys had pushed the two wagons as deeply under the cover of some spreading oak trees as they could be squeezed; Fawn doubted it was enough.
Sumac ran an aggravated hand through her escaping hair. “If you . . . oh, blight. Keep the fire. With all these unveiled farmer grounds and this herd of animals, nothing with groundsense could miss you, dark, trees, or no. Blight, have a party and dance.”
“I’ll pass,” said Barr weakly from his blanket.
It might almost have been a joke; the wheezy bark it won from Sumac might almost have been a laugh. The laugh leached away as she met Fawn’s anxious eyes.
“I couldn’t catch them—couldn’t get near them,” she said. “Other side of the river, up the ridge, those rocks rise up in ten- and twentyfoot blocks. No way for miles either side to get a horse up. Fawn, I’m sorry.”
Barr squeezed his eyes shut.
Mutely, Fawn held out her left wrist, wrapped in its wedding cord.
Sumac’s lips parted; she strode around the fire and gripped it. “Ye gods, he’s still alive!”
“Yes. Remo and Arkady said. We keep checking.”
“His patrol always claimed Dag was a blighted cat, but this . . . ! How can he—where can they have—”
A jerky wail interrupted her as Vio ran out of the dark. “My baby! Did you find Owlet? ”
Judging from the spasm of her hand, Sumac barely kept herself from flinching away. She dropped Fawn’s wrist and turned to the desperate woman. “No. I lost them over the ridge. Couldn’t follow.”
“How can you have lost them! You’re a Lakewalker, you’re supposed to be magic!”
Sumac stiffened. “I can’t blighted fly!”
Fawn pushed herself up to stand between the pair, hitching up the torn fabric of her shirt. Left-handed, because her right side wasn’t working too good. With Arkady drawn deep into the urgency of the bone break, Fawn had to wait for her turn, so Berry had done her best to clean out the deep gouges fore and aft in her shoulder, wrapping them in a strip of torn cloth. It would hold for the moment. Fawn wasn’t about to complain of the throbbing pain with Barr down there gritting his teeth on much worse.
“We think Dag’s still alive,” Fawn said. “If he is, he’ll go after the child if he can.” If he hadn’t been dropped on those rocks like Barr, and left lying up there in some broken agony.
“How do you know? ” Vio demanded.
“Because . . . because he’s Dag.”
Vio’s mouth thinned. “Can’t we send out searchers? ”
“Are you mad? ” said Remo.
“I’ll go by myself, if none of you big men and Lakewalkers will!”
Grouse, coming up behind her, said, “Don’t be a fool, Vio.”
The girl Plum hovered—skinny, hollow-eyed, dark hair straggly.
Her distraught mama, earlier, had screamed at her for not helping hang on to her baby brother; her frantic papa had hit her for crying.
She was pretty quiet now, creeping to cling once more to her mama’s skirts, because no matter how bad it got, where else did a five-yearold have to go?
Vio gave her husband a hard look. “I don’t see anybody else volunteering, now, do I? ”
Fawn put in more quietly, “We all lost folks. Neeta her partner, Sumac her uncle, me, well. And if Barr gets to keep his leg it’ll be a miracle.”
A disagreeing grunt from Arkady. All in a day’s work for him, was this?
“If this is a contest, I don’t think much of the prizes,” Fawn finished, ignoring that last. “What we need is to work together.”
Vio stared venomously at her. “You can’t know what it’s like to lose a child.”
On the list of pointless things to say to the woman, Yes, I do seemed pretty high up. So Fawn said nothing, and was shortly glad of it when Vio’s hard voice broke. “Owlet’s so little.”
Sumac started to rub, then winced and dabbed, at her scratched face. “There’s not a lot of question in my mind Dag would have wanted me to turn back and look after you all.” Her glance at Fawn added, Especially you.
In an effort to be practical, because someone needed to, Fawn put in, “We found another dead mule along the road. I don’t know if you had time to notice, but didn’t neither of those mules have their harness taken off. If they’d died natural, those tea caravan boys wouldn’t have left their loads on ’em, nor the hides either, likely. That says to me they must have been attacked and forced away or run off. But we haven’t spotted any human bodies yet.”
Sumac’s brow furrowed. “Sounds like trouble to the north, all right. Besides no traffic coming down, I ’specially don’t like that we haven’t even met anyone running away our way.”
“Except for that first malice,” Fawn pointed out.
“There was that.” Sumac grimaced. “Going forward seems a bad idea. Going back is no bet
ter. We’d be open targets in that burned-over country. Staying here’s no good, either. We hit that mud-bat pack hard. No question they’ll be back looking for more. But I know the worst would be to scatter into the woods with no blighted plan!”
The others had trickled up around the firelit debate, looking more mulish than their mules.
“We should round up our weapons,” said Ash.
“We should,” agreed Sumac, “but we’re too many to hide and too few to make a stand.”
“I’m thinking,” said Fawn, “that those muleteers could have been mind-slaved.” She looked around at the array of faces, some blank, and explained, “That scares me way more than mud-men. I talked to folks at Glassforge and in Raintree who went through it. It’s like you still have your wits, you keep all your know-how, but suddenly you want to do whatever the malice wants of you. If it wants you to attack your friends, or eat your own children, it seems like a fine idea at the time. And you remember, after. The most important thing, whatever else we do, is to keep everyone out of range of that malice.”
Sumac bit her knuckles, seemed to gather herself, and spoke in the most no-nonsense voice Fawn had yet heard from her. A patrol leader’s voice, for sure. “All right. This is what we’re doing. The wounded can’t run or be carried. They’ll have to be hid in the rocks on the valley side no matter what. Lie up till rescue can get to them. That’ll be Barr, Arkady, and Rase.”
“I can fight,” Rase quavered. To Fawn, he looked as if he could barely stand.
“Good,” said Sumac heartlessly, “because if you get found, you’ll have to. My best guess is that the malice lair lies to our east. So that leaves west. Happens there’s a Lakewalker camp almost due west of here at Laurel Gap. So we set the animals loose, pull together what food and weapons we can carry—and ropes, we’ll want ropes—and skedaddle west over the ridges on foot. Tonight.” Her voice slowed. “It might be best to leave Plum with Arkady.”
“No!” Vio wailed.
“Your decision,” said Sumac. “You have one hour to think about what this retreat’ll put her through. And who’s going to carry her fifty, sixty miles over mountains at a run.” She turned on her heel, taking in the rest of the stunned company. “We want to make sure we have all the bows and arrows into the hands of folks who can use them.”
“Tavia’s bow was broken when her horse fell on it,” Fawn said.
“Neeta got back her quiver.”
Sumac nodded. “Remo can take Barr’s bow. Neeta can have mine. Whit, you have yours.”
Putting the distance weapons, Fawn noticed, solely into the hands of people who could ground-veil or were shielded, and did not risk mind slaving.
“We can fight those things!” said Finch. “We drove them off once!”
“Speak for yourself, boy,” growled Bo. “Looked to me like they just left ’cause they got bored.”
“But we can’t fight their master,” said Sumac. “This wants the Laurel Gap patrol. Blight, this wants every Lakewalker camp in the hinterland!”
“I have Dag’s primed knife,” said Fawn quietly. “He dropped it to me. Last thing.”
Sumac’s eyebrows rose. “Well,” she said. “That gives you two good reasons to stick tight to me.”
Fawn swallowed. “Dag might come back. Looking for us. Or maybe Tavia.”
“Then they’ll be able to join up with Arkady’s group,” suggested Sumac. “Hide out till we can send help.” Fawn thought Sumac drew more consolation from this notion than she did.
Arkady looked up, squinting, and said in an underwater groan, “Needle. Dressings. Splints.”
Calla and Fawn hurried back to his side, Fawn rooting in the medicine pack.
“You all right? ” said Sumac, in what was for Sumac an amazingly diffident voice.
“I’ll do. Just don’t bring me another like this for the next three days, eh? ” He grimaced at her.
“In case you didn’t hear, we’re going to tuck up your medicine tent back in the rocks. Your job will be to all stay alive till we send a patrol to dig you out of your burrow again.”
He nodded. Not sorry, Fawn guessed, that it would be Sumac’s duty to run away from this place as fast as she could drive her farmer flock.
Sumac packed off the splinted Barr on a sapling-and-blanket stretcher carried by Remo and Whit, with Arkady leading his packhorse bearing the medicine-tent supplies and Rase staggering along after. Vio didn’t send Plum with them. Again, Fawn noticed, no one without either ground veiling or a shield would know just where they’d gone to earth, and so could not betray them even under a malice’s persuasion.
The company scattered to gather its gear.
20
Two hours after sunset, the lopsided moon rose to bathe the easternfacing ridge in milk and ink. Under normal conditions, Dag would have found it as good as daylight. Not tonight. Staggering along with his only hand full of walking stick, trying to peer over the squirming burden of Owlet tied to his chest, ankle screaming at every step, it took Dag twice as long to reach the crest as he’d planned. He could sense Tavia’s growing impatience.
“Maybe I should take the tad,” she said as they made the top and Dag stood gasping and bent.
He waved an acknowledging hand. “A minute.” He stared out over the valley, seeking, beyond the silver ribbon of river, the fainter line of the Trace. Nothing moved along the road. No curls of luminous smoke rose from the woods to the north, either. He dared to open his groundsense, reaching, but it was well over two miles to the valley floor, beyond his range even at his best. Fawn’s still alive, his marriage cord told him, but where?
The cool damp of this black-white-gray world, falsely serene, felt clammy on his sweating face. Something unexpected pricked his senses, not below, but north along the ridge. Faint, thready . . .
“Tavia, open and check along the ridge to our right. Maybe half a mile.”
“That’s right at the edge of my—wait. A patroller? Not one of ours . . . ? ”
“No ground I recognize. Hurt, I think.”
She nodded; they began to pick their way between scrubby bushes, around jutting rocks, through weeds. Plants bruised by their passage gave up a sharp green smell in the dark. The trees rose around them as they descended, making the shadows more treacherous, though they did give Tavia handholds. Dag found that anchoring his hook on a passing sapling proved more pain than it was worth. His left arm was wrenched and sore, his stump swollen and uncomfortable in the wooden cuff, but he hardly dared remove his arm harness for fear he wouldn’t be able to get it back on.
Tavia forged ahead; he caught up to find her crouched and peering over a twenty-foot drop. A huddled man-shape lay at its foot.
A dry, hoarse voice rose from below. “Someone . . . up there?
Help!”
“We see you,” Tavia called. “We’re coming down.”
“I think my back is broken,” the voice returned.
“Don’t try to move!”
“I can’t . . . blighted move!”
They crept along the outcrop till Tavia found a steep scramble down.
Dag was forced to go a little farther and then work his way back.
A patroller, yes, Dag saw as he limped near. Spare of build, middle height; a few threads of silver gleamed in his dark hair, mostly undone from its braid and scrambled around his head. He lay faceup, legs limp, hands clenched. A marriage cord, frayed and faded, circled his left wrist. His lips were dry, cracked, and bleeding. His ripped shirt was stained with dark, dried blood; already Dag recognized the pattern of mud-bat clawings. And he was right about his back. At least two vertebrae fractured, about halfway down.
“Water,” he whispered to Tavia as she bent over him. “Oh, please . . .” The man’s patting hand found a leather water bottle at his side, empty and flaccid, and thrust it toward Tavia.
“Dag? ” she said uncertainly.
“Yes. He’s dangerously parched. Careful getting it off.”
She unwound the st
rap from his neck, untangled it from his hair, and sped away. Dag lowered himself with a grunt. Sleepy Owlet whimpered protest; Dag off-loaded the child and rolled him to the side, where he curled up in the dry dirt, stubby hands relaxing again in sleep. How did youngins do that, go from squirming whirligigs to limp little rag dolls in a blink?
“Who’re you?” whispered the injured man. “Patrollers? Not ours. Help from outland . . . ?” He squinted up at Dag in brief hope, took in his battered appearance, his arm harness, his stick, and answered his own question with a deflated, “Not . . .”
“Name’s Dag Bluefield N—” Dag swallowed the No-Camp. “Traveling north with a mixed party of farmers and Lakewalkers. We were attacked just before sunset by a flock of those flying . . . things. Mud-bats. They tried to carry me, Tavia, and the tad over there across the ridge, but we fought free of ’em. We’re trying to get back to our people, but I don’t see where they’ve gone.”
“Lucky. I . . . was dropped . . .” The man’s eyes rolled anxiously as Tavia reappeared out of the moon shadows. “Ah-please . . .”
“You can help him raise his head,” said Dag, “but don’t lift his shoulders or jostle his back.”
Tavia nodded, and spent the next few minutes getting the entire skin of water down the desperately thirsty man without choking him, much.
“Ah,” he said as she let his head down again. “So good. Gods. Hurts . . .”
“How long have you been up here? ” asked Dag. The man’s bladder had given way in his paralysis long enough ago for his trousers to have pretty much all dried out again. That actually wasn’t a good sign, but the water should fix it.
“Not sure. I keep fading in and out, and waking up not dead. Surprises me. One day, two? It’s been dark and light and dark . . .”
“Where you from? Laurel Gap? ”
“Aye. My patrol—we’d heard strange reports, just arrived at the head of the valley and started to sweep, when those mad things fell out of the sky on us.”