Whit breathed reluctant agreement with that, relaxing slightly.
Berry nodded, her blond hair a glimmer in the gloom.
Fawn traced the two cords around her throat; her hand clenched on her birthday walnut in its hair net. “They worked! Do you realize, Dag’s ground shields worked!” At least long enough for them to run away from a malice distracted by other events. Long enough to live to tell the tale? “We got away!”
“The others didn’t.” Berry’s voice was flat—not with censure, Fawn thought, but just to keep steady.
Whit scrubbed his face. “Why didn’t that malice just ground-rip everyone right then? ”
“It was chasing after the patrollers,” said Berry. “I reckon it’s circled back by now.” Her voice quavered at this last.
“Maybe not,” said Fawn slowly. “That malice you fellows brought down the other day was a lot like my malice at Glassforge, a lumpy firstmolt. This one seems more like the one Dag saw in Raintree, advanced, except mainly eating bats instead of people, so it’s advanced . . . oddly. It was so crisp and fine and fresh-looking. If it just lately had a molt, maybe it’s only now able to fly and get around. It might not be looking to start another molt right off, especially as that would weigh it down so’s it couldn’t fly anymore. Maybe it might want to, like, save its prey till it’s ready for more.”
“Like a spider? ” said Berry. Fawn could hear her grimace.
Fawn frowned, trying to think it through. “If it’s mostly been eating bats, it might not be too bright yet.” Bats didn’t keep larders, as far as she knew. Would the malice think like a bat, or like a person? A mad person.
She brightened. “But it can’t get too far away from its mind slaves. Remember what Ford Chicory said back in Raintree, how he and his fellows would ride in and raid the malice’s army, catch folks and bring them back out of range, and then they’d get their wits back? I think this malice will want to gather all its captives in one place, except then it’ll be stuck—if it flies too far away from ’em, they’ll all come to their senses and escape.”
“Think it’ll try to march everyone to its lair? ” asked Whit, puzzling it out, too.
“Maybe. Though this one doesn’t seem tied to its lair anymore.”
“Now what do we do? ” asked Berry. “If I had six good feet of water under my hull, I’d take on anything, but I barely know this dry-foot country. Should we try to get back to Arkady? ”
Whit shook his head. “We’d not be that much safer, and we’d be all exposed trying to get there.”
Fawn thought of the pale flash of bone knife, spinning through the air in Sumac’s last, futile effort, and let her hand curl around its sheath.
“Whit, you got any of those crossbow bolts left? ”
“Just three.”
“Give me one.”
Whit rustled around, extracted a bolt from the short quiver, and handed it across. It glinted in the strip of moonlight. Fawn held it, traced it, tested its balance, fingered the feather vanes. Drew the bone knife, compared length, diameter, heft.
Whit saw her drift at once. “Um . . . if that worked, wouldn’t Lakewalkers already have invented sharing arrows? Sharing spears, for that matter? ”
Fawn shook her head. “Actually, Dag says patrollers do fix their sharing knives to spear hafts sometimes, in the field, but not often. In the close quarters of a woods or a cave, a spear’s not much more use than a knife, and they all are right terrified of anything that risks breakage.”
“Like poor Remo,” Berry agreed. “So cut up when he broke one by accident that he ran away from home.”
“Yep,” said Fawn. “It’s not just a handy sharp point on the end of a stick. It’s someone’s life. Death. Hopes. And it has to be the right shape to carry around with you for years, and something you could drive into your own heart even if you were caught out dying by yourself. A primed knife can be made into a spear easy enough, but I think a patroller would faint dead away if you suggested a sharing arrow. Think of a miss hitting a tree or a cave wall hard.”
“Mm,” said Whit. “Your grandfather’s ghost would haunt you forever, I expect.”
“Now this”—Fawn held up the knife—“would just tumble and be useless if you tried to shoot it from your crossbow. But if I put vanes on it and balance it, I think it might fly straight. Enough. For a short ways.” She touched Whit’s bolt, showing where she meant to scavenge the vanes.
“How would you make it balance? ”
“I’d need to carve away some of the bone.”
Whit made a choking noise.
“Won’t that destroy it? ” asked Berry doubtfully.
Fawn stared down at the length of carved bone, turning it in the moon patch. “I watched Dag bond and prime this knife. The groundwork he did seemed mainly concentrated on what used to be the bone’s inner surface. The end is just carved this shape to be handy for a grip. If I pare it down . . . See, if it doesn’t break, it’s not broken.”
“Huh? ” said Berry.
“It’s made to bust open from inside by the groundwork when it comes in contact with a malice. If it doesn’t crack apart while I’m fooling with it, that means the priming is still sound.” But Fawn ruined her confident-sounding claim by adding, “I think.”
“And just who,” said Whit warily, “do you picture doing this shooting?”
“It would have to be you.”
A fraught silence. From two directions.
“You’ve had way more practice ’n me,” Fawn forged on, “and besides, my shoulder’s hurt.” Hot and aching from the mud-bat’s clawing. She would deal with that later. “Best to be as close as we can get, in case you only get one shot. But all the bone bolt has to do is fly more or less straight and hit anywhere, and go a little ways into the malice’s fake skin. I didn’t shove Dag’s old primed knife point more’n an inch into the Glassforge malice”—she suppressed a shudder of memory—“and it worked just fine.”
“That’s taking an awful risk with our only primed knife,” said Whit.
“Yes, but if we sit hiding out here with it, it’s just as useless as if it’s busted. Better to try something fast. Before the malice flies somewhere out of reach. Before it starts snacking on our folks. Everything I’ve learned about malices says it’s better to get them sooner than later. Like putting out a fire.”
Into the continuing silence Fawn added desperately, “And if it fails, well, it was only Crane.”
“That,” said Berry, after a cool pause, “is a real good point.”
Whit sighed, partly agreement, and partly . . . well.
They would shortly lose what little light they had as the moon advanced over the ridge. Fawn held the bolt in the patch of moonlight and picked apart the threads winding the vanes, laying the feathers out carefully, one, two, three. She then drew her steel knife from her belt. One of Dag’s earliest gifts to her; he’d insisted she wear it at all times, and kept it razor-sharp for her.
She balanced and rebalanced the sharing knife in her hands, turning it over and around. Set the steel to a knobby bit on the hilt. Pressed.
The bit flew off with a faint snap.
Everyone held their breaths. But the bone blade stayed intact.
Fawn swallowed, set her steel to lift a longer sliver, and leaned into her next cut.
21
The scent of a campfire, drifting in the chill dawn air, warned Fawn, Whit, and Berry to get off the Trace and take to the woods once more.
Sumac was right about smoke smell carrying, Fawn thought, then wondered if Dag’s niece was still alive. Earlier they’d discovered where the remains of the company, herded by the malice’s mud-creatures, had tromped back onto the road, right enough, but if the patrollers were still around they’d left no mark. Following the slight acrid whiff upwind, they came to what was plainly a long-established stopping place along a creek— and found their quarry. No, not our quarry; our bait.
Prior travelers had stripped the woods of burnable deadfall near the big clear
ing, but Berry, scouting ahead, found a pile of old rotting logs, too damp and punky and moss-grown to burn, shaded by huge old mountain-laurel bushes and a spreading white pine; by the time they crept beneath to take stock, color was seeping back into Fawn’s vision as the last stars were swallowed by the steely sky. The day would turn hot and fine once the sun rose above the eastern ridge, but right now all was a shadowless damp. And an eerie quiet. A whimper from Plum, quickly muffled by her mama, came faintly to their ears, and Fawn was reminded that sounds carried both ways.
More than their captured company huddled around the fire; maybe a dozen tea caravan muleteers and a few other unlucky Trace travelers were also collected, sitting or lying down in sodden exhaustion, or snoring.
In the meadow opening out beyond, mules munched and crunched, big gray shapes moving through the wet grass. They seemed to have their harnesses off, so evidently the muleteers had retained enough of their wits to care for their animals. Fawn wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
“See that malice anywheres?” whispered Whit.
Fawn peered over the mossy log. Balanced on a dead tree branch on the other side of the clearing, what seemed a tall cloaked figure moved, and she caught her breath, but then she spotted another, draped from a lower branch like dirty washing, and realized they were only a pair of mud-bats. The one above shuffled in an irritated way, then swung to hang head down; the one beneath whined uncomfortably, and clawed its way back upright. Neither seemed to like its new position any better.
A couple of big, naked shapes sat cross-legged at the far edge of the circle of captives, and Fawn realized they were ordinary mud-men— new made, or seized from the other malice? Their lumpish forms made her think maybe they were spoils of the earlier clash, the one that—it was hard not to think of it as our malice—had been fleeing.
Berry followed her gaze, gripped her arm. Breathed, “Can they sense us? ”
“I guess not,” Fawn breathed back, when none of the dozing creatures roused in suspicion.
Dag had said their shields didn’t make their grounds as invisible as that of a fully veiled patroller. Were these early creations lacking groundsense, or did the smudged grounds simply not catch their interest? Maybe we look like rocks. Fawn tried to crouch as still and rocklike as possible, to keep up the illusion.
“When d’you think the malice will come back?” whispered Whit into Fawn’s ear; she had to strain to make out the words. At least she didn’t have to warn him to keep his voice down.
She also made her reply as voiceless as she could. “Not sure. If it’s past the stage of ground-ripping everybody on sight, and it seems this one is, next thing a malice does is try to gather forces to make attacks. ’Cept there’s nothing around here to attack. It’ll have to march everyone forty miles up the road to even reach the next village.” She hesitated.
“The Glassforge malice started to dig a mine, pretty early on, but that might have been ’cause it ate—ground-ripped—a miner. If this one’s been eating muleteers and traveling folks, it may just want to traipse away up the Trace.”
“Huh.” Whit settled in tighter to the earth.
They might have a long wait till their ambush. That would be bad.
Fawn could feel her nervous energy leaching away in exhaustion. This was a well-watered country, so they hadn’t gone thirsty in the night, but no one had eaten since noon yesterday. Or slept. A wave of nausea swept her, but it wasn’t as bad as the sick chill from being reminded of what she risked. Oh gods, if the baby made her throw up, could she do so in utter silence? Don’t think about it, it just makes it worse. She swallowed and breathed through her mouth.
To distract herself, she counted heads. All their company seemed still to be here, and together, except, disturbingly, Calla and Indigo. An ice lump formed under her breastbone as she realized that the four bodies in a huddled heap near the road weren’t sleeping. But all were strangers.
Had the muleteers redeemed their comrades for burial, or were the mud-men just saving the corpses for breakfast? She swallowed again, harder. If the mud-men were properly frugal, they ought to consume the oldest meat first, before starting on a more tender morsel like, say, Plum. Only if the malice has ground-ripped a good farmwife, I suppose. And, It might still get that chance.
Whit shifted uncomfortably, readjusted the lie of his crossbow.
Touched the cord of the sharing-knife sheath, now hung around his neck.
“If it flies around, how do we lure it close enough to get a good shot? ”
“I figure our shields will puzzle it, if it sees us. It’ll fly closer to look. Then we get it. You get it,” Fawn corrected herself.
“Maybe you two better draw back.”
Berry shook her head. “Somebody might have to keep attackers off you till you get your shot.” Her hand tightened around a long, stout stick, which Fawn had no doubt the riverwoman knew how to use.
Fawn felt less useful. If Whit’s first shot missed, but fell without breaking, she might be able to scurry and retrieve it. Depending on whether anyone, malice or mud-men or mind slaves, realized what was going on. Giving Whit not one chance, but two. But probably not three.
She did not mention the dodgy scheme aloud.
The light grew; from the woods, a redcrest trilled incessantly, cheercheer-
cheer, and was answered by another. A few figures around the smoldering fire stirred, lay back down. Fawn spotted some, but not all, of the company’s packs and bedrolls lying scattered about. Would the muleteers share their food? Would the malice realize it needed to feed its new troops? If so, would it bring people food, or bags of bugs . . . ? Fawn blinked rapidly, fighting a soft slide into the hallucinations of dream. This was nightmare enough with her eyes wide open. Maybe the bat-malice only came out at night. They would have to withdraw and hide till then; there was no way they could stay awake and undetected till nightfall in this . . .
Whit’s breath went out in a guarded huff. Fawn looked up through the laurel leaves.
A bat-shape circled in an un-bat-like graceful glide. She could not guess its size against the blank blue sky, but its bone-shaking aura rolled before it like sea waves. She wanted to run now, but of course it was too late. It wasn’t courage, nor any fancied usefulness, that kept her crouching.
Papa always said Mama should have named me Cat, because my curiosity would kill me someday. Maybe today? Yet beneath her fear, curiosity refused to surrender. Will my stupid-farmer-girl idea work? She wet her lips and waited.
“All right,” Whit muttered. He fumbled the modified knife out of its sheath—Fawn took it back from him so he wouldn’t drop it while he was cranking his bow—stood up, and stepped forward. Breaking cover too soon, maybe, but oh gods that he could stand up at all . . . Fawn scrambled after and pressed the bone bolt into his sweat-damp hand.
The malice circled overhead, looking down curiously. Too high?
Moving too fast? It flapped it vast wings and went higher. “Whit, wait,” Fawn gasped as he raised the crossbow, wavering after its target.
Instead of the malice descending, the company rose to its feet.
Turned faces their way. Started to move in a stumbling bunch. Finch called anxiously, “No, you don’t have to kill them! Just pull those walnut necklaces off them, and they’ll be fine!”
Oh gods . . . !
Berry took a grip on her stick and stepped forward grimly. Fawn, desperate, jumped out and waved her arms frantically skyward. “Down here, you stupid bat-thing, you malice-bat . . . stupid thing! This is what you want! Come and get it!” She danced back and forth. Oh, come and get it. “Stupid malice!”
Whit gulped as the malice, with another lazy wing flap, dropped suddenly closer, eyeing them. Still beyond reach of any knife or spear.
More wing beats sent gusts of cellar smell tumbling toward them as it hovered, legs drawn up. Fawn wondered how long their shields would stand up to the malice’s full concentration, then realized she was about to find out, because th
ey had surely won all its attention now. Its legs extended—it was coming in for a landing. The morning grew darker, like a cloud drawing across the sun, but the sky was cloudless and the sun wasn’t up over the ridge yet . . .
The shaking crossbow steadied, Fawn knew well at what cost. Yes, Whit! A snap of release, a deep thrum from the string, a white flash as the bone bolt flew upward. A thwack-crack as it entered the malice’s abdomen, spread broad as a target as its wings stretched to scoop the air.
The malice’s surprised shriek pierced Fawn’s ears, dimming abruptly as darkness descended on her eyes. Am I being ground-ripped? But Dag said it would hurt . . . Through the boiling black clouds, Fawn saw the malice’s wings blow off in both directions and tumble earthward as its body disintegrated. Rank matter showered down. The blackness shrank inward, hard and tight. Was this death? Oh baby, oh Dag, I’m sorry—
———
Dag came awake on a sudden, indrawn breath, and stared around, heart thudding for no reason that he could discern. All was quiet, the woods fog-shrouded, but the world had lightened since he’d dozed off under this ledge in a black chill. The sky shaded upward from gray to pale blue. An hour after dawn, perhaps? It would be at least another two hours before the sun cleared the ridge and began to warm them, but already the mist was shredding away as the air began to stir. His two charges still slept; or at least, Owlet slept, and Pakko lay in a pain-hazed doze that Dag could find no reason to disrupt.
Fearfully, Dag tested his marriage cord coiled on his upper arm. She’s still alive. At least that. The tiny hum seemed disturbingly muted, as it had ever since Dag had anchored Fawn’s walnut shield into her ground.
Was it more muted now? Why? Was Fawn traveling farther from him?
Ordinary distances had never affected their cords before. Dag tried to encourage himself: Sumac will know to look after her, but the dire part of his mind that wouldn’t shut up had to add, If Sumac is still alive. Would his scout Tavia find any survivors at all in the valley, let alone Arkady?
He rolled his shoulders, propped uncomfortably against the rock wall, and scowled at his right leg, stretched out before him. He’d finally loosened his boot for fear that cutting off circulation would lead to cutting off his purpling foot, and as he’d expected, the ankle was now too swollen to tie it again. Soon he would need to get up and go refill their water bottle. He tried to muster a proper medicine maker’s concern for his charges, instead of frustrated rage for being fixed here. He and Tavia had made Pakko as clean and comfortable as possible before she’d left last night. Dag’s last reserve was one strip of dried plunkin in his pocket. Pakko’s body was the most depleted, but his pain muffled his hunger, and keeping Owlet silent might prove the more urgent task . . .