No. This is wrong.
Dag found an unexpected ally in Owlet, who had awakened during the groundsetting session. Flustered by the influx of strangers, the child began crying again for his mama. Dag ruthlessly let him. Tavia quickly handed him off to Calla, who had no better luck calming him. Arkady, returning from washing up in the streamlet, winced at the noise.
“Best to get this child back to his family,” Dag observed over the ruckus. “Before he cries himself sick or takes a tumble down the hill. There’s no need to keep him up here in the cold another night.”
“Who are you volunteering? ” said Tavia. “You couldn’t carry him!”
“I could,” said Indigo unexpectedly. “Go with Dag and help look for the Basswoods.” A glance exchanged with Calla added, And Sage and Finch and Ash.
“Huh.” Tavia rubbed a hand over her weary face. “I guess Calla and me between us would be enough help out up here tonight. I mean, with Arkady and all.”
Calla added, bouncing the child to no other effect than to give the wails a waver, “His parents have to be crazy with worry and grief right now. Cruel to leave them that way any longer than needed.”
“Where would you look? ” said Arkady, weakening under the onslaught.
“There’s been a tail of smoke coming up from the woods near the Trace all day, ’bout eight, ten miles north, looks like,” said Dag. “I’ve been checking it. Seems like a campfire, and on the route Calla and Indigo said our folks took. If not our people, it’s some people, who might have seen them.”
“And you plan to walk two miles down this hill, cross a river, walk another mile to the road and more miles down it, with a sprained ankle, before dark? ” inquired Arkady. “Lugging this little screamer? You’re not heroic, Dag, you’re mad.”
Getting there. For the tenth time today, Dag hobbled to the drop-off and cast his groundsense out to its farthest, thinnest reach.
For the first time today, he received a response: far below, a long, plaintive whinny echoed up the ravine-slashed slopes.
Dag grinned. “Who said anything about walking? Seems my ride’s turned up. If Indigo can get me down this hill as far as I can summon Copperhead up, I’m back in the saddle.”
———
To Dag’s surprise, his saddle was still on Copperhead’s back, though his saddlebags were gone, scraped off somewhere in the woods. He’d have to spend a day hunting for them, not for the first time in his career. Not to mention his war knife, lost in the clash. Later. Copperhead hadn’t managed to pull off his bridle, and his bit was slimy and crusted with browsing. His mane and tail were full of burs. But in all, the horse was in vastly better shape than his owner.
Bemused, Dag handed back the blanket he’d begged from Indigo, with which he’d planned to pad the gelding’s murderously serrated backbone. “You didn’t unsaddle the horses before turning them loose? ”
“The others, sure!” Indigo, indignant, stepped prudently out of range of cow kicks as Dag led his mount to the nearest fallen log. “This one ran off after he dumped you in the fight. We never caught him.”
“Embarrassed, I hope. Eh, old fellow?” Dag scrubbed the chestnut ears; Copperhead snorted green slobber and rubbed to be relieved of his bridle, in vain. He laid his ears back in protest as Dag tightened his girth. But Dag made sure the horse sensed this was no time for tricks. It was an awkward heave to get himself up, but Dag blew out his breath in relief as his haunches settled into their accustomed place once more, and he allowed his throbbing right foot to dangle. He hurt all over, and his vision seemed to pulse in time with the pain in his ankle. Arkady, though also exhausted and still disapproving, had spared him a small ground reinforcement to his sprain before he’d left, muttering, I suppose Sumac’s halfway to Laurel Gap by now, to which Dag had replied, I’ll keep an eye out.
Dag lowered his hook, toward which Owlet reached out grimy hands; swinging from it had been a game they’d invented earlier in the day, which had worked for a while to turn wails to giggles. “Upsy-daisy, little brother.” Indigo boosted him upward, and Dag tucked him in the blanket and disposed him as securely as possible before him in the saddle, left arm wrapping his little chest. Owlet made a noise halfway between fascination and dismay at this elevated view of the world.
Dag glanced out across the river valley, and said to Indigo, “Copperhead will outpace you.”
“I didn’t figure you’d be waiting.” Indigo helped Dag slip his stick under his saddle flap.
“Do you want to follow, or go back up to Arkady’s camp with Calla? ”
Indigo shook his head. “I’ll check the wagons, first. They really are the sensible meeting point. If no one’s there yet, I may follow you up the Trace. Or I may just flop down and wait. But north’s your best bet, right enough.”
Dag nodded, and turned Copperhead westward with the pressure of his knees. It was slow work picking through the woods, spitting out spiderwebs, but they found a river crossing that didn’t come up higher than the horse’s belly just as the rim of the sun touched the western ridge. Dag reckoned the luminous mountain twilight would last till he reached the source of that smoke curl up the road; after that . . . well, it would depend on what he found. There was a very real possibility that he might be attempting to deliver Owlet to parents ground-ripped and dead in a ditch.
He tried for optimism; it was equally likely that the bat-malice had been mustering farmer troops to meet an attack from the patrollers operating to the north, in which case it would have been conserving its captives, not feeding on them. His optimism faltered with the thought, I hope our folks didn’t run into the patrollers before the malice went down.
Although that might well have been how the malice had met its end, because clearly the creature had not been tied to its initial lair. Dag had been on the other side of that scenario, a couple of times, fighting mindslaved farmers. He didn’t have to imagine the horrors; he could just call up the memories. He jerked up his mazed brain as if it were a balky horse. No. We’re not having that here.
When they reached the road, Dag turned Copperhead north and touched him into his long, rocking lope; of the horse’s many defects, that gait was not one. Owlet squealed with astonishment and glee as his curls ruffled in the wind. At least one of us three is happy. Actually, Copperhead didn’t altogether seem to mind stretching his legs, and Dag let him stretch them a little farther. As a result, Dag came within groundsense range of the smoke camp while the sky was still bright.
Yes! he thought as he touched the first familiar farmer ground. Still half a mile out, he let blowing Copperhead drop to a walk, and began hurriedly counting heads. Bo, Hawthorn, Hod, good. Sage—oh, Calla, everything’s going to be all right for you now. Finch and Ash. The Basswoods, very distressed, but absent-gods-be-thanked Plum was still with them.
He’d been especially worried for Plum, a high-ground-density morsel of little use as a soldier. A great many strangers, or near strangers—he was almost sure he recognized some of the tea-caravan muleteers they’d been playing leapfrog with for weeks. He sorted through again. Were those dim smudges Whit and Berry, behind their shields? Surely there was a third? Yes, dimmer still.
Dag pressed Copperhead into a grudging trot as orange firelight flickered through the graying shadow of the woods. He turned into a broad clearing, with a broader meadow opening out along a creek, to find a couple of dozen folks in a makeshift camp—muleteers, yes, and the larger part of his own company. Finch, lugging in an armload of deadfall, saw him first, dropped the branches around his feet, and yelled in astonishment, “It’s Dag! He’s alive! And he’s got Owlet with him!”
A female shriek of “What?” came from the clearing’s far side. Dag had just time to spare a powerful thought of Behave or you’re wolf meat to Copperhead before a dozen pale, excited people swarmed up around him.
Copperhead lowered his head and snorted, but stood dutifully still.
Without being asked, everyone parted to let Vio run up to Dag’s s
addle; Grouse and Plum hurried behind her. The ragged woman stared up openmouthed with all the joy lighting her face that Dag could have wished, her arms reaching as if for stars. He persuaded Owlet to hang on to his hook arm, lifted him from his saddlebow, and lowered him into his mother’s grasp.
“Dag, Dag, Dag,” chortled Owlet. “Plunkin, plunkin. Blighdit.”
Vio was laughing, shining tears tracking down her face. “My word, but he’s filthy!”
“No worse’n Dag!” Grouse exclaimed, hugging wife and child both.
As he took in the return of his son, all unexpected, from what had surely seemed certain death, his face bore a naked wonder unlike any expression Dag had ever surprised there. Dag grinned. And what do you think of Lakewalkers now, Grouse?
Dag’s gaze swept the upturned faces, but didn’t find Berry, Whit, or Fawn.
“Where’s Fawn? ” he asked.
Silence spread out from the crowd clustered around his knees, as though his words had been a stone thrown into water.
Vio looked up; her face drained of joy, leaving just tears. She clutched Owlet harder. “Oh, Dag. I’m so sorry.”
“What? ”
“The poor little thing was so brave and bright, and then so stiff and cold. If we’d guessed you were still alive, we’d have waited for you.”
“What are you talking about? ”
Bo, shouldering forward, swallowed and swung his arm to point across the clearing. “That bat-malice-thing kilt her, just as Whit got it with his bow. Them muleteers was buryin’ their own dead, so we laid her in alongside ’em. Not an hour ago, I reckon.”
“Buried?” Dag’s heart began to hammer. He gripped his marriage cord and stared in foolish bewilderment at the mound of fresh-turned earth beneath a cluster of slender ash trees. “But she’s not dead!”
22
Dag found himself atop the low mound, clawing at the dirt with his hook, with no memory of how he’d got there. He didn’t have his stick.
“We’ve got to get her out of there! She can’t breathe!”
“Dag, man!” Finch pulled at his shoulder. Ash clamped a big hand on the other, lifting him more effectively; he wavered unwillingly to his knees, still clawing dirt, then clawing air.
“It’s no good, Dag!” said Sage. “Give it up, please!”
A woman’s voice, Vio’s, in the background, calling in distress, “Oh, help! Grief’s gone and turned his wits!”
“I did not,” Dag gasped furiously, shrugging off the hands, “survive a fight with mud-men and a night on a blighted mountaintop, climb two miles back down the mountain, and ride ten with a busted ankle, all to find my wife, to stop six feet short!”
“Does he want her bones? ” said an unfamiliar voice—one of the muleteers?
“They say them Lakewalkers eat their dead—it’s like a funeral feast to them—but I’m not having with that here!”
“She was his wife, though. Maybe we should let him . . .”
“Well, he ain’t eating my brother, nor stealing his bones neither!”
Dag fought free; more hands clutched him. Bo called out, “There’s no use to this carryin’ on, Dag—let her rest in peace. We done her all the respects, I promise you.”
“She’s not dead! I don’t know what’s going on, but she’s not dead! She can’t be dead! Not Spark!” He whirled, shedding men. Farmers.
“Dag, stop, this is madness!”
“Blight it, help me!” he cried, anguished. One-handed shoveling was not one of his better skills. But somebody must have had tools to dig the grave, so there must still be tools around to dig it up. He didn’t expect the strangers to understand, but surely the southern boys . . . ?
A muleteer shoved too close; Dag almost swiped at him with his lethal hook, just managed to slug the man instead. Six more helpful muleteers jumped Dag and wrestled him to the grass. Gods! He couldn’t groundrip them like mud-bats . . . Yes, I could. The unwelcome thought slowed him a little.
He wept in his frustration, water blurring his dizzied view of shadows, firelight, men’s frightened faces. “Look, fetch another Lakewalker! Anyone with a speck of groundsense! They’ll testify I’m right!” A knee pressed on his chest, making him think of the dirt that must be pressing down on Spark’s. Had they stamped down the grave mound? “Absent gods, did you cover her face? There’ll be dirt in her mouth—in her eyes—” They hadn’t sewn her eyelids shut, had they? He’d heard that was a farmer funeral practice, some places . . .
Bo’s voice, would-be-soothing but for the quaver: “Dag, there weren’t no mistaking. She was cold and stiff. We couldn’t feel a pulse. There weren’t no breath mistin’ on a knife blade.”
“It was a hot day, of course there wouldn’t be breath on a warm blade! Where’s Whit? Where’s Berry? Get me Whit, he’ll understand!”
“He’s too sick to stand up, Dag, and Berry ain’t no better,” Hawthorn’s voice called anxiously from beyond the circle of looming faces.
Wrong, wrong, what was wrong? With a mighty lunge, Dag wallowed to his feet, knocking aside muleteers.
Oh gods, thank gods, a man was running up with a shovel. Dag’s heart lifted in joyous relief. “Yes, yes, help me—!” He reached out his hand for the wildly swinging tool. Saw, too late, its intended purpose as the broad blade swept around his head and clouted him hard. Faces, firelight, spinning branches above, all dissolved in hot bright sparks.
———
He came to himself wincing, sick to his stomach. Pain pulsed like forgehammer blows in his head, ankle. Lungs. Heart. He breathed shallowly, then more deeply. Made to touch his head, only to find his hand caught.
He wrenched around, or tried to, to discover he was sitting with his back to a slender tree, his hand and hook tied behind it. He hadn’t been stunned for long—his tears were not quite dried. It felt as if snails had been crawling across his face, and he jerked his arm again, desperate to wipe away the sensation.
Turning his wrist, Dag felt rope. He could ground-rip through rope, if he had to—it wouldn’t kill him to rip anything he could eat, Spark had figured that out, Spark, no! Not that gnawing down a mouthful of hemp would be good for him. He panted, trying to collect his scattered wits, because they seemed to be his last resource. Struggling for calm, he extended his groundsense. The dim sensation in his marriage cord was unchanged. That, at least. The shadowy blur under the mound at the meadow’s edge had not disappeared. Whatever had happened wasn’t growing worse. Yet.
He looked up to find Finch, Ash, Sage, and Bo all crouched around him in a half circle, staring apprehensively. Hod hovered behind Bo. He’d been crying, too, judging from the snail tracks down his spotty face.
Dag swallowed, moistened dry lips. Croaked, “I’m better now. You can untie me.”
Bo’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll be the judge of that, Dag.”
Subterfuge. He should have gone to subterfuge right off, instead of alarming the whole camp with a display of deranged Lakewalker.
Screaming—more screaming, gods, his throat was raw—would not be helpful. Stands to reason, stands to reason, and he choked down a shattered laugh at Spark’s favorite turn of phrase, because inexplicable cackling would not be helpful, either.
The sight of Sage’s strained face reminded him. “Sage. I saw Calla and Indigo. They escaped last night all right, and made it back to Arkady. Indigo’s gone back to the wagons, to catch anyone who shows up there, and Calla’s up on the east ridge with Arkady and a hurt patroller that Tavia and I found. Tavia, she got away from her mud-bat, too. Whole, we’re all whole. Well, I got a little bent.”
Sage almost melted before Dag’s eyes, as a man had a right to who’d just learned he would not be burying his new bride. Not to mention his tent-brother. And all, and all. Save for Spark. But this level-voiced report seemed to reassure his audience in more ways than one.
“Please. All I want . . . all I want is to see her face again. One last time. Is that too much to ask?” Dag would have crawled on his knees to
beg, without hesitation, but until he convinced them to untie him he couldn’t move. It wasn’t enough just to break free and run off. Now that he’d recovered his senses, he could think of three ways to escape, quick as a cat. But he had to have help—willing, careful help. Right now. He gulped again, to hide his mad-looking desperation. “Fawn and me, we’ve done a lot for you folks. I know it’s late, and you’re all tired, but . . . but please. I just want to look at her. One last time.”
And if it really was the last time, well, he still had his bonded knife slung around his neck, didn’t he? Formerly when he was in desperate straits that thought had calmed and heartened him, in a bleak sort of way. Not tonight. I want Fawn, I want our baby, I want, I want . . . I want life. Years and decades and heaping plattersful more of life. It was not too much to ask. “For pity’s sake,” he whispered.
He tried to compose himself enough to muster a persuasion, or more than one, unfit for groundwork of any kind though he was in this distraction. But then he saw the hesitation in Sage’s face, and waited, one heartbeat, two, three.
“Maybe it’ll settle him down,” Sage said.
Dag quelled a howl of agreement, Yes, yes! Made his voice humble, mollified. “It’s all I want. Please.”
Bo’s brow wrinkled. Finch’s mouth twisted in doubt.
Ash, whose size had made him the victim of every cry of Need some help liftin’, here! since they’d left Alligator Hat, sighed, and said sadly, “All right. I’ll dig.”
———
There was only the one shovel, belonging to the muleteer who’d belted Dag with it, and who gave it up dubiously. But even with the three southern boys to take it in turns, it would be agonizing minutes before they uncovered the hopes they had so prematurely buried. More frantic urging to Be careful! would do nothing but re-convince them that Dag was mad. Since he was terrified that they might yet stop short, and he couldn’t watch without screaming, he took himself across the clearing to see Whit and Berry, limping so stiffly that even Bo hurried to put a helping hand under his elbow. Dag did not protest.