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 saddle; 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 ground-rip 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 forge-hammer 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 ni
ght 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.
His Bluefield tent-kin were laid out together on a thin blanket, just at the edge of the circle of firelight. Hawthorn crouched by his big sister and brother-in-law, looking forlorn; he shuffled back as Dag approached. Berry, muzzy and weak, levered herself up onto one elbow. Dag knelt awkwardly by her side. From this distance, now that he’d settled a bit, he could at last see what was going on. The pair had not, as he had first thought, been partially ripped by the malice, a crippling unpleasantness of which Dag had firsthand experience. Or…not exactly. But their shields had closed down so tightly under the impact of the malice’s attempt to do so that their grounds were actually partially withdrawn from their bodies, drained from their extremities into quivering, defensive balls.
Dag huffed in astonishment and fascination, and reached to grasp Berry’s walnut pendant and pull it over her head. She whimpered in protest.
“No, it’s all right. It’s done its work.” Not only done, but nearly drained. The thinning groundwork was close to failure. In a few more hours, it would likely have fallen apart, freeing her ground from its shell, leaving her exhausted but alive. As he coaxed its cord from her hair, the deep connection pulled reluctantly apart in sheets like maple syrup just turning to sugar, and her ground flooded back out into its normal form, congruent with her skin.
Berry took a ragged breath, raising her hands to clutch her head. “Oh.” She struggled to sit up. “What was that? Oh, Dag, what a night we’ve had! Whit—” She turned urgently to her unconscious young husband.
“Just a moment.” Dag half crawled around them. He stole a moment to study the effect of the other walnut shield. It, too, had held against the malice’s attempt at ground-ripping, but was clamped even more tightly. And was very close to failure. Whit wasn’t going to be his friskiest after it released, but his abused ground would recover in a few days. I trust. Dag drew Whit’s braided cord over his head in turn, and felt the link shear apart.
Whit groaned, and mumbled, “I feel awful. Bo, what did I drink?” His gluey eyes peeled open to stare without comprehension up at Dag. Blinked. Came abruptly to awareness. “Dag! You’re here! The malice—Fawn—she carved up your knife, put feathers on it—”
“We got the malice, Whit!” Berry told him.
“Did we…? Yes, I remember. Its wings blew off, wildest thing—Dag, your shields! They must have worked!” Whit felt all down his body as if surprised to find it still attached to his head.
“Yes, though it seems they still need some refinin’. You just rest, patroller boy. You’ve done your job.”
Whit settled back, pleased. “Hey, I did, didn’t I? Heh. Wait’ll Barr and Remo hear about this!”
And a great many others besides. Two dozen people had witnessed Fawn’s farmer patrol shoot down the terrifying malice. Dag suspected that this was one tale he wouldn’t have to labor to get across to folks. It would fly on wings.
Whit’s and Berry’s voices tumbled over each other to tell him the story of the past rough night, of all they’d done from the time they’d been driven away from the mind-captured company till their dawn ambush of the bat-malice. Dag barely listened, his groundsense straining toward the grave. If Fawn’s shield failed before she was unearthed, releasing her ground back into a body buried alive…That certainly would have happened, Dag thought, sometime before tomorrow morning. Absent gods, and he’d almost let Arkady talk him into spending the night on the mountain. Don’t scream, don’t scream.
At the mound, the boys had stopped digging with the shovel and were leaning in, reaching down with their arms. Working something stiff and small up out of the soil. Dag found his stick and pushed to his feet again, turning hastily away from Whit’s urging that he go look for the fallen wings, and Berry’s woozy, belated query of, Hey, where’s Fawn?
Dag fell to his knees beside the opened pit in time to receive his wife in his arms, Ash’s face looming in sympathetic sorrow. She was every bit as stiff and cool as a real corpse, he had to allow the farmer boys that much. Her powerful shield had drawn her ground in deeply, centered on head, spine, chest, and especially belly. There’d been no shroud to wrap her in—she’d been buried in her shirt and shoes and riding trousers—but absent gods be thanked, someone had donated an old handkerchief to spread across her face. It lay dimpled and moist across her mouth and nostrils, which at least were not packed and blocked with dirt. He pulled the cloth away. Her face was set, her lips much too pale, but not the drained lavender yellow of a corpse’s. Her closed eyes were undamaged, the lids traced with the pale violet lines of her veins beneath the delicate skin, her black lashes lying in a curving fan above her cheekbones.
His hand shaking so much he could hardly get a grip, Dag found the walnut and drew it over her head. Its cord caught in her dark curling hair, thick with dirt clumps, and he had to stop a moment lest he tear away strands of her hair, too, in his terror. Gently, gently…the bond sheeted apart the way Whit’s and Berry’s had, and he flung the walnut from him with enough force to make it bounce halfway across the clearing.
Her rigidity changed under his hand to a shuddering stretch. He bent his head and kissed her forehead, cheekbones, all over her face, but not her mouth, for she needed that to take a sudden breath, then another, and another, long gulps of air. Color flooded back int
o her face, and his world. The lashes fluttered faintly…
There had been voices in the darkness, distant, as though heard from the other side of time.
The poor little thing!
Oh, the pity of it…
It’s almost a blessing, that he’s gone first.
Yeah, he wouldn’t of took this well…
She’d wondered, in muzzy indignation before the voices faded out of hearing, where were her congratulations?
Pressure then, stealing her breath, and pain from the pressure, and panic from the loss. Air seemed absorbed through her skin, not her slow gaping mouth, seeping into her lungs and hot busy belly. Where had Dag gone off to now? She needed him, she was sure of it. Something was very wrong…
Time leaked away in the black. Hours? Years?
At last, mumbling sounds returned to her clogged ears, breaking up the worrying too-much-silence that had made her fear she’d been struck deaf. She felt suddenly heavy and dizzy, and only then realized how nothing she’d felt before. Almost, almost…there! Air!
Her eyelids fought apart onto the most welcome of sights: Dag. His eyes were turned their tea color in the graying shadows and flickering firelight, but a few gold flecks still glinted. From their crow-foot corners shimmering lines traced around his cheekbones, like inlaid silver wire beaten into a copper vessel. His cheeks were stubbly, face bruised and haggard, and his dirty iron-black hair stuck up every which way. For once, he actually looked his age. Still looks good to me…
Her hand struggled upward to touch the silvery wetness as she at last caught her breath. Despite his wild eyes, his grin nearly split his face. Her fingers traced the rough beard, his stretched lips, bumped over his slightly crooked teeth with the dear familiar chip out of a front one. His kisses found her knuckles, imprinting each one. Her hand slid across his jaw, around his neck, found a grip on his collar, and oh my what had he done to his good cotton shirt she’d made for him? More rips than cloth, she swore.