The man glanced down at her. Likely she looked as young to him as she did to Dag, for he said more gently, “No orphans here, miss.”
“But…” She sucked on her lower lip, obviously thinking through the implication.
“We’ve found none alive here under twelve. Nor many over.”
Dag said quietly, as she looked up at him as if he could somehow fix this, “Next to pregnant women, children have the richest grounds for a malice building up to a molt. It goes for them first, preferentially. When Bonemarsh was evacuated, the young women would have grabbed up all the youngsters and run at once. The others following as they could, with what animals and supplies they could get at fast, with the off-duty patrollers as rear guard. The children would have been got out in the first quarter hour, and the whole camp in as little more. They did lose folks beyond the range of warning—some of those makers we freed from the groundlock had stayed to try and reach a party of youngsters who’d gone out gathering that day.”
Fawn frowned. “I hadn’t heard that part of the tale. Did they find them in time?”
Dag sighed. “No. Some of the Bonemarsh folk who came back later recovered the bodies, finally. For a burial not so different than this.” He nodded toward the mounds; the townsman, listening, stared down and dug his boot heel into the dry soil, brows pinching in wonder. Yes, thought Dag. Witness her. Farmers can ask, and be answered. Won’t you try us?
“Did they take their—” Fawn shut up abruptly, remembering not to ask about knife-bones in front of farmers, Dag guessed. She just shook her head.
The townsman gave Dag a sidelong look. “You’re not from Bonemarsh. Are you.”
“No. My company rode over from Oleana to help out. We’re on our way home now.”
“Dag’s patrol killed your blight bogle,” Fawn put in, a little proudly. “When the malice’s—bogle’s curse lifted from your mind, that was when.”
“Huh,” said the man. And then, after a bleak silence, “Could have been sooner.”
Stung to brusqueness, Dag said, “If any of you had owned the wits to run and give warning at the first, it could have been a lot sooner. We did all we could with what we had, as soon as we knew.”
A stubborn silence stretched between them. There was too much grief and strain here, thick as mire, for argument or apology today. Dag had pretty much pieced together the picture he’d come for. It was maybe time to go.
A trio of townsmen came out of the barren woods, back from some errand there—pissing, searching?—and stopped to gape at the newcomers. One grizzled head came up sharply; staring, the man began to walk toward the fallen tree, faster and faster. His stride turned into a jog, then a run; his face grew wild, and he waved frantically, crying, “Sassy! Sassy!”
Dag stiffened, his hand drifting to his knife haft. The townsman beside Fawn straightened up with a moan and held out his palm in a gesture of negation, shaking his head. The runner slowed as he neared, gasping for breath, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes and peering at Fawn. In a voice gone gray, he said, “You aren’t my Sassy.”
“No, sir,” said Fawn, looking up apologetically. “I’m Dag’s Fawn.”
He continued to peer. “Are you one of ours? Did those patrollers bring you back?” He waved toward the Lakewalkers still standing warily with their horses. “We can try and find your folks…”
“No, sir, I’m from Oleana.”
“Why are you with them?”
“I’m married to one.”
Taken aback, the man turned his head to squint; his gaze narrowed on Saun, who was standing holding Copperhead’s reins, watching them alertly. The man’s mouth turned down in a scowl. “If that’s what that boy told you, missie, I’m afraid he was lying.”
“He’s not—” She broke off as Dag covered and squeezed her hand in warning.
The grizzled man took a breath. “If you want to stay here, missie, we could find you, find you…” He trailed off, looking around dolefully.
“Shelter?” muttered his comrade. “Not hardly.” He stood up and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “Give it over. She’s not our business. Not today.”
With a disappointed glance over his shoulder, the grizzled man dragged off.
“I hope he finds his Sassy,” said Fawn. “Who was—is she? His daughter?”
“Granddaughter,” replied the townsman.
“Ah.”
“We need to get off this blight, Fawn,” said Dag, wondering if, had it been some other day, the townsmen would have made Fawn their business. Disquieting thought, but the dangerous moment, if that had been one, was past.
“Oh, of course.” She jumped up at once. “You’ve got to be feeling it. How’s your leg doing?”
“It’ll be well enough once I’m in the saddle again.” He grounded the butt of the hickory stick and levered himself up. He was starting to ache all over, like a fever. The townsman trailed along after them as Dag hobbled back to his horse.
It took Saun and Varleen both to heave Dag aboard Copperhead, this time. He settled with a sigh, and even let Saun find his left stirrup for him and take away his stick. Varleen gave Fawn a neat boost up on Grace, and Fawn smiled thanks.
“You ready, Dag?” Saun asked, patting the leg.
“As I’ll ever be,” Dag responded.
As Saun went around to his horse, the townsman’s eyebrows rose. “You’re her Dag?” Surprise and deep disapproval edged his voice.
“Yes,” said Dag. They stared mutely at each other. Dag started to add, “Next time, don’t—” but then broke off. This was not the hour, the place, or the man. So when, where, and who will be?
The townsman’s lips tightened. “I doubt you and I have anything much to say to each other, patroller.”
“Likely not.” Dag raised his hand to his temple and clucked to urge Copperhead forward.
Fawn wheeled Grace around. Dag was afraid she’d caught the darker undercurrents after all, because the struggle was plain in her face between respect for bereavement and a goaded anger. She leaned down, and growled at the townsman, “You might try thank you. Somebody should say it, at least once before the end of the world.”
Disconcerted, the townsman dropped his eyes before her hot frown, then looked after her with an unsettled expression on his face.
As they left the blighted town and struck east up a wagon road alongside the river, Mari asked dryly, “Satisfied with your look-see, Dag?”
He grunted in response.
Her voice softened. “You can’t fix everything in the whole wide green world by yourself, you know.”
“Evidently not.” And, after a moment, more quietly, “Maybe no one can.”
Fawn eyed him with worry as he slumped in his saddle, but he did not suggest stopping. He wanted a lot more miles between him and what lay behind him. Greenspring. Should it be renamed Deadspring on the charts, now? Mari had been right; he’d had no need for a new crop of nightmares, let alone to have gone looking for them. He was justly served. Even Fawn had grown quiet. No answers, no questions, just silence.
He rode in it as they turned north across the river, looking for the road home.
17
S ome six days after striking the north road, the little patrol clopped across the increasingly familiar wooden span to Two Bridge Island. Fawn turned in her saddle, watching Dag. His head came up, but unlike everyone else, he didn’t break into whoops, and his lopsided smile at their cheers somehow just made him look wearier than ever. Mari had decreed easy stages on the ride home to spare their mounts, though everyone knew it had been to spare Dag. That Mari fretted for him troubled Fawn almost more than this strange un-Dag-like fatigue that gripped him so hard. The last day or two the easy part had silently dropped out, as the patrol pressed on more like horses headed for the barn than the horses themselves.
They paused at the split in the island road, and Mari gave a farewell wave to Saun, Griff, and Varleen. She jerked her head at Dag. “I’ll be taking this one straight home, I think.”
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“Right,” said Saun. “Need a helper?”
“Razi and Utau should be there. And Cattagus.” Her austere face softened in an inward look, then she added, “Yep.” Fawn wondered if she’d just bumped grounds with her husband to alert him to her homecoming.
Dag roused himself. “I should see Fairbolt, first.”
“Fairbolt’s heard all about it by now from Hoharie and the rest,” said Mari sternly. “I should see Cattagus.”
Saun glanced at his two impatient comrades, both with families waiting, and said, “I’ll stop in and see Fairbolt on my way down island. Let him know we’re back and all.”
Dag squinted. “That’d do, I guess.”
“Consider it done. Go rest, Dag. You look awful.”
“Thankee’, Saun,” said Dag, the slight dryness in his voice suggesting it was for the latter and not the former statement, though it covered both. Saun grinned back, and the younger patrollers departed at a trot that became a lope before the first curve.
Dag, Mari, and Fawn took the shore branch, and while no one suggested a trot, Mari did kick her horse into a brisker walk. She was standing up in her stirrups peering ahead by the time they turned into her campsite.
Everyone had come out into the clearing. Razi and Utau held a child each, and Sarri waved. Cattagus waved and wheezed, striding forward. In addition there was a mob of new faces—a tall middle-aged woman and a fellow who had to be her spouse, and a stair-step rank of six gangling children ranging from Fawn’s age downward to a leaping little girl of eight. The woman was Mari’s eldest daughter, obviously, back from the other side of the lake with her family and her new boat. They all surged for Mari, although they stepped aside to give Cattagus first crack as she slid from her saddle. “’Bout time you got back, old woman,” he breathed into her hair, and, “You’re still here. Good. Saves thumpin’ you,” she muttered sternly into his ear as they folded each other in.
Razi dumped his wriggling son off on Sarri, who cocked her hip to receive him, Utau let Tesy loose with admonishments about keeping clear of Copperhead, and the pair of men came to help Dag and Fawn dismount. Utau looked tired but hale enough, Fawn thought. Mari’s son-in-law and Razi had all three horses unsaddled and bags off in a blink, and the two volunteered to lead the mounts back to Mare Island, preferably before the snorting Copperhead bit or kicked some bouncing child.
Tent Bluefield was still standing foursquare under the apple tree, and Sarri, smiling, rolled up and tied the tent flaps. Everything inside looked very neat and tidy and welcoming, and Fawn had Utau drop their grubby saddlebags under the outside awning. There would be serious laundry, she decided, before their travel-stained and reeking garments were allowed to consort again with their stay-at-home kin.
Dag eyed their bedroll atop its thick cushion of dried grass rather as a starving dog would contemplate a steak, muttered, “Boots off, leastways,” and dropped to a seat on an upended log to tug at his laces. He looked up to add, “Any problems while we were away?”
“Well,” said Sarri, sounding a trifle reluctant, “there was that go-round with the girls from Stores.”
“They tried to steal your tent, the little—!” said Utau, abruptly indignant. Sarri shushed him in a way that made Fawn think this was an exchange much-repeated.
“What?” said Dag, squinting in bewilderment.
“Not stealing, exactly,” said Sarri.
“Yes, it was,” muttered Utau. “Blighted sneakery.”
“They told me they’d been ordered to bring it back to Stores,” Sarri went on, overriding him. “They had it halfway down when I caught them. They wouldn’t listen to me, but Cattagus came out and wheezed at them and frightened them off.”
“Razi and I were out collecting elderberries for Cattagus,” said Utau, “or I’d have been willing to frighten them off myself. The nerve, to make away with a patroller’s tent while he was out on patrol!”
Fawn frowned, imagining the startling—shocking—effect it would have had, with her and Dag both so travel-weary, to come back and find everything gone. Dag looked as though he was imagining this, too.
“Uncle Cattagus puffing in outrage was likely more effective,” Sarri allowed. “He turns this alarming purple color, and chokes, and you think he’s going to collapse onto your feet. The girls were impressed, anyway, and left off.”
“Ran, Cattagus tells it,” said Utau, brightening.
“When Razi and Utau came back they put your tent up again, and then went down and had some words with the folks in Stores. They claimed it was all a misunderstanding.”
Utau snorted. “In a pig’s eye it was. It was some crony of Cumbia’s down there, with a notion for petty aggravation. Anyway, I spoke to Fairbolt, who spoke with Massape, who spoke with someone, and it didn’t happen again.” He nodded firmly.
Dag rubbed the back of his neck, looking pinch-browed and abstracted. If he’d had more energy, Fawn thought he might have been as angry as Utau, but just now it merely came out saddened. “I see,” was all he said. “Thank you.” He nodded up to Sarri as well.
“Fawn, not to tell you your job, but I think you need to get your husband horizontal,” said Sarri.
“I’m for it,” said Fawn. Together, she and Utau pulled Dag upright and aimed him into the tent.
Utau, releasing Dag’s arm from over his shoulder as he sank down onto his bedroll, grunted, “Dag, I swear you’re worse off than when I left you in Raintree. That groundlock do this to you? Your leg hasn’t turned bad, has it? From what Hoharie said, I’d thought she’d patched you up better ’n this before she left you.”
“He was better,” said Fawn, “but then we went and visited Greenspring on the way home. It was all really deep-blighted. I think it gave him a relapse of some sort.” Except she wasn’t so sure it was the blight that had drained him of the ease he’d gained after their triumph over the groundlock. She remembered the look on his face, or rather the absence of any look on his face, when they’d ridden out of the townsmen’s burying field past the line of small uncorrupted corpses. He’d counted them.
“That was a fool thing to do for a ground-ripped man, to go and expose yourself to more blight,” Utau scolded. “You should know better, Dag.”
“Yeah,” sighed Dag, dutifully lying flat. “Well, we’re all home now.”
Sarri and Utau took themselves out with an offer of dinner later, which Fawn gratefully accepted. She fussed briefly over Dag, kissed him on the forehead, and left him not so much dozing as glazed while she went to deal with unpacking their gear. She glanced up at the lately contested awning of little Tent Bluefield as she began sorting.
Home again.
Was it?
Fawn brought Dag breakfast in bed the next morning. So it was only plunkin, tea, and concern; the concern, at least, he thought delicious. Though he had no appetite, he let her coax him into eating, and then bustle about getting him propped up comfortably with a nice view out the tent flap at the lakeshore. As the sun climbed he could watch her down on the dock scrubbing their clothes. From time to time she waved up at him, and he waved back. In due course, she shouldered the wet load and climbed up out of sight somewhere, likely to hang it all out to dry.
He was still staring out in benign lassitude when a brisk hand slapped the tent side, and Hoharie ducked in. “There you are. Saun told me you’d made it back,” she greeted him.
“Ah, Hoharie. Yeah, yesterday afternoon.”
“I also heard you weren’t doing so well.”
“I’ve been worse.”
Hoharie was back in her summer shift, out of riding gear; indeed, she’d made a questionable-looking patroller. She settled down on her knees and folded her legs under herself, looking Dag over critically.
“How’s the leg, after all that abuse?”
“Still healing. Slowly. No sign of infection.”
“That’s a blessing in a deep puncture, although after all that ground reinforcement I wouldn’t expect infection. And the arm?”
He shifted it. “Still very weak.” He hadn’t even bothered with his arm harness yet this morning, though Fawn had cajoled him into clean trousers and shirt. “No worse.”
“Should be better by now. Come on, open up.”
Dag sighed and eased open his ground. It no longer gave him sensations akin to pain to do so; the discomfort was more subtle now, diffuse and lingering.
Horarie frowned. “What did you do with all that ground reinforcement you took on last week over in Raintree? It’s barely there.”
“It helped. But we crossed some more blight on the way back.”
“Not smart.” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s your groundsense range right now?”
“Good question. I haven’t…” He spread his senses. He hardly needed groundsense to detect Mari’s noisy grandchildren, shouting all over the campsite. The half-closed adults were subtler smudges. Fawn was a bright spark in the walnut grove, a hundred paces off. Beyond that…nothing. “Very limited.” Shockingly so. “Haven’t been this weak since I lost my real hand.”
“Well, if you want an answer to, How am I recovering? there’s your test. No patrolling for you for a while, Captain. Not till your range is back to its usual.”
Dag waved this away. “I’m not arguin’.”
“That tells a tale right there.” Hoharie’s fingers touched his thigh, his arm, his side; he could feel her keen regard as a passing pressure through his aches. “After my story and Saun’s, Fairbolt reckoned he’d be putting your peg back in the sick box. He wanted me to tell him for how long.”
“So? How long?”
“Longer than Utau, anyway.”
“Fairbolt won’t be happy about that.”
“Well, we’ve talked about that. About you. You did rather more in that Bonemarsh groundlock than just take hurt, you know.”
Something in her tone brought him up, if not to full alertness, which eluded him still, then to less vague attention. He let his ground ease closed again. Hoharie sat back on the woven mat beside the bedroll and wrapped her arms around her knees, regarding him coolly.