Horizon

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 clearing, 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 they 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…

With his thoughts chasing their tails like crazed cats, all hope of dozing off again faded. As silently as possible, Dag levered himself to his feet with his stick, gathered up the water bottle, and began hobbling down the hillside. This was going to take a while.

When Dag at length returned, Owlet was awake, cranky, and fearful.

Pakko was eyeing the farmer child with a glazed sort of alarm.

Even in his dreadful pain, the patroller was holding a tolerable ground veiling, which won both Dag’s gratitude and respect; Owlet, of course, blazed like a beacon.

“Oh, good, you’re back,” said Pakko. A tension in his tone reminded Dag of just how long Pakko had lain up here alone, lost and hopeless.

Dag settled himself by the man’s side, leg out. “Ayup. Water? ”

“It’ll just make me piss myself again.” Pakko grimaced, looked away, hiding helpless shame.

“I’m a medicine maker. I’ll deal with it.” Dag revised this slightly.

“You help guide the bag, I’ll hold your head up.” He slipped his hand behind Pakko’s head; Pakko raised an arm, though it made him gasp.

Together, they managed to get another good drink down the injured man. Absent gods, what a pair. We’re not half a patroller between us.

Owlet circled around Pakko and crept into Dag’s lap; Dag gave him a drink, too, with rather more spillage, but the threat of howls passed off with only a few sniffles.

In the daylight, Pakko squinted at Dag in new curiosity, Dag hoped not too tinged with dismay. “Except for the hand, I’d have taken you for a patroller.”

“I was, once.”

“Is that why you went for maker, instead? How was it you were traveling with farmers? ” He looked over at the scabbed and grubby Owlet as if the child were the most unlikely part of all this.

“It’s a long story. A couple of long stories.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Pakko’s air of indifference was a bit too carefully held. Some tale-telling would keep his rescuer safely planted under his eye, right.

Dag sighed. “Yeah, me neither.” But before he could choose a beginning, a ragged motion through the trees snagged his eye. He sat up, squinting, then grabbed his stick and clambered abruptly to his feet;

Owlet, dumped, whimpered in protest. “ ’Scuse me.”

He ducked out from under the overhang, and dared to flick open his groundsense. Mud-bat! He snapped closed again. Limped a few dozen paces along the hillside to where a rock slide had plowed open a wider view of the sky, and of the treetops falling away.

Several hundred paces below, a laboring mud-bat crashed into the branches, fought loose, and struggled for altitude again. It was flying very badly. Injured? Burdened with a load or a captive? It was too far off, Dag thought, for him to pull yesterday’s risky trick with a precisely placed ground-rip, yet if it was taking a prisoner back to its malice, he’d have to try something. But as the creature pumped frantically upward, Dag saw that its back claws were empty.

It lurched nearer. Had it seen him, was it attacking? One bent boot knife and a cut sapling weren’t going to be enough to bring it down. Dag took a breath, opened himself again, reached.

Stood stunned. There was nothing in the mud-bat’s ground but bat, natural bat. Voiceless, wordless, stripped of reason. Terrified and confused to find itself in this all-wrong, too-heavy, dying body. Frantic to reach the cool refuge of its dimly remembered cave, far to the east, out of the horrible hurtful light. In the hot speed of its flight, with no support from its malice master, its disintegration was proceeding rapidly.

There was no mistaking the ground of a mud-man that had lost its wits; Dag had seen the little tragedy played out countless times, most recently two days ago.

Someone has dealt with the malice!

A good half of the thousand pounds of worry weighing Dag’s heart lifted. His mouth opened, and his lips drew back in an uncontrollable grin.

The mud-bat crashed again, rose again, and finally tumbled out of range over the ridgeline. Dag tottered back to their shelter. If he could have, he would have danced the distance.

“Hey, hey, hey, Pakko!”

“What is it?” Pakko clutched the only weapon he had, the water bottle.

“No, good news! Your patrol must have found the malice’s lair! Its mud-men are skinned of their wits and scattering. If we just hold out, help has to come. My people might get up here by the end of the day. Yours could even be out looking for you already! They were what, you said, only about fifteen miles north of here when you parted ways? ”

Pakko made a sound of profound relief. His head fell back limply.

Despite everything, his lips, too, stretched in a grin.

With a sense of joy, Dag flung his own ground open wide, releasing that cramped, deaf, blind, No one here and changing it for a flag of welcome, Here we are! Come get us! Pakko’s grin went wider. Even Owlet looked up and cooed, bemused by the sudden cheer of the mysterious, scary grown-ups.

Dag escorted Owlet back to the streamlet for an overdue morning cleaning, then settled himself again and offered the child a celebratory half plunkin strip, which was grabbed with alacrity. Pakko accepted the other half. The child climbed back into his lap refuge, to gnaw and drool happily. “So, let me see.” Dag thought he might be babbling, but he didn’t care. Pakko was surely the most captive of audiences, and Owlet seemed to find the rumble of Dag’s voice soothing. “You asked for my life story.”

“I sure do wonder how you stumbled onto me, I’ll say that,” Pakko allowed.

“Well, I’m from Oleana, originally, but I took a walk around the lake…”

–-

Later, Dag passed some time tricking a few luckless squirrels and a mourning dove into becoming lunch, a process that both fascinated and fed the fretful Owlet. Peeled, cut up, and cooked on a toasting stick, the game produced hardly a mouthful, but Owlet’s was a little mouth.

Dag was more worried for Pakko, who seemed barely able to swallow.

It was midafternoon when Tavia arrived with Arkady, wonderfully sooner than Dag had dared hope. Unexpectedly, they also brought Calla, Indigo, and pack loads of supplies. Dag ducked out from under the ledge, where Owlet was napping, and hobbled forth to greet them.

Arkady, still catching his breath from the climb, grabbed Dag by the shoulders as though he didn’t know whether to hug him or shake him. “I never thought I’d see you alive again! Ye gods, what horrible things have you been doing to your ground this time? ”

“Did a little surgical ground-ripping on some mud-bats. That’s how we all ended up here and not as meat in the malice’s lair. Arkady, we’re saved! Someone’s done for the malice!”

“Yes, we saw.” Tavia nodded vigorously. “There are dying mud-bats scattered all over the valley. We passed two on the way here.”

“Where’s Fawn? And the others,” Dag added conscientiously.

Arkady and Tavia looked at each other in a way Dag didn’t much like. Arkady said, “After you three were carried away, we made it to the trees, and the attack broke off. A mud-bat tried to take Barr, too, but it dropped him and shattered his leg. I put it back together as best I could, but there was no moving him far, so Sumac had me, Barr, and Rase hide up in a cave. Of sorts. Sumac decided she’d take everyone else west over the ridge, try to reach Laurel Gap.”

Best patrol procedure, get the children and women out of range of the malice, spread the warning. Or, efficiently, both at once. “Good for her.” Was Fawn safe on her way to the Lakewalker camp, then?

Evidently not, for Arkady added, “After that, Calla had better tell the tale.”

The half-blood girl took a deep breath. “We were partway up the hill last night, trying to cross that saddle, when the mud-bats came back. The malice came with them. It was flying.”

Dag’s belly chilled, but he reminded himself that however appalling this malice’s form, it was dead now.

“It looked sort of like a mud-bat, only bigger and, and… more beautiful, I suppose. Once you’d seen it, you wouldn’t ever mistake it for anything else, not for a second.”

Dag nodded understanding.

“It took our minds. It was the strangest sensation. Like I was calm on top, but screaming underneath.” Her tremors were long gone, in this bright afternoon, but Dag sensed a bone-deep exhaustion left in their wake; a familiar state, after dealing with the terror of a malice.

“It didn’t keep hold of her mind the way it did ours, though,” said Indigo. He, too, was pale with more than the night’s exertions.

Calla scowled in memory. “It was like all these wild ideas kept fading in and out of my thoughts. Arkady thinks I was trying to veil myself.”

“Anyway,” Indigo went on, “the mud-bats chased Sumac and Remo and Neeta off, and Fawn and Whit and Berry got away, too.” He seemed about to say more, but swallowed instead.

“Together?” Dag asked in hope. Was Fawn safe with Sumac?

Indigo shook his head. “They ran opposite ways. We think those walnut shields of yours must have worked.”

“The malice marched the rest of us north up the Trace in the night,” Calla continued, “but I kept falling back. Dragging as much as I dared.”

“I kept trying to make her keep up,” said Indigo. “It seemed like my own idea at the time. It was just… something we had to do. But we got farther and farther behind the others, and then… it was like my mind cleared. Then we turned tail and ran.”

“I hoped we could find Arkady, and that the Lakewalkers would protect us,” said Calla. “I’ve never been so scared. We were searching along the ridge about where I thought Sumac had put him, when Neeta found us instead. She was all by herself. She said the patrollers had veiled themselves and shook off the mud-bats, and hid up in a cranny. Sumac was frantic by then, but finally decided someone still had to warn Laurel Gap Camp. So she took Remo and lit out westward, and left Neeta to hunt for Fawn and try to get her back to Arkady.”

“But Neeta said she couldn’t,” said Indigo. “Find Fawn and Whit and Berry, that is. She said it was a good sign, because if her groundsense couldn’t find them, neither could the malice’s. She hoped they’d have the sense to stay hid.”

Dag ran his hand through his hair, and tried not to scream. “Then what? ”

“I came out of the cave to fetch water, and found Neeta and these two blundering around,” said Tavia. “I’d reached Arkady a couple of hours before.”

“Tavia was our first word of your fate,” Arkady told Dag. “It was a relief to know the local patrol was on the hunt, but absent gods, what a mess.”

Tavia went on, “We were trying to decide what was best to do for you, since we didn’t have near enough hands to carry an injured man down this ridge, or any better place to hide him if we did. And then we saw the first dying mud-bat, and then, well, the whole situation was changed.”

“It was plain it was going to be easier to get the medicine maker to the injured than the other way around,” said Arkady. “Or so I thought, before I climbed this benighted mountain. I left Barr with Rase, which I don’t quite like, but they’ve no need to hide themselves now. They should be all right.”

Tavia said eagerly, “Neeta recovered her horse, so she decided she’d ride north and try to find the others, wherever they’d gone after Calla and Indigo got away, and maybe make contact with the local patrollers, get us more help.”

All as good and sensible as it could be, under the difficult circumstances, but where was Fawn? Plainly, no one here knew.

Dag led the party around to their near-cave under the ledge. Arkady knelt down by Pakko, opening his ground to the man’s injury in that keen daunting way of his. “Interesting,” he murmured.

Dag, familiar by now with that particular tone of voice, sincerely hoped his sprained ankle would qualify as boring. He made introductions, which he hoped the glazed-eyed Pakko understood, and went on, “I didn’t think it was good for the break to sit untreated this long, with his muscles in spasms around it like that, but while I’d have been willing to go in after the bone alignment, I wasn’t too sure of those disrupted nerve cords.”

“Right on all counts,” said Arkady. He sat back on his heels and frowned at Dag. “You should be a patient right now, not an assistant, but need drives all. His skin is unbroken, bar some abrasion, and I’d like to keep it that way. That means we do it all by groundsetting techniques. I want you to do the heavy work, go in and carefully realign the two vertebrae, and place ground reinforcements across the fracture lines. Are you ready? ”

Now? Dag’s relief having arrived, now he wanted to go search for his wife, blight it! And child. Yet Fawn wasn’t out there alone, he reminded himself. She’d had her kin with her… his thought snaked on, when last seen. Dag eyed the helpless, hurting Pakko, and controlled his frenzy of impatience. Fawn’s phrase, Soonest begun, soonest done, drifted through his head. “Just a moment.” Carefully, he sat on Pakko’s other side, laid his bad leg out, undid his arm harness, and set it aside.

While Dag was pulling body, mind, and ground together, Arkady called, “Tavia, Calla, Indigo, set up camp here. We won’t be moving this patient tonight. It wants six fit fellows, and we’re going to need to fashion a rigid board carrier to tie him to, first.”

Pakko swallowed, and said, “If I’m not going to walk again, sir”- he did not say aloud, but Dag understood, If I’m just going to be lying in a bedroll pissing myself-“I’d rather you found my knife.”

Arkady gave him an enigmatic look. “You’ll have time to make that choice later. Ready, Dag? ”

Arkady could scout the lay of his land and choose his tactics as swiftly as Dag, and for the same reason: forty years of experience. Despite his weariness, Dag found himself relaxing into that trusted leadership.

He stretched his fingers, real and ghostly; sight and sound dropped away as he sank into the shared hinterland of flowing ground.

It was not healing so much as making ready to heal. Pain moved with hot red violence. Muscles cried. The sculpted bones themselves were cool, solid, reassuring, yet like strange lace down and in, alive with blood both flowing and blocked, bruised and clotted. Arkady handled the much more delicate nerves, like ropes and whips and threads of fire, down and in, down and in…

“Hold up,” Dag murmured, following with a ground-touch; Arkady gasped and broke out of his beginning ground lock. Dag couldn’t have fallen into a lock right now if all their lives had depended on it; his heart was too outwardly drawn, wild to regain the world and all it held. It made him a good anchor, he supposed. What Arkady was doing was complicated, a fiendishly difficult task accomplished with as much grace as any dance, and a strange sort of pleasure to observe just in its own right, apart from any consequences.

“Thanks,” muttered Arkady. “Good job. You can pull out now…”

Dag inhaled, blinked, sat up as their mountainside refuge rushed back into his senses. How much time had gone by? The sun seemed notably lower.

“He passed out a while back,” reported Calla, wiping Pakko’s clammy face with a damp cloth.

“I’m not surprised,” said Dag, and rolled away, pale and shaking.

That was good! he thought with elation. Gods, he liked this work. Magery at full stretch. Allowable magery. He crawled to prop his shoulders up against the cool rock wall of the overhang, and let other people do everything else for a few minutes. Tavia brought him water, and a dried strip of ruddy New Moon plunkin.

Surely this discharged his last obligation to fate; as he was Pakko’s good luck, perhaps someone else would be Fawn’s, passing the debt around. Now it was Dag’s turn to pursue his own ends. And no one had better get in his way.

Just as soon as I can stand up.

“Will Pakko walk again? ” asked Tavia diffidently.

Dag shook his head. “Too early to say. It’ll be a week before the swelling goes down enough to tell the permanent damage. But he’ll live to see his wife again.”

When Arkady, at length, rolled back and propped his own shoulders, looking much like a wet rag, Dag said, “I need to go look for Fawn.”

“Tomorrow,” said Arkady. “I promise we’ll get you down off this mountain first turn.”

“I can get myself down.”

Arkady made a rude noise. “How, fall? I grant you it would be quick.”

Dag touched his left arm. “Something’s not right.”

Arkady’s gaze flicked, quick and keen; he frowned, but did not argue that particular point. It disturbed Dag that he did not. “I suppose I can’t stop you, short of tying you up.”

“That wouldn’t stop me, either.”

“Absent gods, Dag, if you’ve half the sense of a plunkin, you’ll wait for help.”

I am the help. Dag frowned.

“And falling downhill or not, it would be dark by the time you could get to the wagons,” Arkady added. “I suppose that’s the one known meeting place, at this point. Otherwise you’ll have this whole valley to search.”

“Mm,” said Dag trying to think it through. Everyone here was just as exhausted and short of sleep as he was. Calla was also missing a spouse. Dag would have quashed any half-crippled patroller of his who suggested a jaunt so plunkin-brained. Still… he touched his marriage cord again, rubbing it through the rips in his shirt, but it gave him no further enlightenment. Changed, yes, but what did that mean?

Perhaps his and Fawn’s questionable cord weaving was simply running down naturally.

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 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!”