The grass was wet from the rain, beaded droplets glimmering like scattered silver, and the saturated soil squelched under his boots. He weaved around a few sodden cow flops and eased toward the mud-man. Aptly named—the creature was filthy, smeared with dung, hair matted and falling in its eyes, and it whiffed of nascent rot. Its flesh was already starting to lose tone and color, the skin mottled and yellowish. Its lips drew back as it snarled at Dag and froze, undecided between attack and flight.
Jump me, you clumsy suffering nightmare. Spare me the sweat of chasing you down.
“Come along,” Dag crooned, crouching a little and bringing his arms in. “End this. I’ll get you out of there, I promise.”
The creature’s hips wriggled as it leaned forward, and Dag braced himself as it sprang. He almost missed his move as it stumbled on the lunge, hands pawing the air, neck twisting and straining in a vain attempt to bring its all-too-human jaw to Dag’s neck. Dag blocked one black-clawed hand with his left arm, spun sideways, and slashed hard.
He jumped back as hot blood spurted from the creature’s neck, trying to save himself more laundry duty. The mud-man managed three steps away, yowling wordlessly, before it fell to the mucky ground. Dag circled in cautiously, but no further mercy cut was required; the mud-man shuddered and grew still, eyes glazed and half-open. A tuft of dirty wool, stuck to its lips, stopped fluttering. Absent gods, this is an ugly cleanup chore. But neatly enough done, this time. He wiped his blade on the grass, making plans to beg a dry rag from the farmwife in a moment.
He stood up and turned to see the farm men, huddled in a terrified knot clutching their tools, staring at him openmouthed. Tad came running from the fence and was caught around the waist by his father as he attempted to approach the corpse. “I told you to stay back!”
“It’s dead, Pa!” Tad wriggled free and gazed up with a glowing face at Dag.
“He just walked right up to it and took it down slick as anything!”
Ah. The last mud-men these folk had encountered had still been bound by the will of their maker, intelligent and lethal. Not like this forsaken, sick, confused animal trapped in its awkward body. Dag didn’t feel any overwhelming need to correct the farm men’s misperceptions of his daring. Safer if they remained cautious of the mud-men anyway. His lips curled up in grim amusement, but he said only, “It’s my job. You can have the burying of it, though.” The farm men gathered around the corpse, poking it at tool-handle distance. Dag strolled past them toward the house, not looking back.
Most of the animals had collected in the upper end of the pasture, away from the disturbing intruder. The bay mare raised her head and snuffled at him as he approached. He paused, wiped his knife dry on her warm side, sheathed it, and scratched her poll, which made her flop her ears sideways, droop her lip, and sigh contentedly. The farmwife’s tart suggestion of last night that he take the mare and ride off surfaced in his memory. Tempting idea. Yes. But not alone.
He climbed the fence, crossed the yard, and made his way up onto the porch.
Fawn gazed up at him with nearly as worshipful an expression as Tad, only with keener understanding. The farmwife had her arms crossed, torn between gratitude and glowering.
Dag was suddenly mortally tired of mistrustful strangers. He missed his patrol, for all their irritations. He almost missed the irritations, in their comfortable familiarity.
“Hey, Little Spark. I was going to wait for the wagon and take you to Glassforge lying flat, but I got to thinking. We might double up and ride out the way we came in the other day, and you wouldn’t be jostled around any worse.”
Her face lit. “Better, I should think. That lane would rattle your teeth, in a wagon.”
“Even taking it slowly and carefully, we could reach town in about three hours’
time. If you think it wouldn’t overtire you?”
“Leave now, you mean? I’ll pack my bedroll. It’ll only take a moment!” She twirled about.
“Put my arm harness in it, will you? Along with the other things.” Arm harness, knife pouch, and the linen bag of shattered bone and dreams—everything else that he’d arrived in, he was wearing; everything he’d borrowed was put back.
She paused, lips pursing as if following the same inventory, then nodded vigorously. “Right.”
“Don’t bounce. Don’t scamper, either. Gently!” he called after her. The kitchen door shut on her trailing laugh.
He turned to find Petti giving him a measuring look. He raised his brows back at her.
She shrugged, and said on a sigh, “Not my business, I suppose.”
He bit back rude agreement, converting the impulse to a more polite nod, and turned to collect the mare.
By the time he’d reaffixed the rope to the halter for reins and led the horse to the porch, murmuring promises of grain and a nice stall in Glassforge into the fuzzy flicking ears, Fawn was back out, breathless, with her bedroll slung over her shoulder, pelting Petti with good-byes and thank-yous. The honest warmth of them drew an answering smile from the farmwife seemingly despite herself.
“You be a lot more careful of yourself, now, girl,” Petti admonished.
“Dag will look after me,” Fawn assured her cheerily.
“Oh, aye.” Petti sighed, after a momentary pause, and Dag wondered what comment she’d just bit back. “That’s plain.”
From the mounting block of the porch, Dag slid readily aboard the mare’s bare back. Happily, the horse had wide-sprung ribs and no bony back ridge, and so was as comfortable to sit as a cushion; he needed to beg neither saddle nor pads from the farm. He stiffened his right ankle to make a stirrup of his foot for Fawn, and she scrambled up and sat across his lap as before. Wriggling into place, she smoothed her skirts and slipped her right arm around him. A little to his surprise, Petti shuffled forward and thrust a wrapped packet into Fawn’s hands.
“It’s only bread and jam. But it’ll keep you on the road.”
Dag touched his temple. “Thank you, ma’am. For everything.” His hand found the rope reins again.
She nodded stiffly. “You, too.” And, after a moment, “You just think about what I said, patroller. Or just think, anyways.”
This seemed to call for either no answer at all, or a long defensive argument; Dag prudently chose the first, helped Fawn tuck the packet in her bedroll, nodded again, and turned the horse away. He extended his groundsense to its limit in one last check, but nothing resembling an aggravated patroller beating through the bushes stirred for a mile in any direction, nor more distraught dying mud-men either.
The bay mare’s hooves scythed through the wiry chicory, its blossoms looking like bits of blue sky fallen and scattered along the ruts, and the nodding daisies. The farm men were dragging the mud-man’s corpse into the woods as they rode down the fence line. They all waved, and Sassa trotted over to the end of the lane in time to say, “Off to Glassforge already? I’ll be going in soon.
If you see any of our folks, tell them we’re all right! See you in town?”
“Sure!” said Fawn, and “Maybe,” said Dag. He added, “If any of my people turn up here, would you tell them we’re all right and that I’ll meet them in town too?”
“ ‘Course!” Sassa promised cheerily.
And then the track curved into the woods, and the farm and all its folk fell out of sight behind. Dag breathed relief as the quiet of the humid summer morning closed in, broken only by the gentle thump of the mare’s hooves, the liquid trill of a red-crest, and the rain-refreshed gurgle of the creek that the road followed. A striped ground squirrel flickered across the track ahead of them, disappearing with a faint rustle into the weeds.
Fawn cuddled down, her head resting on his chest, and allowed herself to be rocked along, not speaking for a while. Ambushed again by the deep fatigue of her blood loss after the dawn’s spate of excitement, Dag judged; like other injured younglings he’d known, she seemed likely to overestimate her capacity, swinging between imprudent activity and collapse. He hoped her recovery would be as swift. She made a warm and comfortable burden, balanced on his lap. The mare’s walk was certainly smoother than a wagon would have been in these muddy ruts, and he had no intention of jostling either of them with a trot. A few mosquitoes whined around them in the damp shade, and he gently bumped them away from her fair skin with a flick of his ground against theirs.