Her dry voice spoke: “’Bout time you reported for duty again, patroller.”
He tried to move his lips.
Her hand pressed his brow. “That was a joke, Dag. You just lie there.” Her hand went to his, under blankets it seemed. “Finally warming up, too. Good.”
He swallowed and found his lost voice. “How many?”
“Eh?”
“How many died? Last night?” Assuming the malice kill was last night. He had mislaid days before, under unpleasantly similar conditions.
“Now you’ve seen fit to grace us with your gloomy face again—none.”
That couldn’t be right. Saun, what of Saun, left with the horses? Dag pictured the youth attacked in the dark by mud-men, alone, bloodied, overwhelmed…“Saun!”
“Here, Captain.” Saun’s anxiously smiling face loomed over Mari’s shoulder.
That must have been a dream or a hallucination. Or this was. Did he get to pick which? He drew breath enough to get out, “What’s happened?”
“Dirla took the malice—” Mari began.
“I got that far. Saw you drop your knife to her.” Mari’s son’s bone. He managed to moisten his lips. “Didn’t think you’d ever let that out of your hand.”
“Aye, well, I remembered your tale of how you and the little farmer girl got the Glassforge malice. Dirla was closer, and the malice was intent on Utau. I saw the chance and took it.”
“Utau?” he repeated urgently. Yes, the malice had been about to rip the ground from his body…
Mari gripped his shoulder through the blankets. “Malice grazed him, no question, but Razi brought him home. You, now—that’s the closest I’ve ever heard tell of anyone getting his ground ripped without actually dying. Never seen a man look more like a corpse and still breathe.”
“Drink?” said Saun, putting an arm under Dag’s shoulders to lift him a bit.
Oh, good idea. It was only stale water from a skin, but it was wonderfully wet water. Wettest he’d ever drunk, Dag decided. “Thankee’.” And after a moment, “How many of us lost…?”
“None, Dag,” said Saun eagerly. Mari frowned.
“Go on.”
“Eh, after that, it was all over but the shoutin’, of which there was the usual,” said Mari. “Sent two pairs to retrieve Saun and the horses, and kept the rest close to guard our camp from hazard. Let four off to sleep a bit ago.” She nodded across the fire toward some sodden unmoving bundles stretched on bedrolls. Dag raised his head to look. Beside one of them, Razi sat cross-legged; he smiled tiredly at Dag and sent him a vague salute.
“What of the farmer-slaves?”
“There weren’t as many right by here as we’d thought. Seems the malice had sent most of its slaves and mud-men marching off through the woods for some dawn attack on a town just northwest of Farmer’s Flats. I imagine they’re having a right mess down there this morning. Gods know what those poor farmers thought when the malice fog lifted from their minds and their mud-men scampered. I haven’t much tried to herd the folks we found here, though we did check out their camp, and suggest no one try to travel home alone. Most of ’em have gone off by now to try and find friends and family.”
Understandable; welcome, even. It might be cowardice, but Dag didn’t want to try to deal with distraught farmers this morning, atop everything else. Let the Raintree Lakewalkers take care of their own.
Dag’s brow wrinkled. “How many did we lose last night?”
Mari drew a long breath and leaned forward to peer into his face. “Dag, are you tracking me at all?”
“’Course I’m tracking you.” Dag unwound his left arm from his blankets and waved his hook at her. “How many fingers am I holding up?” Except it occurred to him that, on some very disturbing level, he did not know the answer.
Mari rolled her eyes in exasperation. Saun, bless him, looked adorably confused.
“Well, we still don’t know about those makers we left at Bonemarsh,” Saun offered hesitantly.
Mari turned to glare at him. “Saun, don’t you dare start that up again with him now.”
Yes, that was his missing piece, the thing he’d been trying so desperately to remember. Dag sighed, if not exactly in satisfaction.
“We haven’t heard from Obio and the company yet,” said Mari, “but there’s scarcely been time. They might have reached there hours ago.”
“They might have taken some other route,” said Saun stubbornly.
It looked to turn into a bright day. People tied up outdoors in such heat without drink or food could die of exposure in a surprisingly short time, even without the added stress of whatever the malice’s groundlock—or ground link—had done to them. If even one prisoner could release himself, he’d surely free the rest, but suppose none could…? The throbbing headache of nightmare crept back up the base of Dag’s skull. “We have to go back to Bonemarsh.”
Saun nodded in eagerness. “I’ll ride ahead.”
“Not alone you won’t!” said Mari sharply.
Dag got out, “I left them…yesterday. Because I could count. But today I can go back.” Yes, as quickly as might be. “There was something wrong, and I knew it, but there was no time, and I knew that too. I have to get back there.” Enough human sacrifice for one malice, enough.
Mari sat back, dubious. “Make you a deal, Dag. If you can get your fool self up on your fool horse all by yourself, I’ll let you ride it. If not, you’re staying right here.”
Dag grinned wanly. “You’ll lose that bet. Saun, help me sit up.”
The boy slid an arm under his shoulders again. Dag’s head drained nearly to blackness as he came upright, but he kept his blinking eyes open somehow. “See, Mari? I wager there’s not a mark on me.”
“Your ground’s so tight it’s cramping. You can’t tell me you didn’t take hurt under there.”
“What does it feel like?” asked Saun diffidently. “A ground rip, that is?”
Dag squinted, deciding Saun was due an honest answer. “Right now, a lot like blood loss, truth to tell. It doesn’t hurt anywhere in particular”—just everywhere generally—“but I admit I’m not my best.”
Mari snorted.
If he ate, perhaps he would gain strength enough to…eat. Hm.
Mari went off to deal with less intractable people, and Saun, as anxious for the Bonemarsh makers as Dag, made it his business to get Dag ready to ride. While Saun fed him, Dag took counsel with Mari and Codo to split the patrol, sending six south to find the Raintree Lakewalkers and report on the malice kill, and the rest north with him to, with luck, rendezvous with the rest of the company at Bonemarsh.
In the event, Dag half cheated and used a stump to mount Copperhead. Mari, mounting from another stump, eyed him narrowly but let it pass. The horse was too tired to fight him, which was fortunate, because he was way too tired to fight back. He let Saun take the lead in the ride back north, swifter for the daylight, the lack of need for stealth, and the knowing where they were going, but slower for everyone’s exhaustion. Dag sat his horse and wavered in and out of awareness, pretending to be dozing while riding like any good old patroller. Utau, slumping in his saddle and closely shepherded by Razi, looked almost as laid waste as Dag felt.
Dag let his groundsense stay shut, as it seemed to want; it reminded him of the way a man might walk tilted to guard a wound. Maybe, as for blood loss, time and rest would provide the remedy. He tried once to sneak out his ghost hand, but nothing occurred.
The thought of the tree-bound makers he had so ruthlessly abandoned yesterday haunted his hazy thoughts. He searched the memory of his glimpse of the malice’s mind for a hint of them, but could recover only a sense of overwhelming confusion. The makers’ fate seemed to hang in the air like some absent god’s cruel revenge upon his wild hope, scarcely admitted even to himself. If only…
If only I could get through this captaincy without losing anyone, I could stop.
If only he could balance the long weight of Wolf Ridge? Would it? Dag was dubious of his mortal arithmetic. In the long run no one gets out alive, you know that.