All good, but there was something deeply wrong with the picture…oh. “Why haven’t you moved them off this blighted ground?”
Mari, Dirla, and Razi had dismounted during Griff’s recitation, moving closer to listen. Razi still held the reins of Utau’s horse; Utau drooped over his saddlebow, squinting. Dag wasn’t sure how much of this he was taking in.
“We tried,” said Obio. “Soon as you carry someone more than about a hundred paces away, they stop breathing.”
“Must have been a thrill finding that out,” Mari said.
“Oh, aye,” agreed Obio, fervent. “In the middle of the night last night.”
“And if you kill one of the mud-men in their mudholes,” Griff added morosely, “the people scream in their sleep. It’s pretty blighted unnerving. So we stopped that, too.”
“I figured,” said Obio, “that if—when—someone caught up with the malice, the groundlock would break on its own. I intended to detail a few folks to look after them and take the company on, as soon as enough scouts came back to give me a guess what we ought to try next. Except…you say you all did for the malice, but that ugly groundlock’s still holding tight.”
“Dirla did,” said Dag. “With Mari’s sharing knife. Your first personal kill, I believe, Dirla?” It was a shame that the congratulations and celebration that should have been hers were being overwhelmed in this new crisis.
Dirla nodded absently. She frowned past Dag at the unmoving figures in the shaded bedrolls. “Could there be more than one malice? And that’s why this link didn’t break last night?”
Dag tried to think this utterly horrible idea through logically, but his brains seemed to be slowly turning to porridge. His gut said no, right enough, but he couldn’t for the life of him say why, not in words.
Mari came to his rescue: “No. Because our malice would have turned all it had toward fighting the second, instead of chasing after farmers and Lakewalkers. Malices don’t team up—they eat each other.”
Well, that was true, too. But that’s not it.
“That’s what I thought,” said Dirla. “But then why didn’t this stop when the malice died, like what it does to the farmers and the mud-men?”
Maddening question. Lakewalkers, it must have to do with Lake-walkers…“All right,” sighed Dag. “I’m thinking…we got water down those folks yesterday. If we can get more water and some sort of food—gruel, soup, I don’t know—down them again, we can buy a little time, maybe.”
“Been doing that,” said Obio.
Bless your wits. Dag nodded. “Buy time to think. Keep a close eye, wait for the scouts—then decide. Depending, I’m thinking we might split the company—send some volunteers to help the Raintree folks with the cleanup, and the rest home maybe as early as tomorrow morning.” So that Oleana might not, due to Fairbolt’s robbed pegboard, find itself facing a similar runaway malice war next season.
The creeping alarm of this unnatural groundlock upon a bunch of already-nervy patrollers was clearly contagious. At this point, Dag could scarcely tell if his own sick unease was from the makers or their distraught caretakers. “Blight it, I wish I had Hoharie here. She works with people’s grounds all the time. Maybe she’d have an idea.” He might as well wish for that flock of turkey vultures to spiral down, grab him, and fly him away home, while he was at it. He sighed and cast an eye over his exhausted, bleary comrades. “Everyone who was with my veiled patrol is now off duty. Ride on over to the camp—get food, sleep, a wash, whatever you want. Utau, you’re on the sick list till I say otherwise.” Speaking of reasons to wish for the medicine maker.
Utau roused himself enough to growl, “I like that! If that malice scored me, it scored you a lot worse. I know what I feel like. Why are you still walking around?”
A question Dag didn’t care to probe just now, even if his wits had been working. Utau, it occurred to him, had been the only other patroller with his groundsense open, if involuntarily, in those moments of confused terror last night when Dag and the malice had closed on each other. What had he perceived? Evidently not Dag’s disastrous attempt to rip the malice in return. Dag temporized, “Until Razi says otherwise, then.” Razi grinned and cast him an appreciative half salute; Utau snorted. Dag added, “I’m going to lay me a bedroll down here, shortly.”
“On this blight?” said Saun doubtfully.
“I don’t want to be a mile away if something changes suddenly.”
Mari tugged Saun’s sleeve, and murmured, “If that one’s actually volunteerin’ for a bedroll, don’t argue the details.” She gave him a significant jerk of her head, and his eyes widened in enlightenment; he stepped over to Dirla.
“I had more sleep last night than you did, Mari,” said Dag.
“Dag, I don’t know what that was last night after you went down, but it sure wasn’t sleep. Sleeping men can be waked up, for one.”
“Wait, what’s all this?” said Obio.
Utau pushed up on his saddlebow and looked down at Dag a tad ironically. “Malice nearly ripped my ground last night. Dag jumped in and persuaded it to go after him, instead.”
“Did it rip you?” Obio asked Dag, eyebrows climbing.
“A little bit,” Dag admitted.
“Isn’t that something like being a little bit dead?”
“Seemingly.”
Obio smiled uncertainly, making Dag wonder just how corpselike he did look at the moment. He was not lovely, that was certain. Would he make Spark’s eyes happy all the same? I bet so. A bright picture came into his head of the thrill that would flower in her face when he walked into their campsite, when this was all over. Would she drop her handwork and run to his arms? It was the first heartening thought he’d had for hours. Days.
Dag wondered if he’d started to fall asleep standing when a voice broke up this vision, which ran away like water though his hands. He almost cried to have the dream back. Instead, he forced himself to breathe deeply and pay attention.
“…can send couriers with the news, now,” Obio was saying. “I’d like to catch Fairbolt before he sends off the next round of reinforcements.”
“Yes, of course,” murmured Dag.
Dirla had been talking closely with Mari; at this, she lifted her face, and called, “I’d like to volunteer for that, sir.”
You’re off duty, Dag started to object, then realized this task would certainly get Dirla home first. Better—she was eyewitness to the malice kill, none closer. If he sent her, Dag wouldn’t have to try to pen a report in his present groggy state. She could just tell Fairbolt all about it. “You took the malice. You can do any blighted thing you please, Dirla.”
She nodded cheerfully. “Then I will.”
Obio, his eyes narrowing, said, “In that case, I’ve a fellow in mind to send with her for partner. His wife was about to have a baby when we left. Absent gods willing, she might still be about to.”
Which would cover events from the other part of the company for Fairbolt, too. Good.
“Excellent,” agreed Mari. “That’s a courier who won’t dawdle, eh?” “You’ll need to trade out for fresher horses—” Dag began.
“We’ll take care of it, Dag,” Razi promised.
“Right. Right.” This was all routine. “Dirla. Tell Spark—tell everyone we’ll be home soon, eh?”
“Sure thing, Captain.”
Obio boosted Mari back on her horse, and she led the rest of the patrol, save Saun and Dirla, off east toward the promised camp. To reassure Obio and Griff, Dag pretended to make an inspection tour of the grove and the bog, for as much good as his eyes could do with his groundsense still clamped down tight.
“There was a dead woman, yesterday,” Dag began to Obio.
Obio grunted understanding. “We cut her down and wrapped her, and put her in one of the tents in the village. I’m hoping some of the Bonemarsh folk might come back and identify her before we have to bury her. In this heat, that’ll have to be by tomorrow, though.”