Saun, now leaning against the barren ash tree with his arms folded, grimaced agreement.
Fawn’s belly shuddered as it finally dawned on her what Mari was talking about. The picture of Mari, or Saun, or Hoharie—likely Mari, it seemed her idea of a leader’s duty—taking those bone knives and methodically driving them through the hearts of her comrades, going down the rows of bedrolls one after another…No, not Dag! Fawn touched the knife beneath her shirt, suddenly fiercely glad that her accident with it back at Glassforge had at least blocked this ghastly possibility.
Hoharie was frowning, but it seemed to Fawn more in sorrow than dissent.
“I will say,” said Mari, “Dag falling into this lock seemed to give everyone in it new strength—for a little while. But the weaker ones are failing again. If we were to add a new patroller every three days, I don’t rightly know how long we could keep them alive—except, of course, the problem would just get bigger and bigger as we strung it out. I’m not volunteerin’, note. And I’m not volunteerin’ you either, Hoharie, so don’t go getting ideas.”
Hoharie rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m going to have to get ideas of some sort. But I’m not going to attempt anything at all tonight. Fatigue distorts judgment.”
Mari nodded approval, and described the camp off the blight to the east where everyone not tending the enspelled apparently retreated to sleep. When she paused, Fawn motioned at Dag and broke in, “Mari—is it really true I can’t touch him?”
Mari said, “It may be. The finding out could be costly.”
Or not, thought Fawn. “I rode all this way.”
Hoharie said, in a sort of weary sympathy, “We told you to stay home, child. There’s nothing for you to do here but grieve.”
“And get in the way,” muttered Othan, almost inaudibly.
“But I can feel Dag. Still!”
Hoharie did not look hopeful, but she rose to her knees, reached across Dag, and took up Fawn’s left arm anyway, probing along it. “Has it changed any lately?”
“The ache feels stronger for being closer, but no clearer,” Fawn admitted. “It’s funny. Dag gave me this for reassurance, but instead it’s made me frantic.”
“Is that you or him that’s frantic?”
“I can’t hardly tell the difference.”
“Huh.” Hoharie let her go and sat back. “This gets us no further that I can see. Yet.” With a pained grunt, she rose to her feet, and everyone else did too.
Fawn held out her hands, palms open, to Mari. “Surely there’s something I can do!”
Mari looked at her and sighed, but at least it was a sigh of understanding. “There’s bedding and catch-rags to be washed.”
Fawn’s hands clenched. “I can do that, sure.” Better: it was a task that would keep her here in the grove, and not exiled a mile away.
“Oh, that’s important. You rode a long way to do laundry, farmer girl,” said Othan, and missed the cool look that the Lakewalker women turned on him. It was no stretch to Fawn to guess who had been doing the washing so far.
Mari said more firmly, “Not that there’s a pile. It’s so hard to get anything into these people, there’s not much coming out. In any case, not tonight, Fawn. You look bushed.”
Fawn admitted it with a short nod. When it was all sorted out, the party’s horses, including Grace, were led off to the east camp by the patrollers, but Fawn managed to keep her bedroll and saddlebags in the grove by Dag. It was driving her half-mad not to be allowed to touch him, but she set about finding other tasks for her hands, helping with the fire and the batches of broths and thin gruel that these experienced women had cooking.
Hoharie commenced a second, more thorough physical examination of all the silent groundlocked folk, an expression of extreme frustration on her face. “I might as well be some farmer bonesetter,” Fawn heard her mutter as she knelt by Dag. The tart thought came to Fawn that really, they might all be better off with one; farmer bonesetters and midwives always had to work by guess and by golly, with indirect clues. They likely grew good at it, over time.
Resolutely, Fawn took on the laundry the following morning as soon as she could rise and move. At least the work abused different muscles than the ones she’d overtaxed the past three days. Riding trousers rolled above her knees, she waded out into the cool water of the marsh towing a makeshift raft of lashed-together deadwood holding the soiled blankets and catch-rags. The water seemed peculiarly clear and odorless, for a marsh, but it was fine for washing. And she could keep an eye on the long lumpy shadow beneath the ash tree that was Dag, and see the silhouettes of the ground-closed helpers moving about the grove.
To her surprise one of the Lakewalker men, not a patroller but a survivor from the ruined village down the shore, came out and joined her in the task, silently taking up the rubbing and scrubbing by her side. He said only, “You’re Dag Redwing’s farmer bride,” not a question but a statement; Fawn could only nod. He had a funny look on his face, drawn and distant, that made Fawn shy of speaking to him, though she murmured thanks as they passed clouts back and forth. He took the main burden of lugging the heavy, wet cloths back to the blighted trees, and, being much taller, of hanging them up on the bare branches after she shook them out. The only other thing he said, rather abruptly as they finished and he turned away, was, “Artin the smith is my father, see.”
Hoharie paced around the grove and squinted, or walked out to a distance and stared, or sat on a stump and drew formless lines on the ground with a stick, scowling. She went methodically through an array of more startling actions, yelling at or slapping the sleepers, pricking them with a pin, stirring up the half-formed mud-men in their pots. Mari and Saun, with difficulty, dissuaded her from killing another one by way of a test. Flushed after her futile exertions, she came and sat cross-legged by Dag’s bedroll, scowling some more.
Fawn sat across from her nibbling on a raw plunkin slice. She wished she could feed Dag—would the taste of genuine Hickory Lake plunkin be like home cooking to him? But even if she could touch him, he could not chew—he could barely swallow water. She supposed she might try cooking and mashing up some of the root and thinning it down for a gruel, disgusting as that sounded. She asked Hoharie quietly, “What do you figure?”
Hoharie shook her head. “This isn’t just a lovers’ groundlock enlarged. Something of the malice must linger in it. Has to be an involuted ground reinforcement of some sort, to survive the malice’s death; what it’s living on is a puzzle. Well, not much of a puzzle; it has to be ground, the mud-men’s or the people’s or both. People’s, most likely.”
“Like…like a tick? Or a belly-worm? Made of ground,” Fawn added, to show she wasn’t confused about that.
Hoharie gave a vague wave that seemed to allow the comparison without exactly approving it. “It has to be worked ground. Malice-worked. Could be—well, it obviously is—quite complex. I still don’t understand the part about it being so anchored in place. Question is, how long can it last? Will it be absorbed like a healing reinforcement? And if so, will it strengthen or slay? Is it just their groundlock paralysis that is weakening these folks, or is there something more eating away at them, inside?”
At Fawn’s faint gasp Hoharie’s eyes flicked up; she glanced from Dag to Fawn, and murmured, “Oh, sorry. Talking to myself, I’m afraid.”
“It’s all right. I want to know everything.”
“So do I, child,” Hoharie sighed. She levered to her feet and wandered off again.
Saun having gone off to the east camp to sleep after taking a night watch, it was Othan who came at noon to feed Dag broth. Fawn watched enviously and critically as he raised Dag’s head into his lap, wincing at every harsh click of spoon on teeth or muffled choke or dribble lost down over Dag’s chin. At least Dag’s face wasn’t rough with stubble; Saun had shaved it just this morning. Fawn had wondered at the effort, since Dag couldn’t feel it—but somehow it did make him look less sick. So maybe the use of it was not for Dag, but for the people who looked so anxiously after him. She had smiled gratefully at Saun, anyhow.