Othan, on the other hand, glowered at her as he worked.
“What?” she finally demanded.
“You’re hovering. Back off, can’t you? Half a mile would do.”
“I’ve a right. He’s my husband.”
“That hasn’t been decided yet.”
Fawn touched her marriage cord. “Dag and I decided it. Quite a ways back down the road.”
“You’ll find out, farmer.” Othan coaxed the last spoonful of broth down his patient’s throat, which moved just enough to swallow, and laid Dag’s head back down on the folded blanket that substituted, poorly, for a pillow. Fawn considered collecting dry grass to stuff it with, later. Othan added, “He was a good patroller. Hoharie says he could be even more. They say you’ve seduced him from his duty and will be the ruination his life if the camp council doesn’t fix things.”
Fawn sat up indignantly. “They say? So let them say it to my face, if they’re not cowards.” And anyhow, I think we sort of seduced each other.
“My uncle who’s a patroller says it, and he’s no coward!”
Fawn gritted her teeth as Othan—safely ground-closed Othan—stroked a strand of sweat-dampened hair back from Dag’s forehead. How dare he act as if he owned Dag, just because he was Lakewalker-born and she wasn’t! The, the stupid boy was just a wet-behind-the-ears apprentice no older than she was. Younger, likely. Her longing to shut Othan up, make him look nohow, was quelled by her sudden realization that he might be a lead into just the sort of camp gossip Dag had so carefully shielded her from. Also—this was half an argument. Just what all had Dag been saying back to Hickory Lake Camp? She recalled the day he’d made that poor plunkin into a porcupine with his bow and her arrows. Her spinning mind settled on, “I’m not a patch on your malices, for ruination.”
“They’re not our malices.”
Fawn smiled blackly. “Oh, yes, they are.” She added after a fuming moment, “And there isn’t any was about it, unless you want to say he was a good patroller, and he now is a really good captain! He took his company right through that awful Raintree malice like a knife through butter, to hear Dirla tell it. Despite being married to a farmer, so there!”
“Despite, yeah,” Othan growled.
Fawn took a grip on her shredding temper as Mari and Hoharie came up. Othan scrambled to his feet, giving over glaring at Fawn in order to look anxiously at the medicine maker. Hoharie looked grim, and Mari grimmer.
“Which one, then?” said Mari.
“Dag,” said Hoharie. “I’ve worked on his ground enough to be most familiar with it, and he’s also the most recent to fall into the lock. If that counts for anything. Othan, good, you’re here,” she continued without a pause. “I’m going to enter this groundlock, and I want you to try to anchor me.”
Othan looked alarmed. “Are you sure, Hoharie?”
“No, but I’ve tried everything else I can think of. And I won’t walk away from this.”
“No, you’re leaving that dirty job to me,” muttered Mari irritably. Hoharie returned her the sort of sharp shrug that indicated a lengthy argument concluded.
Hoharie went on, “I’ll set up a light link to you, Othan, and try for a glimpse inside the groundlock, then pull back. If I can’t disengage, you are to break with me instantly and not try to enter in after me, do you hear?” She caught her apprentice’s gaze and held it sternly. Othan gulped and nodded.
Fawn scrunched back in the litter of dry grass and dead leaves on Dag’s far side, wrapping her arms around her knees and trying to make herself small, so they wouldn’t notice and exclude her.
Hoharie paused, then said, “My knife is in my saddlebags, Mari, if it comes to that.”
“When should it come to it, Hoharie? Don’t leave me with that decision, too.”
“When the weakest start to die, I believe it will throw more strain on the rest. So it will go faster toward the end. That poor maker who died before Dag’s patrol arrived showed that such deaths won’t break the lock; if anything, it may grow more concentrated. I think…once two or more of the nine—no, ten—are down, then start the sharing. And you’ll just have to see what happens next.” She added after a moment, “Start with me, of course.”
“That,” said Mari distantly, “will be my turn to pick.”
Hoharie’s lips thinned. “Mm.”
“I don’t recommend this, Hoharie.”
“I hear you.”
Evidently not, because the medicine maker lowered herself cross-legged by the head of Dag’s bedroll, motioning Othan down beside her. He sat up on his knees. She straightened her spine and shut her eyes for a moment, seeming to center herself. She then took Othan’s hand with her left hand; there apparently followed another moment of invisible-to-Fawn ground adjustments. Without further hesitation, Hoharie’s right hand reached out and touched Dag’s forehead. Fawn thought she saw him grimace in his trance, but it was hard to be sure.
Then Hoharie’s eyes opened wide; with a yank, she pulled her hand from Othan’s and slammed the heel of it into his chest, pushing him over backward. Her eyes rolled up, her face drained of color and expression, and she slumped across Dag.
With a muted wail, Othan scrambled up and dove for her. Mari cursed and caught Othan from behind, wrapping her arms around his torso and trapping his hands. “No!” she yelled in his ear. “Obey her! Close up! Close up, blight you, boy!”
Othan strained against her briefly, then, with a choke of despair, sprawled back in her grip.
“Ten,” snarled Mari. “That’s it, that’s all we’re doing here. Not eleven, you hear?” She shook him.
Othan nodded dully, and she let him free. He leaned on his hands, staring at his unconscious mentor in horror.
“What did you feel?” Mari demanded of him. “Anything?”
He shook his head. “I—nothing useful, I don’t think. It was like I could feel her ground being pulled away from me, into the dark…!” He turned a distraught face to the patrol leader. “I didn’t let go, Mari, I didn’t! She pushed me away!”
“I saw, boy,” sighed Mari. “You did what you could.” Slowly, she stood up, and braced her legs apart and her hands on her hips, staring down at the two enspelled in their heap. “We’ll lay her out with the rest. She’s in there with them now; maybe she can do something different. If this thing was weakening with age, could we tell? If nothing else, she may have bought three more days of time.” Her voice fell to a savage mutter. “Except I don’t want more time. I want this to be over.”
Hoharie’s bedroll was placed under the ash tree close to Dag’s. Othan took up a cross-legged station of guard, or grief, on the opposite side to Fawn, who sat similarly beyond Dag. They didn’t much look at each other.
Toward sunset, Mari came and sat down between the two bedrolls.
“Blight you two,” she said conversationally to the unconscious pair, “for leaving this on me. This is company captain work, not patrol leader work. No fair slithering out of it, Dag my boy.” She looked up and caught Fawn’s eye from where she lay on her side near Dag. Fawn sat up and returned an inquiring look.
“Bryn”—Mari hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the rank of female sleepers beneath their awning—“will be all of twenty-two next week. If she has a next week. She’s young. Good groundsense range. She might yet grow up to have a passel of youngsters. Hoharie, I’ve known her longer. A medicine maker has valuable skills. She might yet save the lives of a dozen girls like Bryn. So how shall I decide which first? Some choice. Maybe,” she sighed, “maybe it won’t make any difference. I hardly know which way to wish for.
“Agh! Pay no attention to my maunderings, girl,” Mari continued, as Fawn’s stare widened. “I think I’m getting too old. I’m going to go sleep off this blight tonight. It drains your wits as well as your strength, blight does. All despair and death. You get into this mood.” She clambered back to her feet and gazed blearily down over Dag’s supine form at Fawn. “I know you can’t feel the blight direct, but it’s working on you, too. You should take a break off this deathly ground as well.”