Blighted Greenspring had lain on one of the Beargrass’s upper tributaries, as Fawn recalled soberly. Bonemarsh Camp, too. Last summer’s grim campaign against the malice had all played out north of the big town of Farmer’s Flats; the disruption hadn’t reached down here. Dag might thank the absent gods, but Fawn thought the thanks were better due to Dag.
With the addition of the Beargrass, the Grace nearly topped its banks, and in some places overflowed them. Some of the lower-lying islands were drowned already, bare trees sticking up from the water as if growing out of a lake, except that the lake was moving sideways at a fair clip. Fawn sometimes saw animals trapped up the island trees; possums and raccoons, of course, a couple of black bears, and once, excitingly, a catamount, quite close. They passed a wild pig swimming strongly in the current, and the men aboard were barely restrained from trying to hunt it from the boat. Floating wrack either lodged on or broke loose dangerously from towheads, those accumulations of trees and logs at the top ends of the islands that from a distance resembled, the boatmen said, the unruly locks of a fair-haired boy, hence the name Beargrass.
Toward evening, Berry put two men on each sweep to fight the unwieldy Fetch in to shore. As they were tying up in the lee of a bend, a peculiar arrangement floated past in the dusk: two flatboats lashed together side by side. The crew apparently struggled in vain to steer this lumbering rig, because it was slowly spinning in the current.
Out on the back deck, Bo called across the water for them to break up and tie to shore before dark, but the men on the double-boat either didn’t hear or didn’t understand; their return cries were unintelligible.
“Why’d they fix their boats together like that?” asked Fawn curiously, coming out to look.
“I expect because they’re fool Raintree boys who don’t know a thing about the river and have got no business being on it,” said Bo, and spat over the side for emphasis.
“For company, maybe, or not to lose each other in the dark. It likely made ’em feel safer, out on this big river,” said Whit slowly. “Even the Fetch is starting to look pretty small.”
“Do you see why it don’t make ’em safer?” said Berry.
“Oh, I do!” said Fawn excitedly, staring after the receding Raintree flatties.
Berry grinned. “I bet you do. Now wait for Whit.”
Whit squinted into the dusk and said slowly, “They’re trying to move twice the weight with half the oars.”
Fawn nodded vigorously.
“That’s right,” said Berry, straightening in satisfaction. “We may make a riverman of you yet.”
Whit smiled blindingly at her. “I sure hope so.”
She smiled back involuntarily; not her usual wry grin, but something unwitting and almost unwilling. She rubbed her lips and shook her head. “And to top it, they’re running at night. Unless they got themselves their very own Lakewalker aboard, not too bright, I’m afraid.” She leaned on the back rail and stared down the river, her eyes growing grave and gray in the gathering gloom. Fawn barely heard her mutter: “Papa was no fool country boy. So what happened?”
18
During an easy stretch of river in the morning, Berry took Whit topside to give him a lesson on the steering oar. Mildly inspired, Dag assembled the Lakewalkers on the front deck for a drill in ground-veiling. He’d a shrewd suspicion such groundwork had been somewhat neglected by these two partners in favor of more vigorous training in bow, knife, sword, and spear.
Dag took the bench, Barr leaned against the goat pen, and Remo settled cross-legged on the deck. Eyes closed or open, they went around the lopsided circle taking turns at that inward-furling blindness that sacrificed perception for privacy—or invisibility. Unfairly, Barr had the stronger native groundsense of the pair, though unsurprisingly, Remo was more disciplined at handling what he had.
“You can’t veil yourself any better than that, and they let you out on patrol?” said Dag to Barr. “Amma Osprey must be harder up for patrollers than I thought.”
Barr waved a hand in protest. “Going blind like this feels like being a little kid again,” he complained. “Back to before my groundsense even came in.”
“There’s a deep difference in vulnerability. But leaking like you do, you’d never get close enough to a malice to make a rush with your knife.” If you had a knife.
“At that range, it could see me, couldn’t it? I mean, they do have eyes, right?”
“Usually. But that’s not the point. A good ground-veiling also resists ground-ripping, at least by a weak sessile or early molt. Which you’d better hope is what you’ll find yourself facing.” It occurred to Dag that this could be another use for his own weak ground-ripping ability—training young patrollers to resist it. He was tempted to test the notion, except for the certainty that it would scare the crap out of these two even worse than it scared him, and then there would be all those awkward explanations. But it was a heartening realization that any patroller who could resist a malice could resist Dag, as readily as a brawler could block a blow to his face. If he saw the blow coming, leastways.
But not any farmer.
He bit his lip and pushed that troubling thought aside for later examination. “And whether you’re the patrol member who places the knife or not, the better your ground-veiling, the better the chance of not spending the week vomiting your guts out from the blight exposure, after.”
Remo eyed him. “You ever do that?”
“It was closer to two weeks,” Dag admitted. “After that, I took my ground drills a lot more seriously. Let’s go around again. My turn to veil. You two close your eyes, but leave your groundsenses open and try to watch me.”
Dag furled himself firmly, watching as the two obediently scrunched their eyes closed. Softly, he rose from his seat.
Barr grinned. “Hey, where’d you go?”
“Here,” he breathed in Barr’s ear.
The boy yelped and jumped sideways. “Blight! Don’t do that!”
“It’s how you get close to a malice. You need to learn, too.”
“I’ve heard an advanced malice can ground-rip you all the same,” said Remo dubiously.
“I’ve only tangled with two that strong, in my forty years of patrolling. The Wolf Ridge malice I didn’t see close-up, just heard about from the survivors of the actual attack on the lair. The Raintree malice I saw eye-to-eye. That malice opened up one of the best ground-veilers in my company as easy as you’d gut a trout.”
“How can you even take down a malice that strong?” asked Remo.
“Gang up on it. Go after it all at once with a lot of patrollers with a lot of knives, and hope one gets through. Worked at Wolf Ridge, worked the same at Raintree.” He added after moment, “Well-veiled patrollers. So let’s go around again.”
After a couple more circuits, Barr remarked, “So, are you saying if I stayed this lousy at my ground-veiling, I’d never be chosen for one of those suicide-rushes?”
“In Luthlia, we’d set you out for bait,” Dag said.
Remo sniggered. Barr grimaced at him.
“Again,” said Dag. Interestingly, Barr improved; but then, Barr had more room for improvement. Judging by his increased flickering, Remo was growing fatigued. Time to wind up.
“That’s enough for today,” said Dag, easing back onto the bench. “I think we’ll spend an hour a day in this drill from now on.”
Barr stretched and rolled his shoulders, squinting. “So much for the benefits of running away from home.”
“Depends on what you run into,” Dag drawled. “If we rode slap into a river malice around the next bend, would you be prepared?”
“No,” said Remo bitterly. “None of us has a primed knife.”
“Then your job would be to survive and run for help to the next camp. Which is where?”
“Blight,” said Barr. “I’m not even sure where we are.”