Sorcerers, huh. Dag didn’t look like a sorcerer. (And what did sorcerers look like anyhow?) He looked like a very tired hunter who had been too long away from home. Hunting things that hunted him back.
A girl baby. Maybe he was just guessing. Fifty percent odds weren’t half-bad, for appearing right, later. Still, it was an encouraging thought. Girls she knew. A little boy, however innocent, might have reminded her too much of Sunny.
She hadn’t meant to be a mother so soon in her life at all, but if she was going to be stuck with it, she would very well try to be a good one. She rubbed absently at her belly. I will not betray you. A bold promise. How was she to keep a child safe when she couldn’t even save herself? Also, from now on, I will be more careful. Anyone could make a mistake. The trick was not to make the same one twice.
She eventually ran out of ripped fabric, patience to brood, and the will to stay awake. Her bruised face was throbbing. She hauled the repaired ticks back inside and piled them four deep in a corner of the kitchen, because the next room was still a disheartening mess and she hadn’t the energy left to tackle it. She fell gratefully onto the pile. She had barely time to register the musty scent of them, and reflect that they were overdue for an airing anyhow, when her leaden eyes closed. Fawn woke to the sound of steps on the wooden porch. Dag back already? It was still light. How long had she slept? Blearily, she pushed up, eager to show him the overlooked treasures in the cellar and to hear what he’d found. Only then did it register that there were too many heavy steps out there.
She should have been overlooked in the cellar—I could have thrown a couple of those mattresses down there—She had just time to think What good is it to not to make the same mistakes twice when your new ones’ll kill you all the same?
before the three mud-men burst open the door.
Chapter 4
When the faint path he was following up into the hills turned into something more resembling a beaten trail, Dag decided it was time to get off it.
Groundsense or common sense or sheer nerves, he could not tell, but he dismounted and led his horse aside into the woods to a small glade well out of sight and hearing of the track. He hardly needed to lay on suggestions of not-wandering-away; even Copperhead, with his rawhide endurance and his temper, was so tired as to be stumbling. But then, so was Dag. Feeling guilty, he tied the reins up out of the way of front hooves, but left the saddle on. He hated to leave his mount so ill tended, but if he came back in a tearing hurry, there might be no time to fool with gear. Or to hesitate to ride the beast to death, if needs drove hard enough. Tomorrow, or the day after, we shall all take a better rest. One way or another.
He did not return to the trail itself but shadowed the track a dozen paces off in the undergrowth. It was slow work, ghosting like a deer, each footfall carefully laid, constantly alert. Not a mile farther on he was glad of his prudence, freezing in a tangle of deadfall and wild grapevines as two figures came thumping openly along the path.
Mud-men. A fox and a rabbit, at a guess, and he hardly needed his inner senses to tell; they were crude, perhaps early efforts, and marks of their animal origin still showed on their hides, their ears, their misshapen faces and noses.
It was highly tempting to try to do something with that combination, awaken them to their true selves and let nature take its course, but the attempt would cost him his cover, perhaps open him to their master beyond. This was no time for games. Regretfully, he let them pass by, grateful that their clumsy new forms included human limitations on their sense of smell in trade for human advantages of hands and speech.
He first knew he was drawing close to the lair by the absence of birds. This is a day for absences. He drew his groundsense in even more tightly as the first yellowing, dying weeds began to rustle underfoot. I wasn’t expecting this till miles farther in. The lair was much closer to the straight road than he’d thought it could possibly be. It was shockingly clever, in a malice so—supposedly—young, for it to send its first human gulls to take prey so far from its initial bastion. How did we overlook this?
He knew how. We are too few, with too much ground to cover and never time enough. Widen the teeth of the sweeps, speed the search, and risk clues slipping past unobserved. Go slow and close, and risk not getting to all the critical places in time. Well, we found this one. This is a success, not a failure.
Maybe.
By the time he reached a vantage he was crawling like a snail, nearly on his belly, scarcely daring to breathe. Every herb and weed around him was dead and brittle, the soil beneath his knees was achingly sterile, and his tightly furled groundsense shivered in the dry shock of the malice’s draining aura. Indeed, it’s here.
At the bottom of a rocky ravine, a creek wound from his right, ran straight below him, and curled away on his left. Not one living plant graced the cleft for as far as he could see in either direction, although the dead bones of a few trees still stood up like sentinels. A camp, of sorts, lay along the creek side: three or four black campfire pits, currently cold, piles of stolen supplies scattered haphazardly about. On the far side of the creek, a couple of uneasy horses stood tied to dead trees. Real, natural horses, as far as Dag could tell.
Ill kept, of course.
The space below might accommodate twenty-five or fifty men, but it was nearly deserted at the moment. Exactly one mud-man was asleep on a pile of rags like a nest. Dag wondered if any of the absent company might be men his patrol had captured last night. Which implied that the patrol might well arrive on its own at any time, pleasant thought. He did not allow himself to dwell on the hope.
Partway up the other side of the ravine a shelf of overhanging rock created a cave, perhaps sixty feet long and shielded in front by a smooth gray outcrop of stone pushing up almost to meet the overhang. No telling from here how far back in it went. Paths ran out either end, down to the creek and up over the rise behind.
The malice was inside, at the moment. So was it mobile yet, or still sessile?
And if mobile, had it undergone its first molt? And if it hadn’t, how frantic would it be to gather the necessary human materials to achieve that? A
malice’s initial hatching body was even clumsier and cruder than a mud-man’s, which generally seemed to irritate it.
Dag opened his shirt and felt for his sharing knives. He pulled the strap over his head and stared a moment at the twin sheaths. The stitched leather was slick with wear and dark with old sweat. He ran one finger over the thread-wound hilts, one blue, one green, drew and contemplated six inches of polished bone blade. Touched it to his lips. It hummed with old mortality.
Is this the day your death is redeemed, Kauneo my love? I have borne it around my neck for so long. As you willed, so I do. This was a vicious malice, big and getting bigger fast. It would nearly be worthy of her, Dag thought. Nearly.
He drew the second, empty bone blade and laid the two back to back. They come in pairs, oh yes. One for you and one for me. He slipped them away again.
Mari too bore sharing knives, and so did Utau and Chato, gifts of mortality from patrollers before them. Mari’s current set was a legacy from one of her sons, he knew, and as dear to her as these to Dag. The patrol was well supplied. Who used theirs on a malice was not normally a matter of drawing straws, or heroics, or honor. Whoever first could, did. Any way they could. As efficiently as possible.
It wasn’t as though there wouldn’t be another chance later.
Dag’s ground was quivering at the drain from the malice’s presence, an effect that would bleed over into his body if he lingered here much longer.