Sensitive young patrollers were often so disturbed by their first encounter with a malice’s aura, it took them weeks to recover. Dag had been one such. Once.
Now: go. Back to the horse, and gallop like a madman to the rendezvous point.
Yet… there were so few creatures in the camp. The opportunity beckoned for a, so to speak, single-handed attempt. Down the ravine side, fly across the creek, up into that cave… it could all be over in minutes. In the time it took to bring the patrol up, the malice too might draw in its reinforcements (and where were they now, doing what mischief?), turning the attack into a potentially costly fight just to regain a proximity he had right now. Dag thought of Saun. Had he lived the night?
But with his groundsense thwarted, Dag couldn’t see how many men or mud-men might be hidden in the cave with the malice. If he went charging in there only to present his head to the enemy, the difficulties his patrol must then face would grow vastly worse. Also, I would be dead. In a way, he was glad that last prospect still had the power to disturb him. At least some.
He lowered his face, fought for control of his hastened breathing, and prepared to withdraw. His lips twisted. Mari will be so proud of me.
He started to push back from the edge of the ravine, but then froze again.
Down a path on the other side, three mud-men appeared. Was that first one a—where had this malice found a wolf in these parts? Dag had thought the farmers had reduced wolf numbers in this region, but then, this range of rugged unplowable hills was a reservoir for all sorts of things. As we see. His eyes widened as he recognized the second in line, the escaped raccoon-man from this morning. The third, huger still, must once have been a black bear. A flash of familiar dull blue fabric over the giant bear-man’s shoulder stopped his breath.
Little Spark. They found Little Spark. How… ?
A more or less straight line over the hills to the valley farm from here was the short leg of a triangle, he realized. He had run two long legs, to get from the farm back to where he’d first lost the raccoon-man’s traces, then work his way here.
They found her because they went looking, I bet. It accounted for the rest of this malice’s absent company; like the two he’d passed on the trail, they had doubtless all been dispatched to comb the hills for the escaped prize. And the malice and its mud-men already knew about the valley farm if they’d recently raided it. Must have known for a long time; his respect for this one’s wits notched up yet again, for it to leave such a nearby tempting target alone, unmolested and unalarmed, for so long. How much strength had it gained, to dare to move openly now? Or had the arrival of Chato’s patrol stampeded it?
The blue-clad figure, hanging head down, twitched and struggled. Beat the back of her captor with hard little fists, to no visible effect, except that the bear-man shrugged her hips higher over his shoulder and took a firmer grip on her thighs.
She was alive. Conscious. Undoubtedly terrified.
Not terrified enough. But Dag could make it up for her. His mouth opened, to silence his own speeding breathing, and his heart hammered. Now the malice had just what it needed for its next molt. Dag had only to deliver to it a Lakewalker patroller—and one so experienced, too—for its dessert, and its powers would be complete.
He wasn’t sure if he was shivering with indecision or just fear. Fear, he decided. Yes, he could run back to the patrol and bring them on in force, by the tested rules, be sure. Because the Lakewalkers had to win, every time. But Fawn might be dead by the time they got back.
Or in minutes. The three mud-men vanished behind the occluding rock wall. So, at least three in there. Of there could be ten.
To get in and out of that cave… No. He only had to get in.
He didn’t know why his brain was still madly trying to calculate risks, because his hand was already moving. Dropping bow and quiver and excess gear.
Positioning his sharing-knife sheaths. Swapping out the spring-hook on his wooden wrist cap for the steel knife. Testing the draw of his war knife.
He rose and dropped down over the side of the ravine, sliding from rock to rill as silently as a serpent. It had all happened so fast…
Fawn hung head down, dizzy and nauseated. She wondered if the blow she’d taken on the other side of her face would bruise to match the first. The mud-man’s broad shoulder seemed to punch her stomach as it jogged along endlessly, without stopping even when she’d been violently sick down its back. Twice.
When Dag came back to the valley farm—if Dag came back to the valley farm—would he be able to read the events from the mess her fight had left in the kitchen?
He was a tracker, surely he’d have to notice the footprints in plum jam she had forced her captors to smear across the floor as they’d lunged after her. But it seemed far too much to expect the man to rescue her twice in one day, downright embarrassing, even. Imagining the indignity, she tried one more time to break from the huge mud-man’s clutch, beating its back with her fists. She might have been pounding sand for all the difference it made.
She should save her strength for a better chance.
What strength? What chance?
The hot, level sunlight of the summer evening gave way abruptly to gray shadow and the cool smell of dirt and rock. As her captor swung her down and upright, she had a giddy impression of a cave or hollow half-filled with piles of trash.
Or war supplies, it was hard to tell. She fought back the black shadows that swarmed over her vision and stood upright, blinking.
Two more of the animal-men rose as if to greet her three escorts. She wondered if they were all about to fall on her and tear her up like a pack of dogs devouring a rabbit. Although she wasn’t entirely sure but what that shorter one on the end might have been a rabbit, once.
The Voice said, “Bring her here.”
The words were more clearly spoken than the mud-men’s mumblings, but the undertones made her bones feel as though they were melting. She suddenly could not force her trembling face to turn toward the source of that appalling sound.
It seemed to flay the wits right out of her mind. Please let me go please let me go let me go letmego…
The bear-man clutched her shoulders and half dragged, half lifted her to the back of the cave, a long shallow gouge in the hillside. And turned her face-to-face with the source of the Voice.
It might have been a mud-man, if bigger, taller, broader. Its shape was human enough, a head with two eyes, nose, mouth, ears—broad torso, two arms, two legs.
But its skin was not even like an animal’s, let alone a human’s. It made her think of lizards and insects and rock dust plastered together with bird lime.
It was hairless. The naked skull was faintly crested. It was quite unclothed, and seemingly unconscious of the fact; the strange lumps at its crotch didn’t look like a man’s genitals, or a woman’s either. It didn’t move right, as though it were a child’s bad clay sculpture given motion and not a breathing creature of bone and sinew and muscle.
The mud-men had animal eyes in human faces, and seemed unspeakably dangerous.
This… had human eyes in the face of a nightmare. No, no nightmare she had ever dreamed or imagined—one of Dag’s, maybe. Trapped. Tormented. And yet, for all its pain, as devoid of mercy as a stone. Or a rockslide.
It clutched her shirt, lifted her up to its face, and stared at her for a long, long moment. She was crying now, in fear beyond shame. She would deal with Dag’s rescue, yes, or anybody’s at all. She would trade back for her bandit-ravisher.
She would deal with any god listening, make any promise… letmegoletmego...
With a slow, deliberate motion, the malice lifted her skirt with its other hand, twitched her drawers down to her hips, and drew its claws up her belly.
The pain was so intense, Fawn thought for a moment that she had been gutted.
Her knees came up in an involuntary spasm, and she screamed. The sound came so tightly out of her raw throat that it turned into near silence, a rasping hiss.