Mari came to his rescue: “No. Because our malice would have turned all it had toward fighting the second, instead of chasing after farmers and Lakewalkers. Malices don’t team up—they eat each other.”
Well, that was true, too. But that’s not it.
“That’s what I thought,” said Dirla. “But then why didn’t this stop when the malice died, like what it does to the farmers and the mud-men?”
Maddening question. Lakewalkers, it must have to do with Lake-walkers…“All right,” sighed Dag. “I’m thinking…we got water down those folks yesterday. If we can get more water and some sort of food—gruel, soup, I don’t know—down them again, we can buy a little time, maybe.”
“Been doing that,” said Obio.
Bless your wits. Dag nodded. “Buy time to think. Keep a close eye, wait for the scouts—then decide. Depending, I’m thinking we might split the company—send some volunteers to help the Raintree folks with the cleanup, and the rest home maybe as early as tomorrow morning.” So that Oleana might not, due to Fairbolt’s robbed pegboard, find itself facing a similar runaway malice war next season.
The creeping alarm of this unnatural groundlock upon a bunch of already-nervy patrollers was clearly contagious. At this point, Dag could scarcely tell if his own sick unease was from the makers or their distraught caretakers. “Blight it, I wish I had Hoharie here. She works with people’s grounds all the time. Maybe she’d have an idea.” He might as well wish for that flock of turkey vultures to spiral down, grab him, and fly him away home, while he was at it. He sighed and cast an eye over his exhausted, bleary comrades. “Everyone who was with my veiled patrol is now off duty. Ride on over to the camp—get food, sleep, a wash, whatever you want. Utau, you’re on the sick list till I say otherwise.” Speaking of reasons to wish for the medicine maker.
Utau roused himself enough to growl, “I like that! If that malice scored me, it scored you a lot worse. I know what I feel like. Why are you still walking around?”
A question Dag didn’t care to probe just now, even if his wits had been working. Utau, it occurred to him, had been the only other patroller with his groundsense open, if involuntarily, in those moments of confused terror last night when Dag and the malice had closed on each other. What had he perceived? Evidently not Dag’s disastrous attempt to rip the malice in return. Dag temporized, “Until Razi says otherwise, then.” Razi grinned and cast him an appreciative half salute; Utau snorted. Dag added, “I’m going to lay me a bedroll down here, shortly.”
“On this blight?” said Saun doubtfully.
“I don’t want to be a mile away if something changes suddenly.”
Mari tugged Saun’s sleeve, and murmured, “If that one’s actually volunteerin’ for a bedroll, don’t argue the details.” She gave him a significant jerk of her head, and his eyes widened in enlightenment; he stepped over to Dirla.
“I had more sleep last night than you did, Mari,” said Dag.
“Dag, I don’t know what that was last night after you went down, but it sure wasn’t sleep. Sleeping men can be waked up, for one.”
“Wait, what’s all this?” said Obio.
Utau pushed up on his saddlebow and looked down at Dag a tad ironically. “Malice nearly ripped my ground last night. Dag jumped in and persuaded it to go after him, instead.”
“Did it rip you?” Obio asked Dag, eyebrows climbing.
“A little bit,” Dag admitted.
“Isn’t that something like being a little bit dead?”
“Seemingly.”
Obio smiled uncertainly, making Dag wonder just how corpselike he did look at the moment. He was not lovely, that was certain. Would he make Spark’s eyes happy all the same? I bet so. A bright picture came into his head of the thrill that would flower in her face when he walked into their campsite, when this was all over. Would she drop her handwork and run to his arms? It was the first heartening thought he’d had for hours. Days.
Dag wondered if he’d started to fall asleep standing when a voice broke up this vision, which ran away like water though his hands. He almost cried to have the dream back. Instead, he forced himself to breathe deeply and pay attention.
“…can send couriers with the news, now,” Obio was saying. “I’d like to catch Fairbolt before he sends off the next round of reinforcements.”
“Yes, of course,” murmured Dag.
Dirla had been talking closely with Mari; at this, she lifted her face, and called, “I’d like to volunteer for that, sir.”
You’re off duty, Dag started to object, then realized this task would certainly get Dirla home first. Better—she was eyewitness to the malice kill, none closer. If he sent her, Dag wouldn’t have to try to pen a report in his present groggy state. She could just tell Fairbolt all about it. “You took the malice. You can do any blighted thing you please, Dirla.”
She nodded cheerfully. “Then I will.”
Obio, his eyes narrowing, said, “In that case, I’ve a fellow in mind to send with her for partner. His wife was about to have a baby when we left. Absent gods willing, she might still be about to.”
Which would cover events from the other part of the company for Fairbolt, too. Good.
“Excellent,” agreed Mari. “That’s a courier who won’t dawdle, eh?” “You’ll need to trade out for fresher horses—” Dag began.
“We’ll take care of it, Dag,” Razi promised.
“Right. Right.” This was all routine. “Dirla. Tell Spark—tell everyone we’ll be home soon, eh?”
“Sure thing, Captain.”
Obio boosted Mari back on her horse, and she led the rest of the patrol, save Saun and Dirla, off east toward the promised camp. To reassure Obio and Griff, Dag pretended to make an inspection tour of the grove and the bog, for as much good as his eyes could do with his groundsense still clamped down tight.
“There was a dead woman, yesterday,” Dag began to Obio.
Obio grunted understanding. “We cut her down and wrapped her, and put her in one of the tents in the village. I’m hoping some of the Bonemarsh folk might come back and identify her before we have to bury her. In this heat, that’ll have to be by tomorrow, though.”
Dag nodded and trudged on.
The distorting animals trapped in their mud pots were much the same repellent sight as yesterday. The five surviving makers and three patrollers, more inexplicably trapped, were at least physically supported now, as comfortable as they might be made in bedrolls on the ground in the warm summer shade. The other patrollers taking turns to lift them and spoon liquids into them must also be ground-closed and walking blind, Dag realized.
Even apart from the hazard of this peculiar sticky ground-snare, he had the irrational apprehension that opening his ground would be like a man pulling a dressing from a gut wound; that all his insides might spill out. He found that while his back was turned, Saun and Dirla had unsaddled Copperhead and set up Dag’s possessions and bedroll in a flat, dry spot raked clear of debris. They’d been awake as long as he had, blight it, why were they so blighted perky? Blighted children…The moment his haunches hit his blanket, Dag knew he wasn’t getting up again. He sat staring blankly at his bootlaces, transported in memory back to the night after his last malice kill, with Spark on the feather tick in that farmhouse kitchen.
He was still staring when Saun knelt to undo one boot, and Dirla the other. It was surely a measure of…something, that he let them.
“Can I bring you anything to eat? Drink?” asked Dirla.
Dag shook his head. While riding he had gnawed down a number of leathery strips of dried plunkin, on the theory that he might so dispose of two tedious chores at the same time. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t anything.
Saun set his boots aside and squinted out into the afternoon light upon the silent, wasted marsh. “How long do you suppose till this place recovers? Centuries?”
“It looks bad now,” said Dag, “but the malice was only here a few days, and the blight’s not deep. Decades at most. Maybe not in my life, but in yours, I’d say.”