She passed patroller headquarters, where one of Omba’s horse girls was leading off two spent mounts, heads down, lathered, and muddy. Only couriers in a hurry would ride horses in wet like that, but Fawn quelled hope, or fear, of word from Dag’s company; Fairbolt had said today would still be too soon. Considering the deathly signals he was waiting for, she could not wish for more speed.
She popped up the steps to Hoharie’s medicine cabin—medicine tent, she corrected the thought—and stood for a moment trying to catch her breath, then pushed inside.
Hoharie’s apprentice, what was his name, Othan, came out of the herb room and frowned at her. “What do you want, farmer girl?”
Fawn ignored his tone. “Hoharie. Said I should come see her. If anything changed in my marriage cord. Something just did.”
Othan glanced at the closed door to the inner room. “She’s doing some groundwork. You’ll have to wait.” Reluctantly, he jerked his head toward the empty chair by the writing table, then went back into the herb room. Something pungent was cooking over its small fireplace, making the hot chambers hotter.
Fawn sat and jittered, rubbing her left arm, though her probing fingers made no difference to the sensations. The former throbbing had been a source of fear to her for days, but now she wished for it back. And why should her throat feel as though she was choking?
After what seemed forever, the door to the inner chamber opened, and a buxom woman came out with a boy of maybe three in her arms. He was frowning and feverish, eyes glazed, his head resting against her shoulder and his thumb stuck in his mouth. Hoharie followed, gave Fawn a nod of acknowledgment, and went with them into the herb room. A murmur of low voices, instructions to Othan, then Hoharie returned and gestured Fawn before her into the inner room, closing the door behind them.
Fawn turned and mutely thrust out her arm.
“Sit, girl,” Hoharie sighed, pointing to a table in the corner with a pair of chairs. Hoharie winced as she settled across from Fawn, stretching her back, and Fawn wondered what she had just done for that little boy, and how much it had cost her in her ground. Would she even be able to help Fawn just now?
While Hoharie, her eyes half-closed, felt up and down Fawn’s arm, Fawn stammered out a description of what had just happened. Her words sounded confused and inadequate in her own ears, and she was afraid they conveyed nothing to the medicine maker except maybe the idea that she was going crazy. But Hoharie listened without comment.
Hoharie at last sat up and shook her head. “Well, this was odd before, and it’s odder now, but without any other information I’m blighted if I can guess what’s really going on.”
“That’s no help!” It came out something between a bark and a wail, and Fawn bit her lip in fear she had offended the maker, but Hoharie merely shook her head again in something between exasperation and agreement.
Hoharie opened her mouth to say more, but then paused, arrested, her head turning toward the door. In a moment, boot steps sounded on the porch outside, and the squeak of the door opening. “Fairbolt,” Hoharie muttered, “and…?”
A rap at the inner door, and Fairbolt’s voice: “Hoharie? It’s urgent.”
“Come in.”
Fairbolt shouldered through, followed by—tall Dirla. Fawn gasped and sat up. Dirla was as mud-spattered as the horse she must have ridden in on, braids awry, shirt reeking of dried and new sweat, her face lined with fatigue under sunburn. Her eyes, though, were bright.
“They got the malice,” Fairbolt announced, and Hoharie let out her breath with a triumphant hoot that made Dirla smile. Fairbolt cast Fawn a curious look. “About two hours after midnight, three nights back.”
Fawn’s hand went to her cord. “But that was when…What happened to Dag? How bad was he hurt?”
Dirla gave her a surprised nod, but replied, “It’s, um, hard to say.”
“Why?”
Fairbolt, his eyes on Hoharie, pulled the patroller forward, and said, “Tell your tale again, Dirla.”
As Dirla began a description of the company’s hard ride west, Fawn realized the pair must have come to find Hoharie, not her. Why? Get to the part about Dag, blight you, Dirla!
“…we came up on Bonemarsh about noon, but the malice had moved—south twenty miles, we found out later, launching a big attack toward Farmer’s Flats. Dag wouldn’t let us stop for anything, even those poor makers. I’d never seen anything like it. The malice had enslaved the grounds of these Bonemarsh folk, somehow making them cook up a new batch of mud-men for it, or so Dag claimed. It left them tied to trees. The patrol was pretty upset when Dag ordered us to leave them in place, but Mari and Codo came in on his side, and Dag had this look on his face that made us afraid to press him, so we rode on.”
Fawn gnawed her knuckles through Dirla’s excited description of the veiled patrol slipping through an enemy-occupied farm at night, the breathless scramble up a hill, the rush upon a bizarre crude tower. “My partner Mari had almost made it to the top when the malice jumped down—must have been over twenty feet. Like it was flying. I never knew a malice could look so beautiful…Utau went for it. I had my ground shut tight, but later Utau said the malice just peeled his open like popping the husk off a hickory nut. He thought he was done for, but then Dag, who didn’t even have a sharing knife, went for the thing barehanded. Bare-hooked, anyway. It left Utau and turned on him. Mari shouted for me and threw me down her knife, and I didn’t quite see what happened then. Anyway, I drove Mari’s knife into the thing, and all its bright flesh…burst. Horrible. And I thought it was over, and we were all home alive, and it was a miracle. Utau staggered over and draped himself on me till Razi could get to him—and then we saw Dag.”
Fawn rocked, hunched tight with her arms wrapping her waist to keep from interrupting. Or screaming.
Dirla went on, “He was passed out in the dirt, stiff as a corpse, with his ground wrapped up so tight it was stranglin’ him, and no one could get through to try to make a match or a reinforcement, though Mari and Codo and Hann all tried. For the next few hours, we all thought he was dying. Half-ground-ripped, like Utau, but worse.”
“Wait,” said Hoharie. “Wasn’t he physically injured at all?”
Dirla shook her head. “Maybe knocked around a bit, but nothing much. But then, around dawn, he just woke up. And got up. He didn’t look any too good, mind you, but he made it onto his horse somehow and pushed us all back to Bonemarsh. Seems he was fretting over those makers we’d left, as well he might.
“When we arrived, the rest of the company had made it in, but those makers—their groundlock didn’t break when the malice died, and no one could figure out why not. Worse, anyone who tries to open grounds to them gets drawn into their lock, too. Obio lost three patrollers finding that one out. Dag believes they’re all dying. Mari couldn’t get him to leave them, though she thinks he should be on the sick list—it’s like he’s obsessed. Though by the time us couriers left that evening, we’d at least got him to sleep for a while. Utau and Mari, they don’t like any of it one little bit. So”—Dirla turned her gaze on the medicine maker, her hands clutching each other in unaccustomed plea—“Dag said he wished he had you there, Hoharie, because he needs someone who knows folks’ grounds down deep. So I’m asking for you for him, because Dag—he got us through. He got us all through.”
Fairbolt cleared his throat. “Would you be willing to ride to Raintree, Hoharie?”
An appalled look came over the medicine maker’s face as she stared wildly around at her workplace. Fawn thought she could just about see the crowded roster of tasks here racing through Hoharie’s mind.
“—in an hour?” Fairbolt continued relentlessly.
“Fairbolt!” Hoharie huffed dismay. After a long, long moment she added, “Could you make it two hours?”
Fairbolt returned a short, satisfied nod. “I’ll have two patrollers ready to escort you, and whoever you need to take with you.”