“That’s not the problem, Fawn. It’s your own safety. You don’t belong out here.”
I know where I belong, thank you very much. By Dag’s side. Fawn rubbed her left arm and frowned. “I don’t want to cost you your escort. If it’s that unsafe, you might need them yourself.” She let her shoulders slump, her head droop. “All right, Hoharie. I’m sorry. I’ll turn around.” She bit her tongue on any further artistic embellishments. Keep it simple. And short. Lakewalkers read grounds, not thoughts, Dag claimed, and Fawn’s ground had plenty of other reasons to be in a roil besides duplicity.
Hoharie stared at her for a long, uncertain moment, and Fawn held her breath, lest the medicine maker be inspired to detach a guard anyhow. But finally Hoharie nodded. “You’ve come out a long way. If your horse can’t make it back tonight, it should still be safe enough to stop if you get within ten miles of the lake.”
“Grace is doing all right,” Fawn said distantly, and turned away. Although she had to kick the mare back into a walk, as she was much inclined to turn and follow the other horses.
Dag’s groundsense range was a mile; Fawn didn’t think any of Hoharie’s party had a better range, but she let Grace go on for a mile and a bit before halting, just to be safe. She slid down and let her mare browse for a few minutes before leading her back onto the road. In the summer-damp earth, the hoofprints of the Lakewalker horses showed plain even in the failing light. No wrong turns now. Fawn grinned and trailed after them till she could barely see in the shadows, then dismounted again and led Grace off the road to outwait the hours of darkness.
Fawn watered the mare in a nearby stream, then rubbed her down and fed her oats. She washed up herself, swatted mosquitoes, gnawed a plunkin slice, squashed a crawling tick with her knife haft, and rolled up in her blanket. The songs of the small night creatures only made the underlying stillness more profound. It weighed in upon her just how different this desolate darkness was from that of her seemingly equally lonesome trudge through the settled country south of Lumpton Market. These vasty woods did harbor wolves, and bears, and catamounts; she’d seen the skins of all three in the stores back at Hickory Lake. In the aftermath of the malice, mindless mud-men like the one Dag had slain so deftly at the Horsefords’ could also be wandering around out here. She’d hardly given such hazards a thought when she’d camped during the after-wedding trip up to the lake, in woodlands not so very different. But then she’d had Dag by her side. Curling up in his arms each night had seemed like settling into her own private magical fortress. She touched the steel knife he had given her, sheathed at her belt, and sighed.
But by the first gray light of morning, neither she nor Grace had been eaten by catamounts yet. Heartened, Fawn returned to the trail and found Hoharie’s tracks once more. An hour into the ride, she was given pause when the tracks seemed to part from her map, turning off onto a path. But a closer dismounted searching found them coming back and continuing; likely the party had just diverted to a campsite for the night. A pile of recent horse droppings reassured Fawn that she remained the right distance behind. She kicked Grace along, glumly confident that she risked no chance of overtaking Hoharie prematurely. On the other hand, Grace was carrying barely half the weight of those big patrollers’ mounts. Over time that might add up to more of an edge than anyone thought.
Late in the morning Hoharie’s tracks were suddenly confused by those of a much larger cavalcade, going the other way. A patrol, Fawn guessed—Raintree Lakewalkers, or part of Dag’s company heading home? The heavy prints turned off on another trail, and Fawn, frowning, unrolled her map and studied it. They could be diverting to visit a small Lakewalker camp marked a few miles to the south, or they could be patrolling, or who knew? Their passage rendered the trail they’d come down unmistakable, but also left Hoharie’s overlying signs harder to make out in the deeply pocked muddy patches. But at midday, Fawn came to one of the rare timber bridges over a deep-flowing brown river, and was assured of her place on the map once more. From time to time she passed spots where recent deadfalls had been roughly cleared from the road, and she wondered if that was a task patrols undertook as well, when they weren’t in a tearing hurry.
By late afternoon, Grace’s steps were shortening and stiffening, and Fawn’s backside was numb. How did couriers and their horses ever manage such distances at such speed? She dismounted and led the mare up a few of the steeper slopes, insofar as there were any in these parts, fell into resentment at the loss of precious daylight, then finally considered Dirla and ruthlessly cut a switch. This activated Grace again, making Fawn feel equally justified and guilty.
At a close-grown place where the road mud seemed wildly churned, she paused, spooking a couple of turkey vultures and some crows. The former grunted and hissed, reluctantly retreating, and the latter flapped off, yammering complaint. She peeked over the rim of a shallow ravine where the vegetation was trampled down and caught her breath at the sight of half a dozen naked, rotting corpses piled below. She ventured just close enough to be certain they were mud-men and not Lakewalkers, then hastily remounted. She wasn’t sure if the patrol had slain them sometime back, or if Hoharie’s guards had done for them just recently; the stench was no certain clue. The absence of visible catamounts was suddenly not enough to make her feel safe anymore. She pushed along well past sunset mainly because she was now terrified to stop.
In the deep dark that night she rolled up small and scared, sniveling miserable, stupid tears for the lack of Dag. She buried her face in her blanket edge. With none to see her, she supposed she might bawl to her heart’s content, but she really didn’t want to make unnecessary noise. She hoped any predator within ten miles would be too replete with scavenged mud-men to hunt farmer girls and plump, tired horses. She slept badly despite her exhaustion.
She’d figured the last morning would be the worst, and truly, she woke hurting just as much as she’d suspected she would. But it would be a much shorter leg than yesterday, and at the end of it, she would find Dag. Her cord still assured her of this; if anything, her arm throbbed more clearly, if more worrisomely, with each passing mile. Barely an hour into the morning’s ride she found Hoharie’s campsite just off the track, the dirt cast over the campfire ashes still warm. Only the level terrain and Fawn’s switch kept Grace plodding forward into the long afternoon.
As the light flattened toward the west, Fawn rode abruptly out of the humid green of the endless woods into an open landscape metallic with heat. We’re here.
The woods gave way to water meadows, their grasses gone yellow and limp. The sorry shrubs scattered about bore drooping brown leaves, or none. It all looked very sodden and strange. But ahead, she could see a trickle of cook-fire smoke from a stand of skeletal trees along a leaden shoreline. She didn’t need her stolen map anymore, hadn’t for the past two hours; her aching body bleated to her, There, there, he’s over there. Hoharie and her little troop were just dismounting.
As Fawn rode up, Mari came striding out of the trees, waving her arms and crying urgently, “Close your grounds! Close your grounds!”
Hoharie looked startled, but waved acknowledgment and turned to check Othan and the patrollers, who apparently also obeyed. She saw Fawn, who brought Grace to a weary halt just a few paces away, and her face set, but before she could say anything, Mari, coming to her stirrup, continued.
“You’re here sooner than I dared hope! Dirla fetch you?”
“Yes,” said Hoharie.
“Praise the girl. Did you run across the patrol we sent back home?”
“Yes, about a day out of Hickory Lake.”
“Ah, good.” Mari’s eye fell on Fawn, hunched over her saddlebow. “Why’d you bring her?” The tone of the question was not dismissive, but genuinely curious, as though there might be some very good, if obscure, Lakewalkerish reason for Fawn’s presence in Hoharie’s train.