“They had to defend—” Dag began, and stopped. The cluster of nervous townsmen had not put down their tool-weapons, nor dispersed back to their forlorn task. He glanced aside at Fawn, watching in concern from atop Grace, and rubbed his aching forehead. He said instead, abruptly, “How about if I get down from this high horse? Will you step away and talk with me?”
A pause, a stare. A nod.
Dag steeled himself to dismount. Varleen, watching closely, slid down and went to Copperhead’s bridle, and Saun dropped from his own mount, unshipped the hickory staff that he’d carted along slotted under his saddle flap, and stepped to Dag’s stirrup. Dag’s leg did not quite turn under him as he landed on it, and he exchanged an almost-smile with Saun as the youth carefully unhanded his arm, both, he thought, thrown back in memory to their night attack on the bandit camp, ages ago. He gripped the staff and turned to the townsman, who was blinking as if he was just now taking in the details of his interrogator’s ragged condition.
Dag pointed to a lone dead tree, blown or fallen down in the field, and the townsman nodded again. As Dag swung the staff and limped toward it, he found Fawn at his left side. Her hand slipped around his arm, not yet in support, but ready if his leg folded again. He wondered if he should chase her back to Grace, spare her what promised to be some grim details. He dismissed his doubts—too late anyway—as they arrived at the thick trunk. She speaks farmer. With that thought, Dag guided Fawn around to sit between them. Both men could see over her head better than she could see around Dag, and…if this fellow’s most recent view of a Lakewalker patroller had been looking up the wrong end of a spear, he could likely use a spacer. We both could.
Dag breathed a little easier as the mob of townsmen went back to their digging. Now it was the Lakewalkers’ turn to stand in a tight cluster, holding their horses and watching Dag uneasily.
“This bogle was bad for everyone,” Dag began again. “Raintree Lakewalkers lost folks, too, and homes. Bonemarsh Camp’s been blighted—it’ll have to be abandoned for the next thirty or more years, I reckon. This place, longer.”
The man grunted, whether in agreement or disagreement was hard to tell. Maybe just in pain.
“Have very many people come back? To find each other?” Fawn put in.
The man shrugged. “Some. Most of us here knew we’d be coming as a burial party, but…some. I found my wife,” he added after a moment.
“That’s good, then,” said Fawn in a tone of encouragement.
“She’s buried over there,” the townsman added, pointing to a long mound of turned earth along the tree line. Mass grave, Dag thought.
“Oh,” said Fawn, more quietly.
“They waited for us to come back,” the man continued. “All the wives and daughters. All the boys. The old folks. It was like there was something strange and holy happened to their bodies, because they didn’t rot, not even in the heat. It’s like they were waiting for us to come back and find them.”
Dag swallowed, and decided this was not the moment to explain the more arcane features of deep blight.
“I’m so sorry,” said Fawn softly.
The man shrugged. “Could have been worse. Daisy and Cooper over there, they found each other alive just an hour ago.” He nodded toward a man and one of the few women, who were both sitting on the tail of a wagon. Staring blankly, with their backs to each other.
Fawn’s little hand touched the man’s knee; he flinched. “And…why worse?” Fawn could ask such things; Dag would not have dared. He was glad she was here.
“Daisy, she’d thought Coop had their youngsters with him. Coop, he thought she’d had them with her. They’d had four.” He added after a moment, “We’re saving the children for last, see, in case more folks show up. To look.” Dag followed his glance to a line of stiff forms lying half-hidden in the distant weeds. Behind it, the men were starting to dig a trench. It was longer than the finished mound.
“Are the orphans being sheltered somewhere off the blight?” Fawn asked. Thinking absent-gods-knew-what; about someone brokering some bright arrangement to hook up the lost half families with one another, if he knew her.
The man glanced down at her. Likely she looked as young to him as she did to Dag, for he said more gently, “No orphans here, miss.”
“But…” She sucked on her lower lip, obviously thinking through the implication.
“We’ve found none alive here under twelve. Nor many over.”
Dag said quietly, as she looked up at him as if he could somehow fix this, “Next to pregnant women, children have the richest grounds for a malice building up to a molt. It goes for them first, preferentially. When Bonemarsh was evacuated, the young women would have grabbed up all the youngsters and run at once. The others following as they could, with what animals and supplies they could get at fast, with the off-duty patrollers as rear guard. The children would have been got out in the first quarter hour, and the whole camp in as little more. They did lose folks beyond the range of warning—some of those makers we freed from the groundlock had stayed to try and reach a party of youngsters who’d gone out gathering that day.”
Fawn frowned. “I hadn’t heard that part of the tale. Did they find them in time?”
Dag sighed. “No. Some of the Bonemarsh folk who came back later recovered the bodies, finally. For a burial not so different than this.” He nodded toward the mounds; the townsman, listening, stared down and dug his boot heel into the dry soil, brows pinching in wonder. Yes, thought Dag. Witness her. Farmers can ask, and be answered. Won’t you try us?
“Did they take their—” Fawn shut up abruptly, remembering not to ask about knife-bones in front of farmers, Dag guessed. She just shook her head.
The townsman gave Dag a sidelong look. “You’re not from Bonemarsh. Are you.”
“No. My company rode over from Oleana to help out. We’re on our way home now.”
“Dag’s patrol killed your blight bogle,” Fawn put in, a little proudly. “When the malice’s—bogle’s curse lifted from your mind, that was when.”
“Huh,” said the man. And then, after a bleak silence, “Could have been sooner.”
Stung to brusqueness, Dag said, “If any of you had owned the wits to run and give warning at the first, it could have been a lot sooner. We did all we could with what we had, as soon as we knew.”
A stubborn silence stretched between them. There was too much grief and strain here, thick as mire, for argument or apology today. Dag had pretty much pieced together the picture he’d come for. It was maybe time to go.
A trio of townsmen came out of the barren woods, back from some errand there—pissing, searching? — and stopped to gape at the newcomers. One grizzled head came up sharply; staring, the man began to walk toward the fallen tree, faster and faster. His stride turned into a jog, then a run; his face grew wild, and he waved frantically, crying, “Sassy! Sassy!”
Dag stiffened, his hand drifting to his knife haft. The townsman beside Fawn straightened up with a moan and held out his palm in a gesture of negation, shaking his head. The runner slowed as he neared, gasping for breath, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes and peering at Fawn. In a voice gone gray, he said, “You aren’t my Sassy.”
“No, sir,” said Fawn, looking up apologetically. “I’m Dag’s Fawn.”
He continued to peer. “Are you one of ours? Did those patrollers bring you back?” He waved toward the Lakewalkers still standing warily with their horses. “We can try and find your folks…”
“No, sir, I’m from Oleana.”
“Why are you with them?”
“I’m married to one.”
Taken aback, the man turned his head to squint; his gaze narrowed on Saun, who was standing holding Copperhead’s reins, watching them alertly. The man’s mouth turned down in a scowl. “If that’s what that boy told you, missie, I’m afraid he was lying.”
“He’s not—” She broke off as Dag covered and squeezed her hand in warning.