“I’d seen old blight bogle lairs when I was out hunting, from time to time,” Chicory told Dag. Dag wondered how often the man had ventured into forbidden territory above the old cleared line, but now did not seem the time to ask. Chicory went on, “Gray patches, all nasty and dead. It didn’t take no high-nosed patrollers to convince me to stay off ’em, no sir!”
Dag let his groundsense flick out. A successful hunter like Chicory might well possess a rudimentary groundsense like Aunt Nattie’s, if some passing Lakewalker had climbed his family tree a few generations back. It was impolite to inquire, though, and since Chicory seemed to have led an irregular wandering life far from his birth kin, he might not know himself.
The Raintree man continued, “I’ve met your patrols, run across your camps—they never invited me in, mind, more like invited me to move along—but I’d never seen Lakewalkers run before.”
“They went streaming past us like rabbits, when we got up north of the Flats,” said a crewman in a faintly scornful tone.
“Now, that was the women and their young shavers, mostly,” said Chicory in a fair-minded way.
“Malices snatch the youngsters first, by preference,” Dag said. “When a malice goes on the move, Lakewalkers have learned to get the little ones out of the path as fast as they can, with the rest—off-duty patrollers, other adults—for rearguard. Likely you didn’t get far enough north to meet the rearguard, or the malice might have taken you, too.”
“We met plenty of them mud-men,” Bearbait put in, face darkening in memory. “Both before and after they lost their wits. Ugly mugs, they were.”
“The malice makes them up out of animals it catches, you know,” Fawn said. “By groundwork.” She went on to describe the grotesqueries of the mud-man nursery she’d seen at Bonemarsh Camp, with such simple directness that she seemed unaware of how thoroughly she was topping Chicory’s ghost story for keeping folks awake in their bedrolls later.
Upon reflection, Dag was not surprised to learn that Chicory’s troop had acquitted itself well upon the mud-men—hunting and killing bears and wild pigs would have trained them in both methods and daring. But Chicory’s face grew graver when he remarked, “Ugly as they was, they didn’t bother me near as much as those bogle-maddened farmers we met up with. Because they weren’t driven witless. It took you a little to realize they weren’t right in the head, because they walked and talked as if what they was doing was sensible, and they looked just like anybody else, too. You couldn’t hardly tell who was on what side, till they jumped on you, and then it could be too late. What we did find, though”—he rubbed his chin and frowned at Dag in the lantern glow and firelight—“was that if we rode in and grabbed up a few, and took ’em back south far enough, they’d come to their senses. We first found that out trying to capture one to make him talk. Got him far enough away and he talked, all right—not that you could make much sense of it through the crying. After that, we tried to catch as many as we could, and carry ’em away till they found their lost minds again. Wouldn’t any of them join us to go fight, after, though.”
Dag’s brows rose in increased respect. “I didn’t realize farmers could do that, on the edge of a malice war. Huh. That would be…good. Draw down the malice’s forces.”
“You took a chance,” said Remo in disapproval. “If you’d got too close to the malice, it might have caught your minds in turn, and then the malice’s forces would have been up, not down.”
Chicory said stiffly, “Seems to me such a chance would’ve overtaken a man sitting still, just the same.” He eyed Dag sidelong, and added, “I was never too fond of Lakewalkers, and the ones I’ve met have pretty much returned the favor—but I do admit, after last summer I don’t like blight bogles a whole lot more.”
The lead-in could not be spurned; Dag set Fawn to describing Greenspring again, as he did not think he could bear to. Fawn and Whit together managed a creditable explanation of groundsense and sharing knives. Barr and Remo listened with troubled faces to these deep Lakewalker secrets being bandied around; the boatmen, with expressions ranging from disturbed to disbelieving. Chicory, though, just grew quiet and intent.
Chicory seemed a village leader of sorts—if a terrible boatman—with initiative and wits enough on dry land to persuade friends and kin to follow him into discernible danger, for a good cause. His words, as well as the slices of his ground, gave Dag much to digest as he retreated with Fawn to their curtained nook. The bits of ground were converting far more readily than those of the mosquito or even the oats, nearly indistinguishable from an ordinary supporting or healing ground reinforcement. As with malices, it seemed people made the best food. Lakewalker cannibals, indeed. Neither Chicory’s ghost tales nor his war stories had unnerved Dag, but as Fawn cuddled into the curve of his body and drifted into sleep, that last reflection kept him awake for a long time.
The Fetch didn’t handle any worse for its added passengers, but neither did it handle any better, Dag noted the next morning as he took his turn on the roof. Hod was on the opposite oar and Whit at the rudder, very proud to be permitted to steer all on his own down this straight stretch. Berry would be coming up shortly to take over, as, she said, the next bend would bring them to one of the trickiest passages on the river. Berry had allowed a few of the Raintree flatties to volunteer for oar duty, but only one at a time and under her or Bo’s close supervision. The rest seemed willing to help out with the increased scullery chores their presence as inadvertent guests had caused, so except for the unavoidable crowding and the friction on the Lakewalkers’ groundsenses, a day more of their company seemed likely to pass pleasantly enough.
Since a chill wind funneled up the valley, with sunshine intermittent between the scudding blue-gray clouds, most everyone stayed inside near the hearth or curled up in nests amongst the stores. As Dag studied the river, two men in a skiff put out from a feeder creek beneath a bluff, rowing in their direction. When they pulled to within shouting distance, the older one rose up on one knee from his bench and hailed them, waving his hat.
“Hallo the boat!”
“How de’!” Whit called cheerfully in return. “What can we do for you fellows?”
“Well, it’s more like what we can do for you. That last flood messed up the channels all through Crooked Elbow something fierce! I’ll undertake to pilot you through safe.”
This was a common way all along the river for local men to earn a bit of coin. Berry, now that she’d come to trust her Lakewalker crew’s groundsenses, usually turned down such offers politely, though she did enjoy the exchange of river gossip that went with. Sometimes, the rowboats also brought out fresh food or other goods to sell or trade.
“I’m not the boat boss,” Whit called back, “but what do you charge?”
“Just ten copper crays to the Elbow. Twenty to the Wrist.”
A nominal sum, well worth it to the average boat given the time—or worse—that could be lost to an accident. Dag opened his ground, furled to block out the uproar of the crowd on the Fetch. And paused in his sculling.
“Huh,” he said to Hod and Whit. “That’s funny. One of those fellows is as beguiled as all get-out.”
“By a malice?” said Whit in alarm. Hod gaped curiously.
“No, there’s not a touch of blight-sign. He must have had some encounter with a Lakewalker, lately.” Dag stared as the men rowed nearer.