–-
After the labors of the pass, the following day’s start was made later by a pouring rain. But the ragged gray clouds blew out by noon, the sun emerged, and a hot, bright, steaming stillness overtook the rugged country. Their cavalcade strung out along the miry road, just outpacing the first crop of mosquitoes whining in the woody shade. In the damp air, even quiet voices echoed off the rocks. Dag found himself riding together with Fawn, Whit, and Berry at the head of the line, everyone’s feet dangling beside their stirrups. Despite the lazy heat he was pleased to note Fawn upright and staring eagerly around, not as fatigued as she’d been of late.
“How many folks live in Clearcreek, would you guess? ” she asked Berry.
“Maybe seven hundred in the village, but a couple thousand up the whole valley.”
“I was wondering what was the right size of place for Dag-Dag and Arkady, now-to set up their trial medicine tent. Too little, and there wouldn’t be enough customers to keep them busy. Too many and they’d be overwhelmed. Likely Silver Shoals would be too much to start with. I don’t know about Tripoint.”
“It’s bigger than Silver Shoals,” said Dag. “I don’t know if we’ll have time this summer to take you up there and show you the city.”
“It would be something, to have ridden the whole Trace from Graymouth to Tripoint,” agreed Whit. “Still… I want to take Berry up to West Blue, too, and I don’t think there’d be time to do both.”
Whit was plainly eager to show his new bride off to his family. As well he should be, Dag thought.
“I’ve about got calluses on my backside from the Trace already,” said Fawn. “Maybe you could bring back my mare and her foal, though. And my sack of plunkin ears, which Aunt Nattie was keeping for me.”
“Oh, I thought we’d all go together,” said Whit, sounding a little disappointed.
“Well, we’ll see. How close is your place to the river, Berry? ”
“Not much more’n a mile up the Clear Creek. We launched our yearly flatboat right into the crick from our land.”
“So… you’re really almost in the Grace Valley. Do boats-and rivermen-come in off the river? Is it like a river town? ”
“Nearly. Clearcreek Landing, which sits at the crick mouth, is turning into a village in its own right, ’cept for washing away now and then in the floods. Are you thinkin’ of more trade for Dag? It’s a fact them river boys do themselves a world of hurt, time to time, even without the fevers.”
“That,” said Dag, “and something Fawn said once. That the river was like a village one street wide and two thousand miles long. I’ve been thinking for some time that if I want word to get around about what I’m doing, the river folks would ride courier for us.”
Berry nodded in approval; if Dag was not a riverman, a riverbank man would clearly be the next best thing, in her estimation. “It would be a help to me and Hawthorn if you and Fawn and Arkady was to keep our house while we was gone down with the yearly flatboat-that is, if we get a boat built for this fall’s rise. Whit still has a mite to learn ’fore I’m ready to make him boat boss and take up managin’ the goods-shed. I’d like at least one more trip on the river ’fore I get landed on shore like Fawn.” She jerked her chin toward her tent-sister’s middle.
Whit smiled innocently.
“I don’t suppose,” said Fawn, “you have a pond on your place, Berry? ”
“Why, we do, in fact.”
Fawn brightened. “Really!” Planting plunkin in her mind already, Dag could see. Clearcreek, Oleana, was looming larger in his future every day. He began to think he might deal with it right well.
“My word, this is a strange country,” said Fawn, looking around.
“Where did all the trees go? There wasn’t blight here, was there, Dag? ”
The woods had opened out, with only a few tall red oaks, their bark laced with black scars, growing out of a riot of green scrub. “No, forest fire,” said Dag. “There was a big summer drought in this valley a few years ago. It’s all coming back real good, looks like.”
Fawn peered under the flat of her hand at the new growth climbing the valley walls. “That must have been quite some fire.”
Whit squinted ahead into the hazy distance. “Huh. Funny-lookin’ fellow, there, wanderin’ our way. Hey-is he naked?”
Dag followed his glance, opening his half-closed groundsense. A big, shaggy-haired man with oddly mottled skin was limping southward down the middle of the road. Dag’s breath drew in, his back straightened, and his feet sought his stirrups as his mind burst in twenty directions at once, like a covey of startled quail.
“Blight, it’s a mud-man!”
Dag stood in his saddle and bellowed over his shoulder, “Barr! Remo! We got us a mud-man! Fetch out the boar spears! Sumac-”
Blight, where was Sumac? And Arkady? They weren’t in his groundsense range. If a live mud-man was here on this road, its malice master could not be far off. Not nearly far enough. But Dag, straining, couldn’t sense it yet. It came to him-gods, where had his wits gone?-that they hadn’t been passed by any southward-bound traffic all morning. All the night before? How long?
“Fawn”-panic was making Dag’s world turn red-“drop back to the wagons, make ’em stop, get all the farmers together, and stay there.”
One flying wit at least dropped a feather-“Explain to the ignorant ones what’s going on.”
Fawn had her reins tightened up while Whit was still closing his gaping mouth. “Right,” she said simply, and yanked Magpie around.
Dag wheeled in the opposite direction, wrapped his reins around his hook, drew his steel knife, and clapped his heels to his gelding’s sides.
Copperhead bolted forward into the breathless light.
17
By the time Fawn reached the Basswoods’ wagon, which was first in line, every patroller in the company was streaming past her in aid of Dag, weapons brandished. Barr and Remo had reacted the quickest, but Neeta, Tavia, and Rase weren’t much behind.
Vio Basswood stood up on her wagon box, gripping the curved canvas roof and staring in horror as Grouse sawed the reins and brought them to a creaking halt. Her face draining, she screamed, “He’s killed him! Ye gods, he just rode that poor man down and killed him!”
Fawn turned in her saddle and craned her neck. In the heat-hazed distance, Dag was pivoting Copperhead around the fallen mud-man.
She abruptly realized what Vio thought she was seeing: Fawn’s grim, hook-handed Lakewalker husband suddenly running mad and brutally attacking, without reason, an innocent, unarmed-not to mention unclothed-traveler.
“No!” cried Fawn. “That wasn’t a man! It wasn’t human, it was a mud-man!”
“A mud what? ” said Grouse, glaring and scrambling for his spear.
“Malices make them up out of animals and mud by groundwork- magic. I’ve seen the holes they come out of. They make them up into human form to be their slaves and soldiers, and they’re horribly dangerous. You can’t reason with them or anything, even though the malice gives them speech. They lose all their wits when their malice is slain- oh, never mind!” Grouse had his spear out, but was aiming it in the wrong direction, at Fawn, and at Berry who had ridden up panting.
Fawn had thought Whit was behind her, but instead he’d turned again and followed the patrollers, if at a cautious trot. Inside the wagon, the toddler burst into wails at all the shouting.
“Mud-men eat children,” Fawn put in desperately. “The shambles are dreadful, after.” Did Vio need to know this? Maybe. She didn’t need to be made more afraid-she seemed close to fainting-but she needed to be afraid of the right things.
Rase and Neeta came galloping back.
“Is it dead? Are there any more? ” Fawn called.