Dag ran up, looking it over for blood or wounds, trying frantically to remember if Sumac had been wearing her leather coat when she rode off in the heat. It wasn’t tied behind the cantle…
Arkady touched the empty saddle and groaned, “No…”
“She’s a Redwing,” Dag said through his teeth. “She lands on her feet. We are survivors…” He whirled and bellowed, “Whit! Fawn, Berry! Get those blighted farmers mounted up! Patrollers, to me!”
People scurried, yelled, stomped. Argued. The patrollers led their horses up and stood in a ragged line, awaiting orders. In an agonized voice, Arkady said, “Go!”
Dag looked up. A mile off, a horse bearing two riders popped over a rise into sight and his groundsense range simultaneously. “Wait,” Dag said.
Arkady’s face lifted, following his gaze. It felt almost uncouth to be watching an expression so painfully exposed, a man’s last hope returned to him.
Gods, Sumac, Dag thought. If the pair of us don’t have heart failure before this is all over, it won’t be your fault. And then she could inherit her captaincy, clever girl. Agonizing minutes passed as the laboring horse cantered nearer.
As soon as they hove within shouting range, Barr called excitedly, “We found the malice! It’s just up the road!” A ripple ran through the patrollers like the strain through a mob of horses milling at the start of a race.
Barr pulled up among them. Sumac more or less fell from where she clung behind Barr’s cantle down into Arkady’s arms. A drowning man couldn’t hug his log any harder than he did her. Her braid was coming undone, tendrils of black hair plastered around her flushed, sweating face.
Strained lines of pain framed her mouth and eyes, and she was breathing hard, but her gold eyes blazed like fires. She pushed Arkady away enough to find her feet, but didn’t shuck off his anxious hand supporting her elbow, nor his tender one that prodded her scalp, though she did wince. She was wearing, absent gods be thanked, the coat; her ribs bore only bruises, though the knot on the back of her skull was swelling like an egg.
“This malice looks like it’s just barely out of its burrow,” she wheezed. “It’s advancing down the road with a guard of twenty-two mud-men, but they’re moving slow.”
“Seventeen mud-men now,” said Barr.
“They none of ’em have clothes or arms at all, except for rocks and sticks.”
“And numbers,” Dag muttered. “And the malice. Likely it means to supply itself with our weapons and gear.”
“It’ll have to think again about that plan. Dag, we can take it!” said Sumac.
“Looks like it almost took you.”
“Oh, well.” She tossed her hair back in a mockery of a feminine gesture, and grinned. “I didn’t collect worse than a knock on the head, and you should see the other fellas. Grant you that malice is nasty.”
“And strange, absent gods it’s strange,” said Barr.
“It’s the first you ever saw,” said Dag. “How do you figure? ”
“Well, Sumac said, but even if-it’s huge, Dag, seven foot tall at least, ugly as mud, but it can barely move for its great big belly sticking out. The whole time after we’d run headlong into its guards and were fighting our way back out again, it never stopped waddling along. It can’t be covering more than two miles in an hour. So I make it two, three hours till it reaches here.”
“The mud-men can move faster.” Dag jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “As we saw by their scout, I reckon.”
Sumac said, “The malice looks like a sessile about to molt, except for its being out on the road. I’ve never seen one that close to splitting, if so.”
“Good for us if it’s awkward, but its menace is in its ground powers, not its pseudo-body.” Dag chewed his lip. Very few decisions left, here, till he committed them all irrevocably to action. “Rase, are you up for facing your first malice? ”
“Yes, sir!”
Dag nodded, grinning darkly, the old excitement running molten through his veins. I thought you were tired of this game, old patroller? A live malice was never just a training exercise, but absent gods, this sounded close to it. So, let’s teach these youngsters a few tricks. The better to keep them alive on the day when Dag would not be there, and the malice would not be so soft.
Whit, flanked by Fawn, had come up to the edge of the crowd when Sumac had arrived. Now he shouldered forward to say, “Dag, can I ride with you? ” He touched the walnut at his throat.
Dag said automatically, “No. I need you to lead the farmers.”
“Berry and Fawn can do that! What’s the point of making this ground shield if we can’t try it out? ”
Indeed, that was going to be a problem, if he kept making shields for people he loved… “Blight, Whit. If I ever make shields for Reed and Rush, I’ll happily stake them out as bait. Not you.”
Fawn said, “If your shields are ever to make us farmers be partners to Lakewalkers, and not just backward children in your eyes, it has to start somewhere. Seems to me you’ve said a word or two about a man starting where he is. Well, here we are.”
She would quote Dag back to himself… He weakened. “I suppose,” he said, “someone has to hold the horses.”
“Thanks, sir!”
“You be careful, Whit,” said Fawn sternly. “Don’t go turning that into the stupidest thing I ever said. I shouldn’t like to explain it to Berry. Or Mama.”
“Right, Sis!” Whit gave Fawn a hug and dashed off to collect his horse.
“Arkady goes with the farmer party, of course.” Dag narrowed his eyes at the maker, who, praise be, didn’t protest. “So do you, Sumac.”
Sumac opened her mouth, hesitated.
“You’re still dizzy from that knock on your head, your horse is spent, and if it all goes sour, someone needs to know how to get these farmers to Laurel Gap. Which reminds me, Barr, go swap out your mount for a fresher one.”
Barr scurried. Miraculously, Sumac didn’t argue, but allowed the concerned Arkady to lead her off. She was blinking rather hard, as if her vision wasn’t quite meshing.
In minutes more, Dag was leading five patrollers and one West Blue boy at a canter up the road, while Berry and Fawn rousted the rest to ride south. Dag wanted to put as much distance between the attack and Fawn as he could, to give the farmers their best chance if they needed it; and if they didn’t, well, one of the young patrollers could play courier and close the gap quickly enough. A mud-man troop, horsed, could do the same, but these all seemed to be afoot, so far. And let’s keep it that way.
Dag’s safe scheme to leave his tent-brother with the horses foundered at once on Whit’s crossbow. His little patrol was too short on archers to forgo the weapon or its most experienced wielder. He reordered his plan of attack in his head yet again, in time with Copperhead’s swift stride.
“Barr!” he called over the hoofbeats. “Where’s our last good cover before we come up on ’em?” Which would be soon; already, and despite his closed ground, Dag could feel the dry shock in his midsection that told him a live malice was nearby.
“Depends on how much they’ve moved since we hit them,” Barr called back. “Right up there, I think.” He pointed to a rocky outcrop almost overhanging the road, the tail of a spur from the western ridge, sheltering a seeping rivulet. “Not many trees beyond, all fire scrub and brambles. We’ll be able to see trouble coming.”
So will the malice, Dag thought, but waved his hook in acknowledgment.
They swung into the sheltered space, to find signs of its having been used as a campsite by many prior travelers. The patrollers dismounted and began arming themselves.
Dag flung himself off Copperhead and scrambled up the steep slope to the ridgelet, flanked by Barr. On his knees, he parted the blackberry canes and poison ivy with his hook arm and peered out into the hot green afternoon.
The road drew a groove through the recovering scrub, winding down to the next stream crossing and up again, an open space of a good mile. A quarter of the way across it, the malice’s band trudged toward them. Dag could see the creature clearly, head and shoulders above its mud-men. Its body was indeed massive, its gut enormous, its gait clumsy and bizarre.