“Dag, Dag, Dag,” chortled Owlet. “Plunkin, plunkin. Blighdit.”
Vio was laughing, shining tears tracking down her face. “My word, but he’s filthy!”
“No worse’n Dag!” Grouse exclaimed, hugging wife and child both.
As he took in the return of his son, all unexpected, from what had surely seemed certain death, his face bore a naked wonder unlike any expression Dag had ever surprised there. Dag grinned. And what do you think of Lakewalkers now, Grouse?
Dag’s gaze swept the upturned faces, but didn’t find Berry, Whit, or Fawn.
“Where’s Fawn? ” he asked.
Silence spread out from the crowd clustered around his knees, as though his words had been a stone thrown into water.
Vio looked up; her face drained of joy, leaving just tears. She clutched Owlet harder. “Oh, Dag. I’m so sorry.”
“What? ”
“The poor little thing was so brave and bright, and then so stiff and cold. If we’d guessed you were still alive, we’d have waited for you.”
“What are you talking about? ”
Bo, shouldering forward, swallowed and swung his arm to point across the clearing. “That bat-malice-thing kilt her, just as Whit got it with his bow. Them muleteers was buryin’ their own dead, so we laid her in alongside ’em. Not an hour ago, I reckon.”
“Buried?” Dag’s heart began to hammer. He gripped his marriage cord and stared in foolish bewilderment at the mound of fresh-turned earth beneath a cluster of slender ash trees. “But she’s not dead!”
22
Dag found himself atop the low mound, clawing at the dirt with his hook, with no memory of how he’d got there. He didn’t have his stick.
“We’ve got to get her out of there! She can’t breathe!”
“Dag, man!” Finch pulled at his shoulder. Ash clamped a big hand on the other, lifting him more effectively; he wavered unwillingly to his knees, still clawing dirt, then clawing air.
“It’s no good, Dag!” said Sage. “Give it up, please!”
A woman’s voice, Vio’s, in the background, calling in distress, “Oh, help! Grief’s gone and turned his wits!”
“I did not,” Dag gasped furiously, shrugging off the hands, “survive a fight with mud-men and a night on a blighted mountaintop, climb two miles back down the mountain, and ride ten with a busted ankle, all to find my wife, to stop six feet short!”
“Does he want her bones? ” said an unfamiliar voice-one of the muleteers?
“They say them Lakewalkers eat their dead-it’s like a funeral feast to them-but I’m not having with that here!”
“She was his wife, though. Maybe we should let him…”
“Well, he ain’t eating my brother, nor stealing his bones neither!”
Dag fought free; more hands clutched him. Bo called out, “There’s no use to this carryin’ on, Dag-let her rest in peace. We done her all the respects, I promise you.”
“She’s not dead! I don’t know what’s going on, but she’s not dead! She can’t be dead! Not Spark!” He whirled, shedding men. Farmers.
“Dag, stop, this is madness!”
“Blight it, help me!” he cried, anguished. One-handed shoveling was not one of his better skills. But somebody must have had tools to dig the grave, so there must still be tools around to dig it up. He didn’t expect the strangers to understand, but surely the southern boys…?
A muleteer shoved too close; Dag almost swiped at him with his lethal hook, just managed to slug the man instead. Six more helpful muleteers jumped Dag and wrestled him to the grass. Gods! He couldn’t groundrip them like mud-bats… Yes, I could. The unwelcome thought slowed him a little.
He wept in his frustration, water blurring his dizzied view of shadows, firelight, men’s frightened faces. “Look, fetch another Lakewalker! Anyone with a speck of groundsense! They’ll testify I’m right!” A knee pressed on his chest, making him think of the dirt that must be pressing down on Spark’s. Had they stamped down the grave mound? “Absent gods, did you cover her face? There’ll be dirt in her mouth-in her eyes-” They hadn’t sewn her eyelids shut, had they? He’d heard that was a farmer funeral practice, some places…
Bo’s voice, would-be-soothing but for the quaver: “Dag, there weren’t no mistaking. She was cold and stiff. We couldn’t feel a pulse. There weren’t no breath mistin’ on a knife blade.”
“It was a hot day, of course there wouldn’t be breath on a warm blade! Where’s Whit? Where’s Berry? Get me Whit, he’ll understand!”
“He’s too sick to stand up, Dag, and Berry ain’t no better,” Hawthorn’s voice called anxiously from beyond the circle of looming faces.
Wrong, wrong, what was wrong? With a mighty lunge, Dag wallowed to his feet, knocking aside muleteers.
Oh gods, thank gods, a man was running up with a shovel. Dag’s heart lifted in joyous relief. “Yes, yes, help me-!” He reached out his hand for the wildly swinging tool. Saw, too late, its intended purpose as the broad blade swept around his head and clouted him hard. Faces, firelight, spinning branches above, all dissolved in hot bright sparks.
–-
He came to himself wincing, sick to his stomach. Pain pulsed like forgehammer blows in his head, ankle. Lungs. Heart. He breathed shallowly, then more deeply. Made to touch his head, only to find his hand caught.
He wrenched around, or tried to, to discover he was sitting with his back to a slender tree, his hand and hook tied behind it. He hadn’t been stunned for long-his tears were not quite dried. It felt as if snails had been crawling across his face, and he jerked his arm again, desperate to wipe away the sensation.
Turning his wrist, Dag felt rope. He could ground-rip through rope, if he had to-it wouldn’t kill him to rip anything he could eat, Spark had figured that out, Spark, no! Not that gnawing down a mouthful of hemp would be good for him. He panted, trying to collect his scattered wits, because they seemed to be his last resource. Struggling for calm, he extended his groundsense. The dim sensation in his marriage cord was unchanged. That, at least. The shadowy blur under the mound at the meadow’s edge had not disappeared. Whatever had happened wasn’t growing worse. Yet.
He looked up to find Finch, Ash, Sage, and Bo all crouched around him in a half circle, staring apprehensively. Hod hovered behind Bo. He’d been crying, too, judging from the snail tracks down his spotty face.
Dag swallowed, moistened dry lips. Croaked, “I’m better now. You can untie me.”
Bo’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll be the judge of that, Dag.”
Subterfuge. He should have gone to subterfuge right off, instead of alarming the whole camp with a display of deranged Lakewalker.
Screaming-more screaming, gods, his throat was raw-would not be helpful. Stands to reason, stands to reason, and he choked down a shattered laugh at Spark’s favorite turn of phrase, because inexplicable cackling would not be helpful, either.
The sight of Sage’s strained face reminded him. “Sage. I saw Calla and Indigo. They escaped last night all right, and made it back to Arkady. Indigo’s gone back to the wagons, to catch anyone who shows up there, and Calla’s up on the east ridge with Arkady and a hurt patroller that Tavia and I found. Tavia, she got away from her mud-bat, too. Whole, we’re all whole. Well, I got a little bent.”
Sage almost melted before Dag’s eyes, as a man had a right to who’d just learned he would not be burying his new bride. Not to mention his tent-brother. And all, and all. Save for Spark. But this level-voiced report seemed to reassure his audience in more ways than one.
“Please. All I want… all I want is to see her face again. One last time. Is that too much to ask?” Dag would have crawled on his knees to beg, without hesitation, but until he convinced them to untie him he couldn’t move. It wasn’t enough just to break free and run off. Now that he’d recovered his senses, he could think of three ways to escape, quick as a cat. But he had to have help-willing, careful help. Right now. He gulped again, to hide his mad-looking desperation. “Fawn and me, we’ve done a lot for you folks. I know it’s late, and you’re all tired, but… but please. I just want to look at her. One last time.”