On one thing, the folks were clear. If you suffered an incursion by a blight bogle, you called in the Lakewalkers. And you did not cheat them of their pay once they had removed the menace.
Fawn was not entirely sure she believed in blight bogles. For all the tall tales, she had never encountered one in her life, no, nor known anyone else who had, either. They seemed like ghost stories, got up to thrill the shrewd listeners and frighten the gullible ones. She had been gulled by her snickering older brothers far too many times to rise readily to the bait anymore.
She froze again when she realized that one of the patrollers was walking toward her tree. He looked different than the others, and it took her a moment to realize that his dark hair was not long and neatly braided, but cut short to an untidy tousle. He was alarmingly tall, though, and very lean. He yawned and stretched, and something glinted on his left hand. At first Fawn thought it was a knife, then realized with a slight chill that the man had no left hand. The glint was from some sort of hook or clamp, but how it was fastened to his wrist beneath his long sleeve she could not see. To her dismay, he ambled into the shade directly below her, there to lower his long body, prop his back comfortably against her tree trunk, and close his eyes.
Fawn jerked and nearly fell out of the tree when the farmwife reached up and rang her bell after all. Two loud clanks and three, repeated: evidently a signal or call, not an alarm, for she was talking all the time in an animated way with the patroller woman. Now that Fawn’s eyes had time to sort them out in their strange garb, she could see three or four more women among the men. A couple of men busied themselves at the well, hauling up the bucket to slosh the water into the wooden trough on the side opposite the bench; others led their horses in turn to drink. A boy loped around the outbuildings in answer to the bell, and the farm wife sent him with several more of the patroller’s into the barn.
Two of the younger women followed the farmwife into her house, and came out in a while with packets wrapped in cloth—more of the good farm food, obviously.
The others emerged from the barn lugging sacks of what Fawn supposed must be grain for their horses.
They all met again by the well, where a brief, vigorous conversation ensued between the farmwife and the gray-haired patroller woman. It ended with a counting over of sacks and packets in return for coins and some small items from the patroller saddlebags that Fawn could not make out, to the apparent satisfaction of both sides. The patrol broke up into small groups to seek shade around the yard and share food.
The patrol leader walked over to Fawn’s tree and sat down cross-legged beside the tall man. “You have the right idea, Dag.”
A grunt. If the man opened his eyes, Fawn could not tell; her leaf-obstructed view was now of two ovals, one smooth and gray, the other ruffled and dark.
And a lot of booted leg, stretched out.
“So what did your old friend have to say?” asked the man. His low voice sounded tired, or maybe it was just naturally raspy. “Malice confirmed, or not?”
“Rumors of bandits only, so far, but a lot of disappearances around Glassforge.
With no bodies found.”
“Mm.”
“Here, eat.” She handed him something, ham wrapped in bread judging by the enticing aroma that rose to Fawn. The woman lowered her voice. “You feel anything yet?”
“You have better groundsense than I do,” he mumbled around a mouthful. “If you don’t, I surely won’t.”
“Experience, Dag. I’ve been in on maybe nine kills in my life. You’ve done what—fifteen? Twenty?”
“More, but the rest were just little ones. Lucky finds.”
“Lucky ha, and little ones count just the same. They’d have been big ones by the next year.” She took a bite of her own food, chewed, and sighed. “The children are excited.”
“Noticed. They’re going to start setting each other off if they get wound up much tighter.”
A snort, presumably of agreement.
The raspy voice grew suddenly urgent. “If we do find the malice’s lair, put the youngsters to the back.”
“Can’t. They need the experience, just as we did.”
A mutter: “Some experiences no one needs.”
The woman ignored this, and said, “I thought I’d pair Saun with you.”
“Spare me. Unless I’m pulling camp guard duty. Again.”
“Not this time. The Glassforge folk are offering a passel of men to help.”
“Ah, spare us all. Clumsy farmers, worse than the children.”
“It’s their folk being lost. They’ve a right.”
“Doubt they could even take out real bandits.” He added after a moment, “Or they would have by now.” And after another, “If they are real bandits.”
“Thought I’d stick the Glassforgers with holding the horses, mostly. If it is a malice, and if it’s grown as big as Chato fears, we’ll need every pair of our hands to the front.”
A short silence. “Poor word choice, Mari.”
“Bucket’s over there. Soak your head, Dag. You know what I meant.”
The right hand waved. “Yeah, yeah.”
With an oof, the woman rose to her feet. “Eat. That’s an order, if you like.”
“I’m not nervy.”
“No”—the woman sighed—“no, you are not that.” She strode off.
The man settled back again. Go away, you, Fawn thought down at him resentfully.
I have to pee.
But in a few minutes, just before she was driven by her body’s needs into entirely unwelcome bravery, the man got up and wandered after the patrol leader.
His steps were unhurried but long, and he was across the yard before the leader gave a vague wave of her hand and a side glance. Fawn could not see how it could be an order, yet somehow, everyone in the patrol was suddenly up and in motion, saddlebags repacked, girths tightened. The whole lot of them were mounted and on their way in five minutes.
Fawn slipped down the tree trunk and peered around it. The one-handed man—riding rear guard?—was looking back over his shoulder. She ducked out of sight again till the hoofbeats faded, then unclutched the apple tree and went to seek the farmwife. Her pack, she was relieved to see in passing, lay untouched on the bench. Dag glanced back, wondering anew about the little farm girl who’d been hiding shyly up the apple tree. There, now—down she slid, but he still gained no clear look at her. Not that a few leaves and branches could hide a life-spark so bright from his groundsense at that range.
His mind’s eye sketched a picture of her tidy farm raided by a malice’s mud-men, all its cheerful routine turned to ash and blood and charnel smoke. Or worse—and not imagination but memory supplied the vision—a ruination like the Western Levels beyond the Gray River, not six hundred miles west of here. Not so far away to him, who had ridden or walked the distance a dozen times, yet altogether beyond these local people’s horizons. Endless miles of open flat, so devastated that even rocks could not hold their shape and slumped into gray dust. To cross that vast blight leached the ground from one’s body as a desert parched the mouth, and it was just as potentially lethal to linger there. A thousand years of sparse rains had only begun to sculpt the Levels into something resembling a landscape again. To see this farm girl’s green rolling lands laid low like that…
Not if I can help it, Little Spark.
He doubted they would meet again, or that she would ever know what her—mother’s?—strange customers today sought to do on her behalf and their own.
Still, he could not begrudge her his weariness in this endless task. The country people who gained even a partial understanding of the methods called it black necromancy and sidled away from patrollers in the street. But they accepted their gift of safety all the same. So yet again, one more time anew, we will buy the death of this malice with one of our own.