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.
Rase checked just long enough to gasp out, “That one’s dealt with. No more within groundsense range, so far. Dag sent us to find Sumac and Arkady.” He spurred on.
That pair had fallen behind more than once, lately, and Fawn hadn’t given them a thought-at least, not about their safety. Between them, Sumac and Arkady were clearly proof against any predator these hills harbored-wolf, bear, catamount, or rattlesnake. A gang of mud-men was a different proposition.
All the other farmers in the company came up to cluster in the road, goggle, and demand repeated explanations. Pressed, Fawn finally said, “Look, I don’t think I can explain mud-men to you.” Not and be believed.
“Just come look at the evil thing, why don’t you? ”
She turned and led them, wagons and all, up the road to the site of the gory slaughter. Dag and Whit had dismounted. Dag released Copperhead’s reins and prodded the body with his foot; Whit looked as if he was working up the nerve to do the same. “Blight it,” Dag was saying, “this area is supposed to be well patrolled!” He glanced up. “Fawn, I told you to keep back!”
“No, Dag,” she said firmly. “These folks have to see, just like your young patrollers.”
“Oh.” He scrubbed his hand-was it shaking?-over his face.
“Yeah.”
Fawn slid from her mare, took the reluctant Vio by the hand, and dragged her forward; the mob trailed. “Look at it, see? Look at its jaw, practically a muzzle, and those furry ears, and all that coarse hair-it likely started out as a bear, wouldn’t you say, Dag? ” She tried not to look at its bloodied throat, torn out in one slash of Dag’s reaching war knife, with all the power of his arm and Copperhead’s stride behind it.
“Black bear, oh yes,” Dag agreed absently.
“He’s… it’s naked,” said Calla hesitantly.
“Naked is good,” said Dag. “Means it hasn’t killed folks and stolen their clothes yet.”
Fawn realized from their openmouthed staring that this was the first mud-man, alive or dead, that most of the young patrollers had ever seen, too. Dag pointed out a few more distinguishing features, still with the toe of his boot, then glanced up at his whole mixed audience. “This one is so crude and bearlike because it’s the work of a malice in its first molt. The malice might even still be sessile, which would be good news for us. As a malice goes through molts and gets stronger and smarter, its making gets better, till you can’t hardly tell a mud-man from a real human by eye. Lakewalker groundsense can tell at once, though. Their grounds are… their grounds are just not right.”
All the young men jostled forward for a closer look, with the enthusiastic Hawthorn pushing through to the front; Fawn let Vio shrink back. Vio was trembling and teary from seeing, and smelling, the welter of blood, and her little girl, who came out from the wagon and grabbed her skirts, burst into tears in sheer contagion. The toddler tied in the wagon just howled on general principles. Grouse, clutching his spear and looking frantically fearful, his world suddenly full of new dangers but with no clear target to attack, turned on his wife and snarled, “Shut them up!”
It seemed mean, but Fawn had to admit Vio did get a better hold on herself, controlling her snivels and shuffling off to manage her children.
A respite of sorts. Vio was beginning to learn something, Fawn thought, if only that the world was not what she’d imagined. Bo hadn’t pushed forward, and he didn’t look much surprised, but his seamed face screwed up in a dubious scowl. His glance of dismay was not at his Lakewalker companions, though, but at the surrounding ridges.
Dag, too, backed out of the crowd and stared up and down the road, gold eyes slitted. Reaching with his groundsense? A little relief lightened his features, and he muttered, “Ah, good, there’s Arkady.” Truly, in a couple of minutes the strays rode up.
Sumac jumped down and strode to him. “Sorry we fell behind, there. We were just talking.”
From their un-disheveled looks, Fawn thought this was likely true.
Though they both had the weights of character to appear unruffled even when half undone.
