“My great-grandfather’s. About two years back.”
“I see.” Dag touched his forehead in respectful salute. “How’s your ground veiling? Have you been keeping up your drills? ” With Sumac as his patrol leader, Rase surely ought to have been.
“Yes, sir!”
“Good. I carry a primed knife, too, but I’ll hold mine in reserve.”
“It’s lucky we have two knives in this patrol,” said Rase.
“That wasn’t luck, that was preparation. Know the difference. Preparation, you can control.” He gave the young patroller an encouraging grip on the shoulder, which made Rase flash an earnest smile.
Reminded, Dag turned away to rummage through his own saddlebags.
His new bonded knife came to hand first, and he slipped its strong braided cord over his neck and tucked the dark sheath into his shirt.
Next, sifted farther down, he found his primed knife-dodgy, first, and unsupervised making that it was. The sheathed bone itself lay lightly on his chest, but the weight of ugly memories it held dragged like Sage’s anvil. Well, if the renegade Crane’s cruel deeds had any redemption, this was it.
He turned to find Fawn watching him, her dark eyes grave. Her lips moved as if to speak, then pressed closed; she gestured down the stream instead. “So, uh… what’s the matter with Arkady? ”
The maker sat on the creek bank in the midst of a patch of green horsetails, his head bowed to his knees.
“The mud-man, likely. The trained sensitivity that makes good makers also unfits them for patrol. Malice spoor hits them too hard.”
Fawn frowned at him. “You’ve been doing sensitivity drills with Arkady for the past two, three months. What’s that going to do to you? ”
Dag sighed. “I’m not real anxious to test it. We’ll just have to see.”
She came nearer; her little hand rose to trace the walnut-stained knife sheath hidden under his shirt. “I suppose you have to wear this. Just don’t… don’t do anything stupid with it, all right? Remember what you promised.”
Not while I’m aboveground and breathing, her words echoed in the hollows of his mind. “I won’t forget.”
She nodded sternly. Abruptly, he lifted her up, hugged her, twirled her around, and kissed her on the forehead.
“What was that in aid of? ” she puffed in pleased surprise, righting herself as he set her back down.
“Nothing. Just because.”
She ducked her head in a firm nod. “That’s a good reason.”
The farmers were bickering with one another and with the patrollers, but all were making steady progress at sorting out mounts for a retreat, so Dag didn’t attempt to interfere. Packsaddles were rapidly refitted for riders, emptied of their loads and padded with blankets.
Inevitably, Dag supposed, the Basswoods’ so-called riding horse had no saddle. He wondered whether it would be better to distribute the two children with their parents, or with the best riders, which would be a couple of the patrollers. Assuming everyone headed in the same direction.
He foresaw another argument, there. Ah, gah. His brain was doing that mad thing again, running unstoppably and repeatedly down every possible and impossible scenario, even though he knew blighted well that the world never delivered him his expectations.
Fawn brought him a chunk of cheese wrapped in cold pan bread left from the morning. He munched it along with a few swallows of flat, tepid water from his water bottle while he walked a tense perimeter along the turbid creek and around the too-noisy camp, his groundsense straining outward. It was still Arkady, and not Dag, who first lifted his head from his knees and turned his face north. Dag jogged to join him as Arkady stumbled out onto the road and looked up it.
Arkady’s lips parted in horror, and he went greener than when he’d first seen the mud-man. Sumac’s horse was galloping wildly toward them. The stirrups flapped and swung from its empty saddle.
Every patroller in range turned to stop the runaway with a summoning, so hard that the poor beast tumbled to its knees. It grunted up and stood trembling, lathered white between its legs and down its shoulders.
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.
