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.
“Still on the Trace,” murmured Dag. “I’d have thought you and Sumac would have driven them to cover. By the way, five down or no, I don’t thank you two for teaching them to fear Lakewalkers, or how to fight us. Sumac should have known scout doesn’t mean alarm.”
“We were flying around a bend and ran into them quicker than we expected. Just beyond that next rise. They were more spread out, then,” Barr whispered back. “They’ve only moved on about a mile since.”
Dag squinted into the shimmer trying to number mud-man heads, gave up, and said to Barr, “Count ’em. Has it changed? ”
Barr’s younger eyes narrowed intently; his lips moved. “Twenty-six now. Hey! That can’t be right.”
Dag didn’t think Sumac had miscounted. “It must have drawn in its scouts, for defense, and to replace the fallen. Which is no bad result.”
This close to the malice, Dag didn’t dare open his groundsense to check, but he saw no sign of flanking mud-men moving through the nearby scrub. Any more distant mud-men were not a tactical consideration.
The enemy was closing the gap, if at a shambling pace. Let them do most of the walking, good. Dag slid back down to the clearing. The horses had been tied patroller style, that is, reins wrapped up so as not to trail, and heavily persuaded to stay together. Because you wouldn’t want to physically tether a horse you might need to summon, nor risk leaving the poor beasts helpless if no one returned to release them. He rechecked Copperhead, then turned to order his patrol, keeping his voice low.
“All right. We have the advantage of this rise here, which I mean to keep. As soon as the malice and its mud-men are in bow shot, if they haven’t spotted us and turned tail first, I, Whit, Tavia, and Barr will try to take down as many as we can till we run out of arrows. After that it’s a wild pig hunt with spears and knives, except pigs aren’t smart enough to gang up on you and mud-men are. Try not to get separated and become a target, and keep an eye out for anyone who does. Don’t stop to finish off your mud-man if it’s too disabled to move, but be aware they’ll keep coming at you even when hurt as long as their malice is alive. And remember the mud-men are just a noisy diversion; the only target that counts is the malice, and getting Rase and his knife up to it. Try to circle behind it, Rase.”
The patroller swallowed, set his shoulders, nodded. Forced his hand, clutching the knife slung around his neck, back to his side.
Dag drew breath and went on swiftly, “I’m shifting your usual partnerships around. Neeta and Remo both will partner with Rase, flanking him like linkers, because they have the best ground veiling to be that close to the malice, and Neeta has some experience.”
Neeta flashed a nervous but pleased smile, and ducked her chin.
“That leaves Barr with Tavia, and Whit with me.”
That pleased Barr, certainly. Whit blinked in shy pride.
Without Whit along, Dag would have partnered Rase, guiding him in to his first kill. Whit had slain bandits; mud-men wouldn’t shake him unduly. But if the ground shield failed, the boy risked ground-ripping or-almost worse-mind slaving. If the latter happened, Dag hoped he wouldn’t have to do more than clout his tent-brother on the head to put him out of the way till the malice went down, but that wasn’t a task he dared leave to anyone else. He did not voice the risk, not wanting to put Whit off his stride.
“We don’t have to worry about surrounding the malice once it’s close to our position. It’s moving so slow that when the mud-men are out of the way we’ll almost be able to overtake it walking. But-listen close, Whit, because this is where it gets different than a pig hunt-taking on the malice is more like attacking a big bear, and not one of the cute black bears you find around here, but a big northern grizzly. It’s strong, it swings around fast, and it can knock a man thirty feet if it connects with you. Only the sharing knife will kill it. So you concentrate on the mud- men, and leave the malice to Rase and his partners. Got it? ”
“Yessir,” said Whit, eyes wide.
“All right. Get a drink or a piss now if you need to, keep your grounds shut tight, no talking from here on. Tavia and Barr, find your best shooting positions. Whit, stay by me.”
Dag went to Copperhead and collected his adapted bow and arrows.
He hitched his quiver over his shoulder, unbolted his hook from its wooden wrist cuff and dropped it in the leather pouch at his waist, seated the bow in its place, and locked it down. He tested the draw: strings dry and
