ripping, but it resisted mind slaving. If only because it made Whit’s ground so blurry the malice couldn’t figure out what he was. We didn’t give it time to puzzle out the problem.”
“Your patrollers were all right? ”
“Oh, yes.”
Fawn said carefully, “I’m not sure they know you think that. You’ve been sort of grim and glum tonight.”
His brows lifted. “The youngsters did very well. Whit, too. He pulled his weight, and they all saw that he did. Won’t any of ’em look at farmers quite the same way again, I daresay.” He was silent a moment.
“It’s the malice bothers me.”
“Why? ”
He drew breath, let it out slowly. “I don’t know. It just… niggles. Every malice is akin, yet every one is a little different. Why was it out on the road like that? ”
“Maybe it was just changing its lair. Looking for a better place to molt.”
“Possibly.” Dag didn’t sound convinced. “But this one seemed awfully aggressive for a pre-molt. Usually by the time they reach that stage they just lay up and let their mud-men bring them their prey.”
“Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe it ground-ripped some rabid animals?”
“I don’t think it would work like that.” He shook his head, hugging her in close as she turned to fit the curve of his body. “But I’ll say a few good words to the youngsters tomorrow. They earned it.”
–-
The next day dawned clear; the company made a creaky but willing enough start shortly thereafter. Rase had recovered enough to sit his horse, although he had to let Indigo saddle it and two of his comrades help boost him aboard. Four miles up the road came a delay when everyone who hadn’t been on the battlefield got dragged over it by everyone who had for a blow-by-blow description of the fight. Fawn watched from atop Magpie, a trifle worried about the effect any lingering blight might have on her child. She was waiting eagerly for the first flutter of quickening, down there deep in her belly. She had not confessed even to Dag her unfounded conviction that if only she could bring this pregnancy past the point where her first had failed, it would be a sign of hope, like breaking a curse. To encounter a malice just now, bringing back such evil memories, had shaken her more than she’d let on.
But Whit and the patrollers finished babbling about their every bow shot at last, and they moved on.
Late in the morning, they came upon the spot where Dag said the malice must have first turned onto the road, and Dag led a mixed party of patrollers and farmer boys up toward the eastern ridge to search for the lair. Sumac stayed with the wagons to watch over Rase, with Neeta, who had seen lairs in Luthlia, assigned as support. Bo also declined the treat, and Hod as usual stuck by him.
Berry, grinning, leaned across her saddlebow to whisper to Fawn, “I expected Bo to have a worse head than this, come this morning. At midnight last night he was swearin’ to me he’d seen bats the size of turkey vultures flyin’ over the moon.”
“Were they anything like the hoop snakes he told me southern folks used as wagon wheels? ” said Fawn. “Or the alligators hitched up in teams to draw racing boats in the swamps? Or the time it rained so hard that he saw catfish swimming up the road overhead, and fellows caught them in their hats? ”
“I expect so. This fish wasn’t biting, though.”
Fawn snickered, and kicked Magpie along. She wouldn’t be surprised if Bo had seen vultures; those unburied mud-men corpses stank, and would draw scavengers soon. Did vultures search for carrion by moonlight?
The fire scrub ran on for miles, and Fawn tried to imagine the size of the blaze that had leveled these woods. How fast had the wind whipped the orange wall of death? She was reminded that malices were far from the only great uncaring hazard in the world. Between being burned to death or blighted, she could see little to choose. Yet the fire scars were recovering in years, not decades or centuries, and from the point of view of blackberry brambles and fireweed, might almost be considered a blessing.
Her ruminations grew darker when they stopped for lunch at a stream crossing by what was plainly a burned-out village, destroyed by that same three-years-back fire. The lack of settlers in this valley seemed suddenly explained. She walked among the traces of houses and sheds, blackened char sticking out from the green weeds like bones through skin.
“We could stop right here,” said Grouse, eyeing the bit of flat land along the feeder creek that had doubtless been what first attracted the burned-out folks.
“I’m not stopping in this accursed country,” said Vio sharply. “Monsters and fires and bear-men and who knows what all…” She had to break off to run and rescue her toddler Owlet from a determined attempt to fall headfirst into an old well. As she was snatching him away from death, and he was thrashing mightily in protest, she glanced down and shrieked.
Fawn hurried to her side, as did Sage and everyone else in earshot.
The sun overhead lit the well shaft, revealing a mess of bones at the bottom all tangled together. The flesh was gone, but a few scraps of hair and clothing still showed.
“They must have gone down into the water there to try to get away from the flames,” said Sumac, coming over to look, “and suffocated when the fire passed over.”
“Or drowned,” opined Bo, “if they climbed on each other.”
Fawn swallowed and walked quickly away. Several sizes of bones, down there. A family? A couple of families, maybe.
“Wasn’t there anyone left even to bury these? ” asked Calla.
“Maybe the survivors decided to let this be their grave,” offered Sage.
“Not wanting it for a well anymore.”
After some debate, it was decided to leave the well-grave as it had been found. Fawn had lost her appetite for lunch, and was glad to be gone from the haunted place.
The malice lair expedition dropped down to rejoin them a few miles farther on. Dag had told Arkady he would be sorry if he came along, and the maker looked it, his face clammy with a Rase-like paleness. Sumac hurried to help him, but he just shook his head. The two parties traded fire-village and malice-lair descriptions, equally gruesome, and for once Bo offered no silly tales to top them.
Late in the afternoon, Fawn found herself riding between Dag and Finch at the head of the company. Everyone was starting to keep an eye out for a likely spot to camp for the night. Dag said that they might reach the pass at the head of this long valley late tomorrow. A debate was afoot whether it would be better to rest the animals for a day before or a day after the climb, but Fawn thought most folks were in favor of after. No one much liked this country anymore.
Finch was still full of his first sight of a malice lair. “Never would have believed! Everything dead gray for two hundred paces around. And those pocky holes where the mud-men came out, just like you said, Fawn!”
“Was it very bad? ” Fawn asked.
Dag shook his head. “Nothing you haven’t seen, Spark. And less. It still puzzles me.” He turned in his saddle, frowning. “I sure wish we’d seen some other traffic today. Either direction.”
Sumac was riding behind them, along with a recovered but rather quiet Arkady. “That reminds me, Dag,” she remarked. “We should log a report at Laurel Gap Camp. They should have cleaned out that malice before we found it.”
“Writing a patrol report, ah, yes,” said Dag. “That’ll be a good thing for you to teach the youngsters how to do.”
She stuck out her tongue at him.
He grinned unrepentantly, but added, “We can leave it at the courier drop point in Blackwater Mills, when we get there. No need to go out of our way.”
“Though I’d sure like to know where their patrol has got to,” said Sumac.
Dag grimaced. “Aye.” His puzzled gloom returned.
Inspired, Fawn sat up in her saddle. “What if that malice wasn’t attacking us, Dag? What if it was running away from something? ”
“What does a malice have to run away from? ” asked Finch.
Fawn brightened further. “Patrollers! Maybe we’ll run into those Laurel Gap patrollers up the road a piece.”
“Will they be mad that we poached their malice? ” asked Finch. Who hadn’t been there when the malice had
