the dry dirt, stubby hands relaxing again in sleep. How did youngins do that, go from squirming whirligigs to limp little rag dolls in a blink?
“Who’re you?” whispered the injured man. “Patrollers? Not ours. Help from outland…?” He squinted up at Dag in brief hope, took in his battered appearance, his arm harness, his stick, and answered his own question with a deflated, “Not…”
“Name’s Dag Bluefield N-” Dag swallowed the No-Camp. “Traveling north with a mixed party of farmers and Lakewalkers. We were attacked just before sunset by a flock of those flying… things. Mud-bats. They tried to carry me, Tavia, and the tad over there across the ridge, but we fought free of ’em. We’re trying to get back to our people, but I don’t see where they’ve gone.”
“Lucky. I… was dropped…” The man’s eyes rolled anxiously as Tavia reappeared out of the moon shadows. “Ah-please…”
“You can help him raise his head,” said Dag, “but don’t lift his shoulders or jostle his back.”
Tavia nodded, and spent the next few minutes getting the entire skin of water down the desperately thirsty man without choking him, much.
“Ah,” he said as she let his head down again. “So good. Gods. Hurts…”
“How long have you been up here? ” asked Dag. The man’s bladder had given way in his paralysis long enough ago for his trousers to have pretty much all dried out again. That actually wasn’t a good sign, but the water should fix it.
“Not sure. I keep fading in and out, and waking up not dead. Surprises me. One day, two? It’s been dark and light and dark…”
“Where you from? Laurel Gap? ”
“Aye. My patrol-we’d heard strange reports, just arrived at the head of the valley and started to sweep, when those mad things fell out of the sky on us.”
“North of us, then. How far? ”
“Maybe ten, fifteen miles? There was a strong west wind… whenever. That nightmare that carried me off rode the updraft along this side. It kept trying to cross the ridge like the rest, but couldn’t stay up over there, so it was forced along farther and farther south. Lower and lower. It finally got so exhausted, it just… let me go.” A shaken breath.
“For an instant, I thought I was going to get lucky, but I slammed off that rock face and landed wrong, way too hard.”
“Can you feel anything below your waist? ”
“Weird spurts of pain sometimes, but mostly not.”
“Did any of your patrol get away to warn your camp? ”
“Gods, I hope so.”
Then Laurel Gap should be alerted by now, if anyone had escaped and followed the blighted patrol procedure, as Dag so often hadn’t. He felt a sudden new warmth toward the rules. “It sounds like your mud-bat was trying to carry you back to the malice’s lair, same as us.” Which suggested the malice was still in its lair, hopeful thought. “It’s a ways east of here, I reckon. Did it capture anyone else? ”
If this malice had succeeded in ground-ripping a Lakewalker, it was primed to grow immeasurably more dangerous, but the mud-bats plainly had trouble transporting prey as large as a full-size patroller.
“Not sure. That thing took me off early in the fight. I didn’t see much except… gods. I used to like high views.”
Dag grimaced in sympathy.
“You haven’t… run across any of the rest of my patrol yet? ”
“No, sorry. You’re the first.”
“If I’d had a primed knife”-the man’s voice dropped low-“that thing could have carried me to the malice with my goodwill. If I hadn’t left my own bonded knife in my fool saddlebags, wherever they are, I’d have shared by now. It’d have to hurt less than this. With this back, I’m a dead man sooner or later. You’ll never get me down off this ridge alive.”
“Maybe your luck just got better,” said Tavia. “Dag here’s a medicine maker.”
The man’s eyes widened. “With one hand? ”
“I’m just an apprentice. My wife partners me when I need two hands, but she’s”-Dag lifted his head to peer out through the trees, but couldn’t see much-“back with the others.” He added, “What’s your name, patroller?
“Pakko. Pakko Sunfish Laurel Gap.”
“Right.” Dag opened himself, dropped down and in.
The break was every bit as ugly as his first impression had suggested, two vertebrae cracked and pushed out of alignment. The spinal cord was twisted, with bleeding and swelling pressing upon the nerves and creating excruciating pain. One wrong move with enough force, and the nerves could be sheared through or torn outright. Pakko’s foresight was shrewd.
Likely the very best they could do was to get the man home to die there. Dag wasn’t sure that was a kindness. His own father had shared while taken sick on patrol, and been buried where he’d died, sending nothing home to his family but a clean bone blade. Would his return have merely plunged his tent into strain and grief and helpless anger, to the same end? No mercy there. No mercy anywhere, at the last. But Pakko didn’t have his knife, and Dag was almost glad of it. Though not for Pakko’s sake.
Dag came up and out again from his exploration to find the patroller staring at him with wider eyes. Groundsense. What you see, sees you.
“There’s a better medicine maker with our party, a groundsetter. If we can get him up here, I expect we can get you down.” Dag did not promise, Save your life. But what Arkady might do with this mess he scarcely dared guess.
Dag was not above plunging in and trying single-handed, if things were dire enough-he’d once done crude groundsetting on a man with a spurting cut throat, knowing much less than he knew now-but with water and someone to care for his immediate needs, Pakko didn’t look to be dying just yet. Dag was sure he could preserve the man long enough to give him the chance to share. Arkady might be able to get him back to his camp and walking well enough to live and work, if not patrol, for many more years. Forty or fifty years of a man’s life were too much to hazard on Dag’s own impatience.
Dag glanced aside at the sleeping heap of Owlet. These are not the responsibilities I want right now. But they were the ones he’d been handed.
He sighed.
“Tavia. I need you to refill the water bottle, then help me slide Pakko here further under this overhang, without putting strain or pressure on his back. I’ll stay here with him and the tad. You try to find Arkady and the others, and bring us help.”
About time, Dag thought he saw her breathe. Tavia had been wild to do just that, earlier, but had been stuck with Dag’s limping pace. That he might now be sending her alone into a death trap… there are no good choices here. But there were less stupid ones.
She nodded and scrambled up. Glumly, Dag resigned himself to getting no further tonight.
–-
Sumac was right about the rocks. There was no way to haul a horse over this terrain, and Fawn wasn’t too sure about a gaggle of frightened farmers, either. Or frightened Lakewalkers. Their air of patroller grimness might conceal their anxiety from the others, but she’d been around Dag too long to be fooled by it.
Getting them all in motion in the same direction-disorganized for retreat as Sumac tartly put it-took an agonizing amount of time, by Lakewalker standards that Fawn found herself sharing. Sumac was rendered speechless when she found Sage at work fastening a chain around a tree and fixing it to his wagon axle, to daunt possible theft. But since half the others weren’t ready yet either, she let it pass. Indigo wept to let loose the mule team and his riding horse.
“If we make it back alive,” Remo said, “I’ll help you find them again.”
“What if those mud-bats eat them? ”
“Better them than us.”
Indigo didn’t looked convinced.
They tramped five miles north through the woods to come up even with a saddle on the ridgeline that Sumac
