Berry looked just as wind-wild.
They stumbled into the shelter of the trees and looked back. The Lakewakers had vanished on the south side of the clear space, a couple of hundred paces away, but Fawn thought she could mark them by the mud-bats dipping and swooping above the trees over there. The malice appeared to be following them. The rest of their company stood in a bewildered huddle, temporarily undirected by their new master.
“Keep running,” said Whit, shouldering his crossbow to free both hands for their next burst-or rather, one hand to fight through the undergrowth, the other to clutch Berry’s in a death grip that she returned.
Fawn longed for a hand to grip as well-just one’s all I need-but Dag seemed as beyond her reach right now as the moon overhead. She swallowed, nodded. The three of them toiled north along the mountainside.
–-
Dag peered into the night. This rock ledge above their overhang offered a broad vantage, down over the tops of the trees. The angle gave him a dizzy shudder, and he ventured no closer to the edge. The moon was full enough to infuse the whole valley with a blue glow, but it wasn’t bright enough for him to see clearly at a distance, even without the rising mist.
The widest cast of Dag’s groundsense wouldn’t make out what was happening eight or ten miles off, nor did sound carry that far. But beneath that saddle in the far ridge, he thought evil specks whirled.
Unless his eyes were full of floaters, like that time Copperhead had thrown him… but by the ugly quaver in his belly, he thought not.
The mud-bats were abroad, and had found new prey. Fawn and the company? Some other hapless Trace travelers?
The faint hum of Spark’s live ground in his marriage cord was no reassurance. Because if it stopped, it would already be too late…
He clenched his teeth and hand and snarled helplessly. Even if he were to ruthlessly abandon Pakko and Owlet to each other-and he was feeling pretty ruthless right now-it would take him four, five, six hours to limp from here to there. Whatever was happening would be long over, or moved elsewhere, and he’d be wrecked, wholly crippled instead of just half. Was Tavia seeing any of this? She might have crossed the river by now, but if she was under the trees-and she should be- her view would be worse blocked than his.
His every heartstring twanged go. What was left of his wits said, stay.
I’m going to go mad before this night is done.
–-
Fawn sat panting on the dirt floor of their crevice. A tiny patch of moonlight lay at her knees like a rivulet of spilled milk; she and Whit and Berry edged back from it, as if the moon were a malicious eye that might stare in and see them cowering.
“You think this is enough?” Whit wheezed, staring around; Fawn could just see the gleam of his eyes in the shadows.
They’d run maybe two miles north, angling downward mainly for speed’s sake, before Fawn realized they would run out of rocks if they descended farther, and started looking instead for a bolt hole. “Groundsense doesn’t go through thick stone,” she said. But malice groundsense was in every way stronger than Lakewalkers’… Fawn tried for optimism, because the alternative was a panic they could ill afford. “I expect Sumac tucked Arkady and Barr and all up somewhere a lot like this. And I don’t think she’d take chances with Arkady.”
Whit breathed reluctant agreement with that, relaxing slightly.
Berry nodded, her blond hair a glimmer in the gloom.
Fawn traced the two cords around her throat; her hand clenched on her birthday walnut in its hair net. “They worked! Do you realize, Dag’s ground shields worked!” At least long enough for them to run away from a malice distracted by other events. Long enough to live to tell the tale? “We got away!”
“The others didn’t.” Berry’s voice was flat-not with censure, Fawn thought, but just to keep steady.
Whit scrubbed his face. “Why didn’t that malice just ground-rip everyone right then? ”
“It was chasing after the patrollers,” said Berry. “I reckon it’s circled back by now.” Her voice quavered at this last.
“Maybe not,” said Fawn slowly. “That malice you fellows brought down the other day was a lot like my malice at Glassforge, a lumpy firstmolt. This one seems more like the one Dag saw in Raintree, advanced, except mainly eating bats instead of people, so it’s advanced… oddly. It was so crisp and fine and fresh-looking. If it just lately had a molt, maybe it’s only now able to fly and get around. It might not be looking to start another molt right off, especially as that would weigh it down so’s it couldn’t fly anymore. Maybe it might want to, like, save its prey till it’s ready for more.”
“Like a spider? ” said Berry. Fawn could hear her grimace.
Fawn frowned, trying to think it through. “If it’s mostly been eating bats, it might not be too bright yet.” Bats didn’t keep larders, as far as she knew. Would the malice think like a bat, or like a person? A mad person.
She brightened. “But it can’t get too far away from its mind slaves. Remember what Ford Chicory said back in Raintree, how he and his fellows would ride in and raid the malice’s army, catch folks and bring them back out of range, and then they’d get their wits back? I think this malice will want to gather all its captives in one place, except then it’ll be stuck-if it flies too far away from ’em, they’ll all come to their senses and escape.”
“Think it’ll try to march everyone to its lair? ” asked Whit, puzzling it out, too.
“Maybe. Though this one doesn’t seem tied to its lair anymore.”
“Now what do we do? ” asked Berry. “If I had six good feet of water under my hull, I’d take on anything, but I barely know this dry-foot country. Should we try to get back to Arkady? ”
Whit shook his head. “We’d not be that much safer, and we’d be all exposed trying to get there.”
Fawn thought of the pale flash of bone knife, spinning through the air in Sumac’s last, futile effort, and let her hand curl around its sheath.
“Whit, you got any of those crossbow bolts left? ”
“Just three.”
“Give me one.”
Whit rustled around, extracted a bolt from the short quiver, and handed it across. It glinted in the strip of moonlight. Fawn held it, traced it, tested its balance, fingered the feather vanes. Drew the bone knife, compared length, diameter, heft.
Whit saw her drift at once. “Um… if that worked, wouldn’t Lakewalkers already have invented sharing arrows? Sharing spears, for that matter? ”
Fawn shook her head. “Actually, Dag says patrollers do fix their sharing knives to spear hafts sometimes, in the field, but not often. In the close quarters of a woods or a cave, a spear’s not much more use than a knife, and they all are right terrified of anything that risks breakage.”
“Like poor Remo,” Berry agreed. “So cut up when he broke one by accident that he ran away from home.”
“Yep,” said Fawn. “It’s not just a handy sharp point on the end of a stick. It’s someone’s life. Death. Hopes. And it has to be the right shape to carry around with you for years, and something you could drive into your own heart even if you were caught out dying by yourself. A primed knife can be made into a spear easy enough, but I think a patroller would faint dead away if you suggested a sharing arrow. Think of a miss hitting a tree or a cave wall hard.”
“Mm,” said Whit. “Your grandfather’s ghost would haunt you forever, I expect.”
“Now this”-Fawn held up the knife-“would just tumble and be useless if you tried to shoot it from your crossbow. But if I put vanes on it and balance it, I think it might fly straight. Enough. For a short ways.” She touched Whit’s bolt, showing where she meant to scavenge the vanes.
“How would you make it balance? ”
“I’d need to carve away some of the bone.”
Whit made a choking noise.
“Won’t that destroy it? ” asked Berry doubtfully.
Fawn stared down at the length of carved bone, turning it in the moon patch. “I watched Dag bond and prime this knife. The groundwork he did seemed mainly concentrated on what used to be the bone’s inner surface. The end is just carved this shape to be handy for a grip. If I pare it down… See, if it doesn’t break, it’s not broken.”
