retrieve it. Depending on whether anyone, malice or mud-men or mind slaves, realized what was going on. Giving Whit not one chance, but two. But probably not three.
She did not mention the dodgy scheme aloud.
The light grew; from the woods, a redcrest trilled incessantly, cheercheer-
cheer, and was answered by another. A few figures around the smoldering fire stirred, lay back down. Fawn spotted some, but not all, of the company’s packs and bedrolls lying scattered about. Would the muleteers share their food? Would the malice realize it needed to feed its new troops? If so, would it bring people food, or bags of bugs…? Fawn blinked rapidly, fighting a soft slide into the hallucinations of dream. This was nightmare enough with her eyes wide open. Maybe the bat-malice only came out at night. They would have to withdraw and hide till then; there was no way they could stay awake and undetected till nightfall in this…
Whit’s breath went out in a guarded huff. Fawn looked up through the laurel leaves.
A bat-shape circled in an un-bat-like graceful glide. She could not guess its size against the blank blue sky, but its bone-shaking aura rolled before it like sea waves. She wanted to run now, but of course it was too late. It wasn’t courage, nor any fancied usefulness, that kept her crouching.
Papa always said Mama should have named me Cat, because my curiosity would kill me someday. Maybe today? Yet beneath her fear, curiosity refused to surrender. Will my stupid-farmer-girl idea work? She wet her lips and waited.
“All right,” Whit muttered. He fumbled the modified knife out of its sheath-Fawn took it back from him so he wouldn’t drop it while he was cranking his bow-stood up, and stepped forward. Breaking cover too soon, maybe, but oh gods that he could stand up at all… Fawn scrambled after and pressed the bone bolt into his sweat-damp hand.
The malice circled overhead, looking down curiously. Too high?
Moving too fast? It flapped it vast wings and went higher. “Whit, wait,” Fawn gasped as he raised the crossbow, wavering after its target.
Instead of the malice descending, the company rose to its feet.
Turned faces their way. Started to move in a stumbling bunch. Finch called anxiously, “No, you don’t have to kill them! Just pull those walnut necklaces off them, and they’ll be fine!”
Oh gods…!
Berry took a grip on her stick and stepped forward grimly. Fawn, desperate, jumped out and waved her arms frantically skyward. “Down here, you stupid bat-thing, you malice-bat… stupid thing! This is what you want! Come and get it!” She danced back and forth. Oh, come and get it. “Stupid malice!”
Whit gulped as the malice, with another lazy wing flap, dropped suddenly closer, eyeing them. Still beyond reach of any knife or spear.
More wing beats sent gusts of cellar smell tumbling toward them as it hovered, legs drawn up. Fawn wondered how long their shields would stand up to the malice’s full concentration, then realized she was about to find out, because they had surely won all its attention now. Its legs extended-it was coming in for a landing. The morning grew darker, like a cloud drawing across the sun, but the sky was cloudless and the sun wasn’t up over the ridge yet…
The shaking crossbow steadied, Fawn knew well at what cost. Yes, Whit! A snap of release, a deep thrum from the string, a white flash as the bone bolt flew upward. A thwack-crack as it entered the malice’s abdomen, spread broad as a target as its wings stretched to scoop the air.
The malice’s surprised shriek pierced Fawn’s ears, dimming abruptly as darkness descended on her eyes. Am I being ground-ripped? But Dag said it would hurt… Through the boiling black clouds, Fawn saw the malice’s wings blow off in both directions and tumble earthward as its body disintegrated. Rank matter showered down. The blackness shrank inward, hard and tight. Was this death? Oh baby, oh Dag, I’m sorry-
–-
Dag came awake on a sudden, indrawn breath, and stared around, heart thudding for no reason that he could discern. All was quiet, the woods fog-shrouded, but the world had lightened since he’d dozed off under this ledge in a black chill. The sky shaded upward from gray to pale blue. An hour after dawn, perhaps? It would be at least another two hours before the sun cleared the ridge and began to warm them, but already the mist was shredding away as the air began to stir. His two charges still slept; or at least, Owlet slept, and Pakko lay in a pain-hazed doze that Dag could find no reason to disrupt.
Fearfully, Dag tested his marriage cord coiled on his upper arm. She’s still alive. At least that. The tiny hum seemed disturbingly muted, as it had ever since Dag had anchored Fawn’s walnut shield into her ground.
Was it more muted now? Why? Was Fawn traveling farther from him?
Ordinary distances had never affected their cords before. Dag tried to encourage himself: Sumac will know to look after her, but the dire part of his mind that wouldn’t shut up had to add, If Sumac is still alive. Would his scout Tavia find any survivors at all in the valley, let alone Arkady?
He rolled his shoulders, propped uncomfortably against the rock wall, and scowled at his right leg, stretched out before him. He’d finally loosened his boot for fear that cutting off circulation would lead to cutting off his purpling foot, and as he’d expected, the ankle was now too swollen to tie it again. Soon he would need to get up and go refill their water bottle. He tried to muster a proper medicine maker’s concern for his charges, instead of frustrated rage for being fixed here. He and Tavia had made Pakko as clean and comfortable as possible before she’d left last night. Dag’s last reserve was one strip of dried plunkin in his pocket. Pakko’s body was the most depleted, but his pain muffled his hunger, and keeping Owlet silent might prove the more urgent task…
With his thoughts chasing their tails like crazed cats, all hope of dozing off again faded. As silently as possible, Dag levered himself to his feet with his stick, gathered up the water bottle, and began hobbling down the hillside. This was going to take a while.
When Dag at length returned, Owlet was awake, cranky, and fearful.
Pakko was eyeing the farmer child with a glazed sort of alarm.
Even in his dreadful pain, the patroller was holding a tolerable ground veiling, which won both Dag’s gratitude and respect; Owlet, of course, blazed like a beacon.
“Oh, good, you’re back,” said Pakko. A tension in his tone reminded Dag of just how long Pakko had lain up here alone, lost and hopeless.
Dag settled himself by the man’s side, leg out. “Ayup. Water? ”
“It’ll just make me piss myself again.” Pakko grimaced, looked away, hiding helpless shame.
“I’m a medicine maker. I’ll deal with it.” Dag revised this slightly.
“You help guide the bag, I’ll hold your head up.” He slipped his hand behind Pakko’s head; Pakko raised an arm, though it made him gasp.
Together, they managed to get another good drink down the injured man. Absent gods, what a pair. We’re not half a patroller between us.
Owlet circled around Pakko and crept into Dag’s lap; Dag gave him a drink, too, with rather more spillage, but the threat of howls passed off with only a few sniffles.
In the daylight, Pakko squinted at Dag in new curiosity, Dag hoped not too tinged with dismay. “Except for the hand, I’d have taken you for a patroller.”
“I was, once.”
“Is that why you went for maker, instead? How was it you were traveling with farmers? ” He looked over at the scabbed and grubby Owlet as if the child were the most unlikely part of all this.
“It’s a long story. A couple of long stories.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Pakko’s air of indifference was a bit too carefully held. Some tale-telling would keep his rescuer safely planted under his eye, right.
Dag sighed. “Yeah, me neither.” But before he could choose a beginning, a ragged motion through the trees snagged his eye. He sat up, squinting, then grabbed his stick and clambered abruptly to his feet;
Owlet, dumped, whimpered in protest. “ ’Scuse me.”
He ducked out from under the overhang, and dared to flick open his groundsense. Mud-bat! He snapped closed again. Limped a few dozen paces along the hillside to where a rock slide had plowed open a wider view of the sky, and of the treetops falling away.
Several hundred paces below, a laboring mud-bat crashed into the branches, fought loose, and struggled for altitude again. It was flying very badly. Injured? Burdened with a load or a captive? It was too far off, Dag thought,
