He reached the log wall of the last tent standing and peered uncertainly toward the boggy patch a couple hundred paces off. Back from it, a thicket of scrubby trees—willow, slim green ash, vicious trithorned honey locust—shaded something dark about their boles that he could barely make out with his eye. He opened his groundsense again, flinched, then snapped it back.
“Mari. Codo. To me,” he said over his shoulder.
Mari was at his side at once; Codo, the oldest patroller here but for Mari, slid forward in a moment and joined them.
“There’s somebody under those trees,” Dag murmured. “Not mud-men, not farmer slaves. I think it’s some of us. Something’s very wrong.”
“Alive?” asked Mari, peering too. The half dozen figures didn’t move.
“Yes, but…extend your groundsenses. Carefully. Don’t get caught up. See if it’s anything you recognize.” Because I think I do.
Codo gave him a dry glance from under gray brows, silent commentary on Dag’s earlier repeated insistence that no one open their grounds without a direct order. Both he and Mari stared with eyes opened, then closed.
“Not seen anything like that before,” muttered Mari. “Unconscious?”
“Groundlocked…?” said Codo.
“Ah. Yes. That’s it,” said Mari. “But why are they…”
Dag re-counted—six with his eyes, five with his groundsense. Which suggested one was a corpse. “I think they’re tied to those trees.” He turned to Mari’s partner Dirla, hovering anxiously. “The rest of you stay back. Codo, Mari, come with me.”
There was no cover between here and the stand of scrub. Dag gave up the fraying pretense of stealth and walked openly forward, Codo and Mari right on his heels.
The Bonemarsh Lakewalkers were indeed bound to the thicker tree boles, slumped or half-hanging. They appeared unconscious. Three men and three women, older for the most part; they seemed makers, not patrollers, if Dag could guess from their look and the remains of their clothing. Some bore signs of physical struggle, bruises and cuts, others did not. One woman was dead, waxy and still; Dag hesitated to touch her to check for the stiffness, or lack of it, that would tell him how long. But not very long, he suspected. Late again, old patroller.
Codo hissed and drew his knife, starting for the ropes that bound the prisoners.
“Wait,” said Dag.
“Eh?” Codo scowled at him.
“Dag, what is this?” asked Mari. “Do you know?”
“Aye, I think so. A new malice has to stay by its mud-man nursery to keep them growing, part of what keeps it tied to its lair even after it’s no longer sessile. This malice has gotten strong enough to…to farm out the task. It’s linked up these makers to make its mud-men for it, while it goes…off.” Dag glanced southward uneasily.
Codo breathed a silent whistle through pursed lips.
“Can we break them out of their groundlock?” said Mari, eyes narrowing.
“Not sure, but wait. What I don’t know is how much of a sense the malice has of them, at whatever distance it’s gone now. If we fool with them, with this groundwork, might be an announcement that we’re here, behind it.”
“Dag, you can’t be thinking of leaving them!” said Codo in a shocked voice. Mari looked not so much shocked as grim.
“Wait,” Dag repeated, and turned to walk toward the boggy patch. The other two exchanged glances and followed.
Every few feet along he found a shallow pit in the wet soil, looking like a mud pot dug by playing children. At the center of each, a snout broke the surface, usually flexing frantically to draw air. He identified muskrat, raccoon, possum, beaver, even squirrel and slow, cold turtle. All were starting to lose their former shapes, like caterpillars in a chrysalis, but none had yet grown to human size. He counted perhaps fifty.
“Well, that’s handy,” said Codo, looking over his shoulder with fascinated revulsion. “We can kill them in their holes. Save a lot of grief.”
“These aren’t going to be ready to come out for days, yet,” said Dag. “Maybe weeks. We take the malice down first, they’ll die in place.”
“What are you thinking, Dag?” said Mari.
I’m thinking of how much I didn’t want to be in command of this jaunt. Because of decisions like this. He sighed. “I’m thinking that the rest of the company is half a day behind us. I’m thinking that if we can get some drinking water down those poor folks, they’ll last till nightfall, and Obio can cut them loose, instead. And we won’t have given away our position to the malice. In fact, the reverse—it’ll think any pursuit is still back here.”
“How far ahead of us do you think this malice is by now?” said Codo.
Dag shook his head. “We’ll scout around for clues, but not more than a day, wouldn’t you guess? It’s plain the malice has gathered up everything it’s got and pressed south. Which says to me it’s on the attack. Which also says to me it won’t be looking behind it much.”
“You mean to follow. Fast as we can,” said Mari.
“Anyone here got a better idea?”
They both shook their heads, if not happily.
They returned to the patrol, now gathered warily in the village. Dag dispatched a pair to go get Saun and bring up the horses, sending the rest to scout around the desolation the malice had left. About the time Saun arrived with their mounts, Varleen found the butchering place back in the scrub where the malice’s forces had eaten their last meal, bones animal and human mixed, some burned, some gnawed raw. Dag counted perhaps a dozen human individuals in the remains for sure, but not more. He tried hard to hang on to that not more as a heartening thought, but failed. Fortunately, there was no way for the three patrollers most recently familiar with Bonemarsh Camp to recognize anyone among the disjointed carcasses. The burying, too, Dag left for Obio and the company following.
His veiled patrol had been keyed up for a desperate attack. Gearing back down for a quiet, hasty lunch instead, especially for the ones who’d seen the butchery, went ill, and Dag had no desire to linger, if only for the certainty that the fierce argument over whether to attempt to release the groundlocked makers would start up again. Saun was particularly unhappy about that one, as he recognized some of them from the two years he’d patrolled out of Bonemarsh before he’d exchanged to Hickory Lake.
“What if Obio chooses another route?” Saun protested. “You left him free to.”
“Soon as we take the malice down, tonight or tomorrow, we’ll send someone back,” said Dag wearily. “Soon as we take the malice down, they may well be able to free themselves.”
This argument was, in Dag’s view, even more dodgy, but Saun accepted it, or at least shut up, which was all Dag wanted at this point. His own greatest regret was for the time they’d lost in their stealthy on-foot approach; they might have ridden into the village at a canter for all the difference it would have made. Dag suspected they were now going to come up on the malice well after dark, exhausted, at the end of a much too long and disturbing day. Part of a commander’s task was to bring his people to the test at the peak of their condition and will. He’d fumbled both time and timing, here.
Tracking the malice south presented no difficulty, at least. Starting just beyond the marsh, it had left a trail of blight a hundred paces wide that a farmer could not have missed, let alone anyone with the least tinge of groundsense. At the end of this, one malice, guaranteed. Finding it would be dead easy now.
The malice not finding us first will be the hard part. Dag grimaced and kicked Copperhead forward at a trot, his troubled patrol strung out in his wake.