After a moment she gulped and raised her face. “You have to let me go.”

“No, I don’t,” he said amiably.

“We have to get those bone fragments dug out of your leg. I didn’t know how far to stick it in, so I pushed it all the way, I’m afraid.”

“Thorough as ever, I see.”

She shrugged out of his weak grip and escaped, but grinned through her tears, so that was likely all right. He eased open his groundsense a fraction, aware of something deeply awry in his own body’s ground just below his perceptions, but managed a head count of the people in the grove before he tightened up again. All alive. Some very weak, but all alive. Someone had flung himself onto a horse bareback and was galloping for the east camp. Othan was diverted from his farmer-wrestling to tend on Hoharie, struggling up out of her bedroll. Dag gave up captaining, lay back with a sigh of boundless fatigue, and let them all do whatever they wanted.

In due course Othan came back with Hoharie’s kit and some lights and commenced some pretty unpleasant fiddling about down by Dag’s side. Weary Hoharie directed, and Fawn hovered. That the blade should hurt worse coming out than going in made some sense, but not that it should do so more often. Voices muttered, rose and fell. “It’s bleeding so much!” “That’s all right. It’ll wash the wound out a bit. Now the swab.” “Hoharie, do you know what that swab is?” “Othan, think. Of course I do. Very clever, Fawn. Now tie the strips down tight. No peeking under it, unless it soaks through.” “Did he get it all?” “Yes, look—fit the pieces together like a puzzle, and check for missing chips or fragments. All smooth, see?” “Oh, yes!” “Hoharie, it’s like his ground is shredded. Hanging off him in strips. I’ve never felt anything like!” “I saw when it happened. It was spectacular. Get the bleeding stopped, get everyone off this blight and over to the east camp. Get me some food. Then we’ll tackle it.”

The evacuation resembled a torchlight parade, organized by the folks who came pelting over from the east camp, all dressed by guess and riotous with relief. Those freed from the groundlock who could sit a horse were led off two to a mount, holding each other upright, and the rest were carried. Dag was carted eastward feetfirst on a plank; Saun’s face, grinning loonlike, drifted past his gaze in the flickering shadows. Mari’s voice complained loudly about missing the most exciting part. Dag gripped Fawn’s hand for the whole mile and refused to let go.

The east camp didn’t settle down till dawn. Fawn woke again near noon, trapped underneath Dag’s outflung arm. She just lay there for a while, relishing the lovely weight of it and the slow breath ruffling her curls. Eventually, she gently eased out from under, sat up, and looked around. She thought it a measure of Dag’s exhaustion that her motions didn’t wake him the way they usually did.

Their bedroll was sheltered under a sort of half tent of bent saplings splinted together supporting a blanket roof. Half-private. The camp extended along the high side of a little creek, well shaded by green, unblighted trees; maybe twenty or twenty-five patrollers seemed to be moving about, some going for water or out to the horse lines, some tending cook fires, several clustered around bedrolls feeding tired-looking folks who nevertheless were doggedly sitting up.

At length, Dag woke too, then it was her turn to help him prop up his shoulders against his saddlebags. Happily, she fed him. He could both chew and swallow, and not choke; halfway through, he revived enough to start capturing the bits of plunkin or roast deer from her with his right hand and feed himself. His hand still trembled too much to manage his water cup without spilling, though. His left arm, more disturbingly, didn’t move at all, and she suspected the bandage wrapping his left leg disguised even deeper ills than the knife wound. His eyes were bloodshot and squinty, more glazed than bright, but she reveled in their gold glints nonetheless, and the way they smiled at her as though they’d never quit.

In all, Fawn was glad when Hoharie came by, even if she was trailed by Othan. She was accompanied and supported by Mari, whose general air of relief clouded when her eye fell on Dag. The medicine maker looked fatigued, but not nearly as ravaged as Dag, perhaps because her time in the lock had been the shortest. She had all her formidable wits back about her, anyhow.

Othan unwrapped the leg, and Hoharie pronounced his neat stitches that closed the vertical slit to be good tight work, and the redness only to be expected and not a sign of infection yet, and they would do some groundwork later to prevent adhesions. Othan seemed even more relieved at the chance to rewrap the wound with more usual sorts of patroller bandages.

While this was going on, Mari reported: “Before you ask three times, Dag—everyone made it out of the groundlock alive.”

Dag’s eyes squeezed shut in thankfulness. “I was pretty sure. Is Artin going to hold on? His heart took hurt, there, I thought.”

“Yes, but his son has him well in hand. All the Raintree folks could be carried off by their kin as early as tomorrow, at least as far as the next camp. They’ll recover better there than out here in the woods.”

Dag nodded.

“Once they’re away our folks will be getting anxious to see home again, too. Bryn and Ornig are up already, and I don’t think Mallora will be much behind. Young, y’know. I don’t know about you, but I’m right tired of this place. With that hole in your leg it’s plain you’re not walking anywhere. It’s up to Hoharie to say how soon you can ride.”

“Ask me tomorrow,” said Hoharie. “The leg’s not really the worst of it.” “So what about the arm, Hoharie?” Dag asked hesitantly. His voice still sounded like something down in a swamp, croaking. “It’s a bit worryin’, not moving like that. Kind of takes me back to some memories I don’t much care to revisit.”

Hoharie grimaced understanding. “I can see why.” As Othan tied off the new dressing and sat back, she added quietly, “Time to give me a look. You have to open yourself, Dag.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. He didn’t sound at all enthusiastic, Fawn thought. But he lay back against his saddle prop with a faraway look on his face; his lips moved in something deeper than a wince. Mari hissed, Hoharie’s lips pursed, and Othan, who had sewn up bleeding flesh without a visible qualm, looked suddenly ill.

“Well, that’s a bigger mess than Utau, and I thought he was impressive,” allowed Hoharie. “Let me see what I can do with this.”

“You can’t do a ground reinforcement after all you just went through!” Dag objected.

“I have enough oomph left for one,” she replied, her face going intent. “I was saving it for you. Figured…”

Fawn tugged at Mari and whispered urgently, “What’s going on? What do you all sense?” That I can’t.

“The ground down his left side’s all marked up with blight, like big deep bruises,” Mari whispered back. “But those nasty black malice spatters that I felt before seem to be gone now—that’s a real good sign, I reckon. The ground of his left arm, though, is hanging in tatters. Hoharie’s wrapping it all up with a shaped ground reinforcement—ooh, clever—I think she means to help it grow back together easier as it heals.”

Hoharie let out her breath in a long sigh; her back bent. Dag, his expression very inward, stared down at his left arm as it moved in a short jerk. “Better!” he murmured in pleased surprise.

“Time,” said Hoharie, and now she sounded down in that swamp, too. Dag gave her a dry look as if to say, Now who’s overdoing? She ignored it, and continued, “It’ll all come back in time as your ground slowly heals. Slowly, got that, Dag?”

Dag sighed in regret. “Yeah…” His voice fell further. “The ghost hand. It’s gone, isn’t it? For good. Like the other.”

Hoharie said somewhat impatiently, “Gone for a good, to be sure, but not necessarily forever. I know it perturbed you, Dag, but I wish you’d stop thinking of that hand as some morbid magic! It was a ground projection, a simple…well, it was a ground projection, anyway. As your ground heals up from all this blight, it should come back with the rest of it. Last, I imagine, so don’t go fuming and fretting.”