“They can’t be back trying to farm this!” said Saun in dismay.

“No,” said Dag, rising in his stirrups and squinting, “it’s no crop they’re planting today.”

“They’re digging graves,” said Mari quietly. “Must be some refugees who’ve come back to try and find their kin, same as at Bonemarsh.”

Griff shook his head in regret.

Dag hitched his reins into his hook, for all that his left arm was still very weak, to free his hand. He waved the patrol forward, but with a cautioning gesture brought them to a halt again at a little distance from the Greenspring survivors.

The townsmen formed up in a ragged rank, clutching shovels and mattocks in a way that reminded Dag a lot of the Horsefords’ first fearful approach to him, sitting so meekly on their porch. If the Horsefords had suffered reason to be nervy, these folks had cause to be half-crazed. Or maybe all-the-way crazed.

After an exchange of looks and low mutters, a single spokesman stepped out of the pack and moved cautiously toward the patrol, stopping a few prudent paces off, but within reasonable hearing distance. Good. Reassurances might work better delivered in a soothing tone, rather than bellowed. Dag touched his temple. “How de’.”

The man returned a short, grudging nod. He was middle-aged, careworn, dressed in work clothes due for mending that hadn’t been washed for weeks, an almost welcome whiff of something human in this odorless place. His face was so gray with fatigue as to look blighted while alive. Dag thought, unwillingly, of Sorrel Bluefield again.

“You folks shouldn’t be on this sick ground,” Dag began.

“It’s our ground,” the man returned, his stare distant.

“It’s been poisoned by the blight bogle. It’ll go on poisoning you if you linger on it.”

The man snorted. “I don’t need some Lakewalker corpse-eater to tell me that.”

Dag tried a brief, acknowledging nod. “You can bury your dead here if you like, though I wouldn’t advise it, but you should not camp here at night, leastways.”

“There’s shelter still standing.” The townsman raised his chin and scowled, and added in a tone of warning, “We’ll be guarding this ground tonight. In case you all were thinking of sneaking back.”

What did the fellow imagine? That Dag’s patrol had come around to try to steal the bodies of their dead? Infuriated protests rose in his mind: We would not do such a foul thing. We have plenty of corpses of our own just now, thank you all the same. Farmer bones are of no use to us, ground-ripped bones are no use to us, and as for ground-ripped farmer bones…! Teeth tight, he let nothing escape but a flat, “You do that.”

Perhaps uneasily realizing he’d given offense, the townsman did not apologize, but at least slid sideways: “And how else will we find each other, if any more come back? The bogle cursed us and marched us off all over the place…”

Had he been one of the bewildered mind-slaves? It seemed so. “Did no one know to run for help, when the bogle first came up? To spread a warning?”

“What help?” The man huffed again. “You Lakewalkers on your high horses rode us down. I was there.” His voice fell. “We were all mad with the bogle spells, yes, but…”

“They had to defend—” Dag began, and stopped. The cluster of nervous townsmen had not put down their tool-weapons, nor dispersed back to their forlorn task. He glanced aside at Fawn, watching in concern from atop Grace, and rubbed his aching forehead. He said instead, abruptly, “How about if I get down from this high horse? Will you step away and talk with me?”

A pause, a stare. A nod.

Dag steeled himself to dismount. Varleen, watching closely, slid down and went to Copperhead’s bridle, and Saun dropped from his own mount, unshipped the hickory staff that he’d carted along slotted under his saddle flap, and stepped to Dag’s stirrup. Dag’s leg did not quite turn under him as he landed on it, and he exchanged an almost-smile with Saun as the youth carefully unhanded his arm, both, he thought, thrown back in memory to their night attack on the bandit camp, ages ago. He gripped the staff and turned to the townsman, who was blinking as if he was just now taking in the details of his interrogator’s ragged condition.

Dag pointed to a lone dead tree, blown or fallen down in the field, and the townsman nodded again. As Dag swung the staff and limped toward it, he found Fawn at his left side. Her hand slipped around his arm, not yet in support, but ready if his leg folded again. He wondered if he should chase her back to Grace, spare her what promised to be some grim details. He dismissed his doubts—too late anyway—as they arrived at the thick trunk. She speaks farmer. With that thought, Dag guided Fawn around to sit between them. Both men could see over her head better than she could see around Dag, and…if this fellow’s most recent view of a Lakewalker patroller had been looking up the wrong end of a spear, he could likely use a spacer. We both could.

Dag breathed a little easier as the mob of townsmen went back to their digging. Now it was the Lakewalkers’ turn to stand in a tight cluster, holding their horses and watching Dag uneasily.

“This bogle was bad for everyone,” Dag began again. “Raintree Lakewalkers lost folks, too, and homes. Bonemarsh Camp’s been blighted—it’ll have to be abandoned for the next thirty or more years, I reckon. This place, longer.”

The man grunted, whether in agreement or disagreement was hard to tell. Maybe just in pain.

“Have very many people come back? To find each other?” Fawn put in.

The man shrugged. “Some. Most of us here knew we’d be coming as a burial party, but…some. I found my wife,” he added after a moment.

“That’s good, then,” said Fawn in a tone of encouragement.

“She’s buried over there,” the townsman added, pointing to a long mound of turned earth along the tree line. Mass grave, Dag thought.

“Oh,” said Fawn, more quietly.

“They waited for us to come back,” the man continued. “All the wives and daughters. All the boys. The old folks. It was like there was something strange and holy happened to their bodies, because they didn’t rot, not even in the heat. It’s like they were waiting for us to come back and find them.”

Dag swallowed, and decided this was not the moment to explain the more arcane features of deep blight.

“I’m so sorry,” said Fawn softly.

The man shrugged. “Could have been worse. Daisy and Cooper over there, they found each other alive just an hour ago.” He nodded toward a man and one of the few women, who were both sitting on the tail of a wagon. Staring blankly, with their backs to each other.

Fawn’s little hand touched the man’s knee; he flinched. “And…why worse?” Fawn could ask such things; Dag would not have dared. He was glad she was here.

“Daisy, she’d thought Coop had their youngsters with him. Coop, he thought she’d had them with her. They’d had four.” He added after a moment, “We’re saving the children for last, see, in case more folks show up. To look.” Dag followed his glance to a line of stiff forms lying half-hidden in the distant weeds. Behind it, the men were starting to dig a trench. It was longer than the finished mound.

“Are the orphans being sheltered somewhere off the blight?” Fawn asked. Thinking absent-gods-knew-what; about someone brokering some bright arrangement to hook up the lost half families with one another, if he knew her.

The man glanced down at her. Likely she looked as young to him as she did to Dag, for he said more gently, “No orphans here, miss.”

“But…” She sucked on her lower lip, obviously thinking through the implication.

“We’ve found none alive here under twelve. Nor many over.”

Dag said quietly, as she looked up at him as if he could somehow fix this, “Next to pregnant women, children have the richest grounds for a malice building up to a molt. It goes for them first, preferentially. When Bonemarsh was evacuated, the young women would have grabbed up all the youngsters and run at once. The others following as they could, with what animals and supplies they could get at fast, with the off-duty patrollers as rear guard. The children would have been got out in the first quarter hour, and the whole camp in as little more. They did lose folks beyond the range of warning—some of those makers we freed from the groundlock had stayed to try and reach a party of youngsters who’d gone out gathering that day.”