Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [101]
As Dirla began a description of the company’s hard ride west, Fawn realized the pair must have come to find Hoharie, not her. Why? Get to the part about Dag, blight you, Dirla!
“…we came up on Bonemarsh about noon, but the malice had moved—south twenty miles, we found out later, launching a big attack toward Farmer’s Flats. Dag wouldn’t let us stop for anything, even those poor makers. I’d never seen anything like it. The malice had enslaved the grounds of these Bonemarsh folk, somehow making them cook up a new batch of mud-men for it, or so Dag claimed. It left them tied to trees. The patrol was pretty upset when Dag ordered us to leave them in place, but Mari and Codo came in on his side, and Dag had this look on his face that made us afraid to press him, so we rode on.”
Fawn gnawed her knuckles through Dirla’s excited description of the veiled patrol slipping through an enemy-occupied farm at night, the breathless scramble up a hill, the rush upon a bizarre crude tower. “My partner Mari had almost made it to the top when the malice jumped down—must have been over twenty feet. Like it was flying. I never knew a malice could look so beautiful…Utau went for it. I had my ground shut tight, but later Utau said the malice just peeled his open like popping the husk off a hickory nut. He thought he was done for, but then Dag, who didn’t even have a sharing knife, went for the thing barehanded. Bare-hooked, anyway. It left Utau and turned on him. Mari shouted for me and threw me down her knife, and I didn’t quite see what happened then. Anyway, I drove Mari’s knife into the thing, and all its bright flesh…burst. Horrible. And I thought it was over, and we were all home alive, and it was a miracle. Utau staggered over and draped himself on me till Razi could get to him—and then we saw Dag.”
Fawn rocked, hunched tight with her arms wrapping her waist to keep from interrupting. Or screaming.
Dirla went on, “He was passed out in the dirt, stiff as a corpse, with his ground wrapped up so tight it was stranglin’ him, and no one could get through to try to make a match or a reinforcement, though Mari and Codo and Hann all tried. For the next few hours, we all thought he was dying. Half-ground-ripped, like Utau, but worse.”
“Wait,” said Hoharie. “Wasn’t he physically injured at all?”
Dirla shook her head. “Maybe knocked around a bit, but nothing much. But then, around dawn, he just woke up. And got up. He didn’t look any too good, mind you, but he made it onto his horse somehow and pushed us all back to Bonemarsh. Seems he was fretting over those makers we’d left, as well he might.
“When we arrived, the rest of the company had made it in, but those makers—their groundlock didn’t break when the malice died, and no one could figure out why not. Worse, anyone who tries to open grounds to them gets drawn into their lock, too. Obio lost three patrollers finding that one out. Dag believes they’re all dying. Mari couldn’t get him to leave them, though she thinks he should be on the sick list—it’s like he’s obsessed. Though by the time us couriers left that evening, we’d at least got him to sleep for a while. Utau and Mari, they don’t like any of it one little bit. So”—Dirla turned her gaze on the medicine maker, her hands clutching each other in unaccustomed plea—“Dag said he wished he had you there, Hoharie, because he needs someone who knows folks’ grounds down deep. So I’m asking for you for him, because Dag—he got us through. He got us all through.”
Fairbolt cleared his throat. “Would you be willing to ride to Raintree, Hoharie?”
An appalled look came over the medicine maker’s face as she stared wildly around at her workplace. Fawn thought she could just about see the crowded roster of tasks here racing through Hoharie’s mind.
“—in an hour?” Fairbolt continued relentlessly.
“Fairbolt!” Hoharie huffed dismay. After a long, long moment she added, “Could you make it two hours?”
Fairbolt returned a short, satisfied nod. “I’ll have two patrollers ready