Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [124]
“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.”
Fawn frowned. “I hadn’t heard that part of the tale. Did they find them in time?”
Dag sighed. “No. Some of the Bonemarsh folk who came back later recovered the bodies, finally. For a burial not so different than this.” He nodded toward the mounds; the townsman, listening, stared down and dug his boot heel into the dry soil, brows pinching in wonder. Yes, thought Dag. Witness her. Farmers can ask, and be answered. Won’t you try us?
“Did they take their—” Fawn shut up abruptly, remembering not to ask about knife-bones in front of farmers, Dag guessed. She just shook her head.
The townsman gave Dag a sidelong look. “You’re not from Bonemarsh. Are you.”
“No. My company rode over from Oleana to help out. We’re on our way home