Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [82]
Her dry voice spoke: “’Bout time you reported for duty again, patroller.”
He tried to move his lips.
Her hand pressed his brow. “That was a joke, Dag. You just lie there.” Her hand went to his, under blankets it seemed. “Finally warming up, too. Good.”
He swallowed and found his lost voice. “How many?”
“Eh?”
“How many died? Last night?” Assuming the malice kill was last night. He had mislaid days before, under unpleasantly similar conditions.
“Now you’ve seen fit to grace us with your gloomy face again—none.”
That couldn’t be right. Saun, what of Saun, left with the horses? Dag pictured the youth attacked in the dark by mud-men, alone, bloodied, overwhelmed…“Saun!”
“Here, Captain.” Saun’s anxiously smiling face loomed over Mari’s shoulder.
That must have been a dream or a hallucination. Or this was. Did he get to pick which? He drew breath enough to get out, “What’s happened?”
“Dirla took the malice—” Mari began.
“I got that far. Saw you drop your knife to her.” Mari’s son’s bone. He managed to moisten his lips. “Didn’t think you’d ever let that out of your hand.”
“Aye, well, I remembered your tale of how you and the little farmer girl got the Glassforge malice. Dirla was closer, and the malice was intent on Utau. I saw the chance and took it.”
“Utau?” he repeated urgently. Yes, the malice had been about to rip the ground from his body…
Mari gripped his shoulder through the blankets. “Malice grazed him, no question, but Razi brought him home. You, now—that’s the closest I’ve ever heard tell of anyone getting his ground ripped without actually dying. Never seen a man look more like a corpse and still breathe.”
“Drink?” said Saun, putting an arm under Dag’s shoulders to lift him a bit.
Oh, good idea. It was only stale water from a skin, but it was wonderfully wet water. Wettest he’d ever drunk, Dag decided. “Thankee’.” And after a moment, “How many of us lost…?”
“None, Dag,” said Saun eagerly. Mari frowned.
“Go on.”
“Eh, after that, it was all over but the shoutin’, of which there was the usual,” said Mari. “Sent two pairs to retrieve Saun and the horses, and kept the rest close to guard our camp from hazard. Let four off to sleep a bit ago.” She nodded across the fire toward some sodden unmoving bundles stretched on bedrolls. Dag raised his head to look. Beside one of them, Razi sat cross-legged; he smiled tiredly at Dag and sent him a vague salute.
“What of the farmer-slaves?”
“There weren’t as many right by here as we’d thought. Seems the malice had sent most of its slaves and mud-men marching off through the woods for some dawn attack on a town just northwest of Farmer’s Flats. I imagine they’re having a right mess down there this morning. Gods know what those poor farmers thought when the malice fog lifted from their minds and their mud-men scampered. I haven’t much tried to herd the folks we found here, though we did check out their camp, and suggest no one try to travel home alone. Most of ’em have gone off by now to try and find friends and family.”
Understandable; welcome, even. It might be cowardice, but Dag didn’t want to try to deal with distraught farmers this morning, atop everything else. Let the Raintree Lakewalkers take care of their own.
Dag’s brow wrinkled. “How many did we lose last night?”
Mari drew a long breath and leaned forward to peer into his face. “Dag, are you tracking me at all?”
“’Course I’m tracking you.” Dag unwound his left arm from his blankets and waved his hook at her. “How many fingers am I holding up?” Except it occurred to him that, on some very disturbing level, he did not know the answer.
Mari rolled her eyes in exasperation. Saun, bless him, looked adorably confused.
“Well, we still don’t know about those makers we left at Bonemarsh,” Saun offered hesitantly.
Mari turned to glare at him. “Saun, don’t you dare start that up again with him now.”
Yes, that was his missing piece, the thing he’d been trying so desperately to remember. Dag sighed, if not exactly in satisfaction.
“We haven’t heard from Obio and the company yet,” said