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By Root 405 0

Bonemarsh again by the growing dampness of the soil and air, and a brightening in the corner of his eye as the flat woods opened out into flatter water meadows. He had been staring at nothing but the coarse rusty hairs of Copperhead’s mane for the past hour, but looked up as Saun muffled an oath and kicked his tired horse into a canter. Above the Bonemarsh shore, life of a sort had returned: a flock of turkey vultures, the fingerlike fringes of their wing tips unmistakable on their black silhouettes as they wheeled. His impulse to canter after Saun was easily resisted, as neither he nor Copperhead was capable of more than a trot right now, the jolting of which would have tormented his sagging back. And…he didn’t want to look. He let his horse walk on.

As they neared the south margin of the marsh, Dag straightened, squinting in guarded hope. The vultures were circling over the woods back behind the village, not over the boggy patch along the shore. Maybe they’d merely found the unburied carcasses from the mud-men’s feast. Maybe…

The rest of his veiled patrol turned onto the shore track, and Dag craned his neck, heart thumping. There were several horses tethered around the scrubby trees, Saun’s now among them. The rest of the company had made it, good! Some of them, at least. Enough. Dag could see figures moving in the shade, then his heart clenched again at the glimpse of several long lumps on the ground. He couldn’t tell if the faces were covered or not. Bedrolls, please, let it be bedrolls and not shrouds… Had the company only just arrived? Because surely the next task would be to move the rescued makers off this half-blighted ground to some healthier campsite. But Obio was here, thank all the absent gods, striding out to wave greeting as they rode up.

“Dag!” Obio cried. “You’re here—absent gods be praised!” His voice seemed to hold more than just relief to see Dag alive. It had the shaken timbre of a man with a crisis desperately seeking someone else to hand it to. One of us is thanking the absent gods too soon, I think.

Dag tried to get both eyes open at once and brace his spine. At least enough to dismount, after which he was determined not to climb back into that saddle again for a long, long time. He slid down and clung to his stirrup leather for a moment, partly for support as he woozily adjusted to standing again, partly because he could barely remember what he was trying to do.

Saun’s anxious voice brought him back to the moment. “You have to see this, Captain!”

He turned, moistened his lips. Got out, “How many? Did we lose.” He felt too close to weeping, and he feared frightening Saun with his fragility. He wanted to explain, reassure: Fellows get like this after, sometimes. You’ll see it, if you’re around long enough.

But Saun was babbling on: “Everyone’s alive that was yesterday. Except now there’s a new problem.”

In a dim effort to fend it all off for just a moment longer, like a man pulling his blanket over his head when called from his bedroll by raucous comrades, Dag blinked at Obio, and asked in a voice raspy with fatigue, “When did you get here?”

“Last night.”

“Where is everyone?”

“We’ve set up a camp about a mile east, just off the blight.” Obio waved toward a distant, greener tree line. “I rested the company yesterday morning, then sent scouts out after you. I started us all toward here at midafternoon, closing up the distance in case, you know. We were getting pretty worried toward dusk, when my scouts hadn’t come back and my flankers ran into a couple of mud-men. They did for them pretty quick, but it was plain you hadn’t got the malice when you’d planned.”

“No. Later. Couple hours after midnight, about twenty miles south.”

“So Saun just said. But if—well, here’s Griff, my scout who found this. Let him tell.”

A worried-looking fellow of about Dirla’s age came up and gave Dag a nod. Griff had been walking for ten years, and in Dag’s experience was levelheaded and reliable. Which made his current rumpled, wild-eyed appearance just that much more disturbing.

“Gods, Dag, I’m so glad you’re