Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [86]
“We tried,” said Obio. “Soon as you carry someone more than about a hundred paces away, they stop breathing.”
“Must have been a thrill finding that out,” Mari said.
“Oh, aye,” agreed Obio, fervent. “In the middle of the night last night.”
“And if you kill one of the mud-men in their mudholes,” Griff added morosely, “the people scream in their sleep. It’s pretty blighted unnerving. So we stopped that, too.”
“I figured,” said Obio, “that if—when—someone caught up with the malice, the groundlock would break on its own. I intended to detail a few folks to look after them and take the company on, as soon as enough scouts came back to give me a guess what we ought to try next. Except…you say you all did for the malice, but that ugly groundlock’s still holding tight.”
“Dirla did,” said Dag. “With Mari’s sharing knife. Your first personal kill, I believe, Dirla?” It was a shame that the congratulations and celebration that should have been hers were being overwhelmed in this new crisis.
Dirla nodded absently. She frowned past Dag at the unmoving figures in the shaded bedrolls. “Could there be more than one malice? And that’s why this link didn’t break last night?”
Dag tried to think this utterly horrible idea through logically, but his brains seemed to be slowly turning to porridge. His gut said no, right enough, but he couldn’t for the life of him say why, not in words.
Mari came to his rescue: “No. Because our malice would have turned all it had toward fighting the second, instead of chasing after farmers and Lakewalkers. Malices don’t team up—they eat each other.”
Well, that was true, too. But that’s not it.
“That’s what I thought,” said Dirla. “But then why didn’t this stop when the malice died, like what it does to the farmers and the mud-men?”
Maddening question. Lakewalkers, it must have to do with Lake-walkers…“All right,” sighed Dag. “I’m thinking…we got water down those folks yesterday. If we can get more water and some sort of food—gruel, soup, I don’t know—down them again, we can buy a little time, maybe.”
“Been doing that,” said Obio.
Bless your wits. Dag nodded. “Buy time to think. Keep a close eye, wait for the scouts—then decide. Depending, I’m thinking we might split the company—send some volunteers to help the Raintree folks with the cleanup, and the rest home maybe as early as tomorrow morning.” So that Oleana might not, due to Fairbolt’s robbed pegboard, find itself facing a similar runaway malice war next season.
The creeping alarm of this unnatural groundlock upon a bunch of already-nervy patrollers was clearly contagious. At this point, Dag could scarcely tell if his own sick unease was from the makers or their distraught caretakers. “Blight it, I wish I had Hoharie here. She works with people’s grounds all the time. Maybe she’d have an idea.” He might as well wish for that flock of turkey vultures to spiral down, grab him, and fly him away home, while he was at it. He sighed and cast an eye over his exhausted, bleary comrades. “Everyone who was with my veiled patrol is now off duty. Ride on over to the camp—get food, sleep, a wash, whatever you want. Utau, you’re on the sick list till I say otherwise.” Speaking of reasons to wish for the medicine maker.
Utau roused himself enough to growl, “I like that! If that malice scored me, it scored you a lot worse. I know what I feel like. Why are you still walking around?”
A question Dag didn’t care to probe just now, even if his wits had been working. Utau, it occurred to him, had been the only other patroller with his groundsense open, if involuntarily, in those moments of confused terror last night when Dag and the malice had closed on each other. What had he perceived? Evidently not Dag’s disastrous attempt to rip the malice in return. Dag temporized, “Until Razi says otherwise, then.” Razi grinned and cast him an appreciative half salute; Utau snorted. Dag added, “I’m going to lay me a bedroll down here, shortly.”
“On this blight?” said Saun doubtfully.
“I don’t want to be a mile away if something changes