Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [98]
Dag was glad to give over this line of thought as Saun called, “Which should I start with? The biggest?”
Mari, her face screwed up in doubt as she stared down at the damp woman maker, said, “The smallest?”
“I’m not sure it matters,” Dag called back. “Just pick one.”
Saun stepped toward a mud pot, gripped his sword in both hands, braced his shoulders, squinted, and struck. Squalling and splashing rose from the hole, and flying mud; Saun grimaced, pulled back, and struck hastily again.
“What was it?” Mari called.
“Beaver. I think. Or maybe woodchuck.” Saun jumped back, looking sick, as the splashing died away.
Carro’s cry wrenched Dag’s attention around. The makers—all the groundlocked folk—were writhing and moaning in their bedrolls, as if in pain—deep, inarticulate animal sounds. The other two on-duty patrollers hurried to their sides, alarmed. The makers did not seem to be actually convulsing, so Dag stifled a wild look around for something to shove between teeth besides his hook, bad idea, or his fingers.
Artin’s breathing passed from labored to choked. Carro pulled down his blanket and pressed her ear to his chest. “Dag, this isn’t good.”
“No more, Saun!” Dag called urgently over his shoulder, and bent to Artin’s other side. The smith’s lips were turning a leaden hue, and his eyelids fluttered.
“His heartbeat’s going all wrong,” said Carro. “Sounds like partridge wings.”
Just before the archer shoots the bird out of the air? Dag continued the unspoken thought. His heart is failing. Blight it, blight it…
Saun hurried back; Dag raised his glance from Saun’s muddy boots to his suddenly drained face. Saun’s lips parted, but no sound came out. Dag needed no words to interpret that particular appalled look, of a heart going hollow with fear and guilt. You should not shoulder such a burden, boy. No one should. But someone had to.
Not today, blight it.
Help might be coming, if the makers could be kept alive till then. Somehow. He remembered, for some reason, his impulsive attack on the malice’s cave back in Glassforge. Any way that works, old patroller.
“I’m going to try a ground match,” Dag said abruptly, moving to get a better grip on Artin’s shuddering body. “Dance his heart back to the right beat, if I can.” As he had once done for Saun.
Mari’s voice called sharply, “Dag, no!”
He was already opening his ground. Finding his way into the other’s body through his ground. Pain on pain, clashing rhythms, but Dag’s dance was the stronger one. The true world rushed back into his awareness, blight and glory and all, and he became aware of how keenly he’d missed his groundsense, as if he’d been walking around for days with the best part of himself bloodily amputated. Dance with me, Artin.
Dag breathed satisfaction as he felt the smith’s heart and lungs take up a steadier, stronger cadence once more. Dag did not share in such shocking pain as Saun’s injuries, but he could feel the fragility in the maker’s ground, how close it was to the edge of another such fall into disorder and death. Were the others as weakened? Dag’s perceptions widened in increasing fascination.
All the Lakewalkers’ grounds were wound about and penetrated by a subtle gray structure like ten thousand tangled threads. The threads combined and darkened, running out like strands of smoke to the mud-men’s pots. The mud-men’s grounds were the strangest of all: turned black, strong, compellingly human