Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [134]
The Raintree man continued, “I’ve met your patrols, run across your camps—they never invited me in, mind, more like invited me to move along—but I’d never seen Lakewalkers run before.”
“They went streaming past us like rabbits, when we got up north of the Flats,” said a crewman in a faintly scornful tone.
“Now, that was the women and their young shavers, mostly,” said Chicory in a fair-minded way.
“Malices snatch the youngsters first, by preference,” Dag said. “When a malice goes on the move, Lakewalkers have learned to get the little ones out of the path as fast as they can, with the rest—off-duty patrollers, other adults—for rearguard. Likely you didn’t get far enough north to meet the rearguard, or the malice might have taken you, too.”
“We met plenty of them mud-men,” Bearbait put in, face darkening in memory. “Both before and after they lost their wits. Ugly mugs, they were.”
“The malice makes them up out of animals it catches, you know,” Fawn said. “By groundwork.” She went on to describe the grotesqueries of the mud-man nursery she’d seen at Bonemarsh Camp, with such simple directness that she seemed unaware of how thoroughly she was topping Chicory’s ghost story for keeping folks awake in their bedrolls later.
Upon reflection, Dag was not surprised to learn that Chicory’s troop had acquitted itself well upon the mud-men—hunting and killing bears and wild pigs would have trained them in both methods and daring. But Chicory’s face grew graver when he remarked, “Ugly as they was, they didn’t bother me near as much as those bogle-maddened farmers we met up with. Because they weren’t driven witless. It took you a little to realize they weren’t right in the head, because they walked and talked as if what they was doing was sensible, and they looked just like anybody else, too. You couldn’t hardly tell who was on what side, till they jumped on you, and then it could be too late. What we did find, though”—he rubbed his chin and frowned at Dag in the lantern glow and firelight—“was that if we rode in and grabbed up a few, and took ’em back south far enough, they’d come to their senses. We first found that out trying to capture one to make him talk. Got him far enough away and he talked, all right—not that you could make much sense of it through the crying. After that, we tried to catch as many as we could, and carry ’em away till they found their lost minds again. Wouldn’t any of them join us to go fight, after, though.”
Dag’s brows rose in increased respect. “I didn’t realize farmers could do that, on the edge of a malice war. Huh. That would be…good. Draw down the malice’s forces.”
“You took a chance,” said Remo in disapproval. “If you’d got too close to the malice, it might have caught your minds in turn, and then the malice’s forces would have been up, not down.”
Chicory said stiffly, “Seems to me such a chance would’ve overtaken a man sitting still, just the same.” He eyed Dag sidelong, and added, “I was never too fond of Lakewalkers, and the ones I’ve met have pretty much returned the favor—but I do admit, after last summer I don’t like blight bogles a whole lot more.”
The lead-in could not be spurned; Dag set Fawn to describing Greenspring again, as he did not think he could bear to. Fawn and Whit together managed a creditable explanation of groundsense and sharing knives. Barr and Remo listened with troubled faces to these deep Lakewalker secrets being bandied around; the boatmen, with expressions ranging from disturbed to disbelieving. Chicory, though, just grew quiet and intent.
Chicory seemed a village leader of sorts—if a terrible boatman—with initiative and wits enough on dry land to persuade friends and kin to follow him into discernible danger, for a good cause. His words,