He looked up to see the woman-child standing a few paces back along the blood trail, staring at them both. Her eyes were huge and brown, like a terrified deer"s. At least she wasn"t screaming anymore. She frowned down at her late a.s.sailant, and an unvoiced Oh Oh ghosted from her tender, bitten lips. A livid bruise was starting up one side of her face, scored with four parallel red gouges. "He"s dead?" ghosted from her tender, bitten lips. A livid bruise was starting up one side of her face, scored with four parallel red gouges. "He"s dead?"

"Unfortunately. And unnecessarily. If he"d just lain still and waited for help, I"d have taken him prisoner."

She looked him up, and up, and down, fearfully. The top of her dark head, were they standing closer, would come just about to the middle of his chest, Dag judged. Self-consciously, he tucked his bow-hand down by his side, half out of sight around his thigh, and sheathed his knife.

"I know who you are!" she said suddenly. "You"re that Lakewalker patroller I saw at the well-house!"

Dag blinked, and blinked again, and let his groundsense, shielded from the shock of this death, come up again. She blazed in his perceptions. "Little Spark! What are you doing so far from your farm?"

Chapter 3.

The tall patroller was staring at Fawn as though he recognized her. She wrinkled her nose in confusion, not following his words. From this angle and distance, she could at last see the color of his eyes, which were an unexpected metallic gold. They seemed very bright in his bony face, against weathered skin tanned to a dark coppery sheen on his face and hand.

Several sets of scratches scored his cheeks and forehead and jaw, most just red but some bleeding. I did that, oh dear I did that, oh dear.

Beyond, the body of her would-be ravisher lay on the smoothed stones of the creek bank.

Some of his still-wet blood trickled into the creek, to swirl away in the clear water in faint red threads, dissipating to pink and then gone. He had been so hotly, heavily, frighteningly alive just minutes ago, when she had wished him dead. Now she had her wish, she was not so sure.

"I... it..." she began, waving an uncertain hand at, well, everything, then blurted, "I"m sorry I scratched you up. I didn"t understand what was coming at me." Then added, "You scared me." I think I've lost my wits I think I've lost my wits.

A hesitant smile turned the patroller"s lips, making him look for a moment like someone altogether else. Not so... looming. "I was trying to scare the other fellow."

"It worked," she allowed, and the smile firmed briefly before fleeing again.

He felt his face, glanced at the red smears on his fingertips as if surprised, then shrugged and looked back at her. The weight of his attention was startling to her, as though no one in her life had ever looked at her before, really looked; in her present shaky state, it was not a comfortable sensation.

"Are you all right otherwise?" he asked gravely. His right hand made an inquiring jerk. The other he still held down by his side, the short, powerful-looking bow c.o.c.ked at an angle out of the way by his leg. "Aside from your face."

"My face?" Her quivering fingertips probed where the simpleton had struck her. Still a little numb, but starting to ache. "Does it show?"

He nodded.

"Oh."

"Those gouges don"t look so good. I have some things in my saddlebags to clean them up.

Come away, here, come sit down, um... away."

From that. She eyed the corpse and swallowed. "All right." And added, "I"m all right. I"ll stop shaking in a minute, sure. Stupid of me."

With his open hand not coming within three feet of her, he herded her back toward the clearing like someone shooing ducks. He pointed to a big fallen log a way apart from the scuffed spot of her recent struggle and walked to his horse, a rangy chestnut calmly browsing in the weeds trailing its reins. She plunked down heavily and sat bent over, arms wrapped around herself, rocking a little. Her throat was raw, her stomach hurt, and though she wasn"t gasping anymore, it still felt as though she couldn"t get her breath back or that it had returned badly out of rhythm.

The patroller carefully turned his back to Fawn, did something to dismantle his bow, and rummaged in his saddlebag. More adjustments of some sort. He turned again, shrugging the strap of a water bottle over one shoulder, and with a couple of cloth-wrapped packets tucked under his left arm. Fawn blinked, because he seemed to have suddenly regained a left hand, stiffly curved in a leather glove.

He lowered himself beside her with a tired-sounding grunt, and arranged those legs. At this range he smelled, not altogether unpleasantly, of dried sweat, woodsmoke, horse, and fatigue.

He laid out the packets and handed her the bottle. "Drink, first."

She nodded. The water was flat and tepid but seemed clean.

"Eat." He held out a piece of bread fished from the one cloth.

"I couldn"t."

"No, really. It"ll give your body something to do besides shake. Very distractible that way, bodies. Try it."

Doubtfully, she took it and nibbled. It was very good bread, if a little dry by now, and she thought she recognized its source. She had to take another sip of water to force it down, but her uncontrolled trembling grew less. She peeked at his stiff left hand as he opened the second cloth, and decided it must be carved of wood, for show.

He wetted a bit of cloth with something from a small bottle-Lakewalker medicine?-and raised his right hand to her aching left cheek. She flinched, although the cool liquid did not sting.

"Sorry. Don"t want to leave those dirty."

"No. Yes. I mean, right. It"s all right. I think the simpleton clawed me when he hit me."

Claws. Those had been claws, not nails. What kind of monstrous birth... ?

His lips thinned, but his touch remained firm.

"I"m sorry I didn"t come up on you sooner, miss. I could see something had happened back on the road, there. I"d been trailing those two all night. My patrol seized their gang"s camp a couple of hours after midnight, up in the hills on the other side of Gla.s.sforge. I"m afraid I flushed them right into you."

She shook her head, not in denial. "I was walking down the road. They just picked me up like you"d pick up a lost... thing, and claim it was yours." Her frown deepened. "No... not just.

They argued first. Strange. The one who was... um... the one you shot, he didn"t want to take me along, at first. It was the other one who insisted. But he wasn"t interested in me at all, later. When-just before you came." And added under her breath, not expecting an answer, "What was was he?" he?"

"Racc.o.o.n, is my best guess," said the patroller. He turned the cloth, hiding browning blood, and wet it again, moving down her cheek to the next gash.

This bizarre answer seemed so entirely unrelated to her question that she decided he must not have heard her aright. "No, I mean the big fellow who hit me. The one who ran away from you. He didn"t seem right in the head."

"Truer than you guess, miss. I"ve been hunting those creatures all my life. You get so you can tell. He was a made thing. Confirms that a malice-your folk would call it a blight bogle- has emerged near here. The malice makes slaves of human shape for itself, to fight, or do its dirty work. Other shapes too, sometimes. Mud-men, we call them. But the malice can"t make them up out of nothing. So it catches animals, and reshapes them. Crudely at first, till it grows stronger and smarter. Can"t make life at all, really. Only death. Its slaves don"t last too long, but it hardly cares."

Was he gulling her, like her brothers? Seeing how much a silly little farm girl could be made to swallow down whole? He seemed perfectly serious, but maybe he was just especially good at tall tales. "Are you saying that blight bogles are real real?"

It was his turn to look surprised. "Where are you from, miss?" he asked in renewed caution.

She started to name the village nearest her family"s farm, but changed it to "Lumpton Market." It was a bigger town, more anonymous. She straightened, trying to marshal the casual phrase I'm a widow I'm a widow and push it past her bruised lips. and push it past her bruised lips.

"What"s your name?"

"Fawn. Saw... field," she added, and flinched. She"d wanted neither Sunny"s name nor her own family"s, and now she"d stuck herself with some of both.

"Fawn. Apt," said the patroller, with a sideways tilt of his head. "You must have had those eyes from birth."

It was that uncomfortable weighty attention again. She tried shoving back: "What"s yours?"

though she thought she already knew.

"I answer to Dag."

She waited a moment. "Isn"t there any more?"

He shrugged. "I have a tent name, a camp name, and a hinterland name, but Dag Dag is easier to shout." The smile glimmered by again. "Short is better, in the field. is easier to shout." The smile glimmered by again. "Short is better, in the field. Dag, duck Dag, duck! See? If it were any longer, it might be too late. Ah, that"s better."

She realized she"d smiled back. She didn"t know if it was his talk or his bread or just the sitting down quietly, but her stomach had finally stopped shuddering. She was left hot and tired and drained.

He restoppered his bottle.

"Shouldn"t you use that too?" she asked.

"Oh. Yeah." Cursorily, he turned the cloth again and swiped it over his face. He missed about half the marks.

"Why did you call me Little Spark?"

"When you were hiding above me in that apple tree yesterday, that"s how I thought of you."

"I didn"t think you could see me. You never looked up!"

"You didn"t act as though to wanted to be seen. It only seemed polite." He added, "I thought that pretty farm was your home."

"It was was pretty, wasn"t it? But I only stopped there for water. I was walking to Gla.s.sforge." pretty, wasn"t it? But I only stopped there for water. I was walking to Gla.s.sforge."

"From Lumpton?"

And points north. "Yes."

He, at least, did not say anything about, It's a long way for such short legs It's a long way for such short legs. He did say, inevitably, "Family there?"

She almost said yes yes, then realized he might possibly intend to take her there, which could prove awkward. "No. I was going there to look for work." She straightened her spine. "I"m a gra.s.s widow."

A slow blink; his face went blank for a rather long moment. He finally said, in an oddly cautious tone, "Pardon, missus... but do you know what gra.s.s widow gra.s.s widow means?" means?"

"A new widow," she replied promptly, then hesitated. "There was a woman came up from Gla.s.sforge to our village, once. She took in sewing and made cord and netting. She had the most beautiful little boy. My uncles called her a gra.s.s widow." Another too-quiet pause.

"That"s right, isn"t it?"

He scratched his rat"s nest of dark hair. "Well... yes and no. It"s a farmer term for a woman pregnant or with a child in tow with no husband in sight anywhere. It"s more polite than, um, less polite terms. But it"s not altogether kind."

Fawn flushed.

He said even more apologetically, "I didn"t mean to embarra.s.s you. It just seemed I ought to check."

She swallowed. "Thank you." It seems I told the truth despite myself, then It seems I told the truth despite myself, then.

"And your little girl?" he said.

"What?" said Fawn sharply.

He motioned at her. "The one you bear now."

Flat panic stopped her breath. I don't show! How can he know I don't show! How can he know? And how could he know, in any case, if the fruit of that really, really ill-considered and now deeply regretted frantic fumble with Sunny Sawman at his sister"s spring wedding party was going to be a boy or a girl, anyhow?

He seemed to realize he"d made some mistake, but to be uncertain what it was. His gesture wavered, turning to open-handed earnestness. "It was what attracted the mud-man. Your present state. It was almost certainly why they grabbed you. If the other a.s.sault seemed an afterthought, it likely was."

"How can you-what- why why?"

His lips parted for a moment, then, visibly, he changed whatever he"d been about to say to: "Nothing"s going to happen to you now." He packed up his cloths. Anyone else might have tied the corners together, but he whipped a bit of cord around them that he somehow managed to wind into a pull-knot one-handed.

He put his right hand on the log and shoved himself to his feet. "I either need to put that body up a tree or pile some rocks on it, so the scavengers don"t get to it before someone can pick it up. He might have people." He looked around vaguely. "Then decide what to do with you."

"Put me back on the road. Or just point me to it. I can find it."

He shook his head. "Those might not be the only fugitives. Not all the bandits might have been in the camp we took, or they might have had more than one hideout. And the malice is still out there, unless my patrol has got ahead of me, which I don"t think is possible. My people were combing the hills to the south of Gla.s.sforge, and now I think the lair"s northeast.

This is no good time or place for you, especially, to be wandering about on your own." He bit his lip and went on almost as if talking to himself, "Body can wait. Got to put you somewhere safe. Pick up the track again, find the lair, get back to my patrol quick as I can. Absent G.o.ds, I"m tired. Mistake to sit down. Can you ride behind me, do you think?"

She almost missed the question in his mumble. I'm tired too I'm tired too. "On your horse? Yes, but-"

"Good."

He went to his mount and caught up the reins, but instead of coming back to her, led it to the creek. She trailed along again, partly curious, partly not wanting to let him out of her sight.

He evidently decided a tree would be faster for stowing his prey. He tossed a rope up over the crotch of a big sycamore that overhung the creek, using his horse to haul the body up it. He climbed up to be sure the corpse was securely wedged and to retrieve his rope. He moved so efficiently, Fawn could scarcely spot the extra motions and accommodations he made for his one-handed state.

Dag pressed his tired horse over the last ridge and was rewarded on the other side by finding a double-rutted track b.u.mping along the creek bottom. "Ah, good," he said aloud. "It"s been a while since I patrolled down this way, but I recall a good-sized farm tucked up at the head of this valley."

The girl clinging behind his cantle remained too quiet, the same wary silence she"d maintained since he"d discussed her pregnant state. His groundsense, extended to utmost sensitivity in search for hidden threats, was battered by her nearby churning emotions; but the thoughts that drove them remained, as ever, opaque. He had maybe been too indiscreet.

Farmers who found out much about Lakewalker groundsense tended to call it the evil eye, or black magic, and accuse patrollers of mind reading, cheating in trade, or worse. It was always trouble.

If he found enough people at this farm, he would leave her in their care, with strong warnings about the half-hunt-half-war presently going on in their hills. If there weren"t enough, he must try to persuade them to light out for Gla.s.sforge or some other spot where they might find safety in numbers till this malice was taught mortality. If he knew farmers, they wouldn"t want to go, and he sighed in antic.i.p.ation of a dreary and thankless argument.

But the mere thought of a pregnant woman of any height or age wandering about in blithe ignorance anywhere near a malice"s lair gave him gruesome horrors. No wonder she"d shone so brightly in his groundsense, with so much life happening in her. Although he suspected Fawn would have been scarcely less vivid even before this conception. But she would attract a malice"s attention the way a fire drew moths.

By the time they"d straightened out the definition of gra.s.s widow gra.s.s widow, he had been fairly sure he had no need to offer her condolences. Farmer bed customs made very little sense, sometimes, unless one believed Mari"s theories about their childbearing being all mixed up with. their pretense of owning land. She had some very tart remarks on farmer women"s lack of control of their own fertility, as well. Generally in conjunction with lectures to young patrollers of both s.e.xes about the need to keep their trousers b.u.t.toned while in farmer territory.

Old patrollers, too.

Details of a dead husband had been conspicuously absent in Fawn"s speech. Dag could understand grief robbing someone of words, but grief, too, seemed missing in her. Anger, fear, tense determination, yes. Shock from the recent terrifying attack upon her. Loneliness and homesickness. But not the anguish of a soul ripped in half. Strangely lacking, too, was the profound satisfaction such life-giving usually engendered among Lakewalker women he"d known. Farmers, feh. Dag knew why his own people were all a little crazed, but what excuse did farmers have?

He was roused from his weary brooding as they pa.s.sed out of the woods and the valley farm came into sight. He was instantly ill at ease. The lack of cows and horses and goats and sheep struck him first, then the broken-down places in the split-rail fence lining the pasture. Then the absence of farm dogs, who should have been barking annoyingly around his horse by now. He stood in his stirrups as they plodded up the lane. House and barn, both built of weathered gray planks, were standing-and standing open-but smoke rose in a thin trickle from the char and ashes of an outbuilding.

"What is it?" asked Fawn, the first words she"d spoken for an hour.