Horizon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  She balanced and rebalanced the sharing knife in her hands, turning it over and around. Set the steel to a knobby bit on the hilt. Pressed. The bit flew off with a faint snap.

  Everyone held their breaths. But the bone blade stayed intact.

  Fawn swallowed, set her steel to lift a longer sliver, and leaned into her next cut.

  21

  The scent of a campfire, drifting in the chill dawn air, warned Fawn, Whit, and Berry to get off the Trace and take to the woods once more. Sumac was right about smoke smell carrying, Fawn thought, then wondered if Dag’s niece was still alive. Earlier they’d discovered where the remains of the company, herded by the malice’s mud-creatures, had tromped back onto the road, right enough, but if the patrollers were still around they’d left no mark. Following the slight acrid whiff upwind, they came to what was plainly a long-established stopping place along a creek—and found their quarry. No, not our quarry; our bait.

  Prior travelers had stripped the woods of burnable deadfall near the big clearing, but Berry, scouting ahead, found a pile of old rotting logs, too damp and punky and moss-grown to burn, shaded by huge old mountain-laurel bushes and a spreading white pine; by the time they crept beneath to take stock, color was seeping back into Fawn’s vision as the last stars were swallowed by the steely sky. The day would turn hot and fine once the sun rose above the eastern ridge, but right now all was a shadowless damp. And an eerie quiet. A whimper from Plum, quickly muffled by her mama, came faintly to their ears, and Fawn was reminded that sounds carried both ways.

  More than their captured company huddled around the fire; maybe a dozen tea caravan muleteers and a few other unlucky Trace travelers were also collected, sitting or lying down in sodden exhaustion, or snoring. In the meadow opening out beyond, mules munched and crunched, big gray shapes moving through the wet grass. They seemed to have their harnesses off, so evidently the muleteers had retained enough of their wits to care for their animals. Fawn wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  “See that malice anywheres?” whispered Whit.

  Fawn peered over the mossy log. Balanced on a dead tree branch on the other side of the clearing, what seemed a tall cloaked figure moved, and she caught her breath, but then she spotted another, draped from a lower branch like dirty washing, and realized they were only a pair of mud-bats. The one above shuffled in an irritated way, then swung to hang head down; the one beneath whined uncomfortably, and clawed its way back upright. Neither seemed to like its new position any better.

  A couple of big, naked shapes sat cross-legged at the far edge of the circle of captives, and Fawn realized they were ordinary mud-men—new made, or seized from the other malice? Their lumpish forms made her think maybe they were spoils of the earlier clash, the one that—it was hard not to think of it as our malice—had been fleeing.

  Berry followed her gaze, gripped her arm. Breathed, “Can they sense us?”

  “I guess not,” Fawn breathed back, when none of the dozing creatures roused in suspicion.

  Dag had said their shields didn’t make their grounds as invisible as that of a fully veiled patroller. Were these early creations lacking groundsense, or did the smudged grounds simply not catch their interest? Maybe we look like rocks. Fawn tried to crouch as still and rock-like as possible, to keep up the illusion.

  “When d’you think the malice will come back?” whispered Whit into Fawn’s ear; she had to strain to make out the words. At least she didn’t have to warn him to keep his voice down.

  She also made her reply as voiceless as she could. “Not sure. If it’s past the stage of ground-ripping everybody on sight, and it seems this one is, next thing a malice does is try to gather forces to make attacks. ’Cept there’s nothing around here to attack. It’ll have to march everyone forty miles up the road to even reach the next village.” She hesitated. “The Glassforge malice started to dig a mine, pretty early on, but that might have been ’cause it ate—ground-ripped—a miner. If this one’s been eating muleteers and traveling folks, it may just want to traipse away up the Trace.”

  “Huh.” Whit settled in tighter to the earth.

  They might have a long wait till their ambush. That would be bad. Fawn could feel her nervous energy leaching away in exhaustion. This was a well-watered country, so they hadn’t gone thirsty in the night, but no one had eaten since noon yesterday. Or slept. A wave of nausea swept her, but it wasn’t as bad as the sick chill from being reminded of what she risked. Oh gods, if the baby made her throw up, could she do so in utter silence? Don’t think about it, it just makes it worse. She swallowed and breathed through her mouth.

  To distract herself, she counted heads. All their company seemed still to be here, and together, except, disturbingly, Calla and Indigo. An ice lump formed under her breastbone as she realized that the four bodies in a huddled heap near the road weren’t sleeping. But all were strangers. Had the muleteers redeemed their comrades for burial, or were the mud-men just saving the corpses for breakfast? She swallowed again, harder. If the mud-men were properly frugal, they ought to consume the oldest meat first, before starting on a more tender morsel like, say, Plum. Only if the malice has ground-ripped a good farmwife, I suppose. And, It might still get that chance.

  Whit shifted uncomfortably, readjusted the lie of his crossbow. Touched the cord of the sharing-knife sheath, now hung around his neck. “If it flies around, how do we lure it close enough to get a good shot?”

  “I figure our shields will puzzle it, if it sees us. It’ll fly closer to look. Then we get it. You get it,” Fawn corrected herself.

  “Maybe you two better draw back.”

  Berry shook her head. “Somebody might have to keep attackers off you till you get your shot.” Her hand tightened around a long, stout stick, which Fawn had no doubt the riverwoman knew how to use.

  Fawn felt less useful. If Whit’s first shot missed, but fell without breaking, she might be able to scurry and retrieve it. Depending on whether anyone, malice or mud-men or mind slaves, realized what was going on. Giving Whit not one chance, but two. But probably not three. She did not mention the dodgy scheme aloud.

  The light grew; from the woods, a redcrest trilled incessantly, cheer-cheer-cheer, and was answered by another. A few figures around the smoldering fire stirred, lay back down. Fawn spotted some, but not all, of the company’s packs and bedrolls lying scattered about. Would the muleteers share their food? Would the malice realize it needed to feed its new troops? If so, would it bring people food, or bags of bugs…? Fawn blinked rapidly, fighting a soft slide into the hallucinations of dream. This was nightmare enough with her eyes wide open. Maybe the bat-malice only came out at night. They would have to withdraw and hide till then; there was no way they could stay awake and undetected till nightfall in this…

  Whit’s breath went out in a guarded huff. Fawn looked up through the laurel leaves.

  A bat-shape circled in an un-bat-like graceful glide. She could not guess its size against the blank blue sky, but its bone-shaking aura rolled before it like sea waves. She wanted to run now, but of course it was too late. It wasn’t courage, nor any fancied usefulness, that kept her crouching. Papa always said Mama should have named me Cat, because my curiosity would kill me someday. Maybe today? Yet beneath her fear, curiosity refused to surrender. Will my stupid-farmer-girl idea work? She wet her lips and waited.

  “All right,” Whit muttered. He fumbled the modified knife out of its sheath—Fawn took it back from him so he wouldn’t drop it while he was cranking his bow—stood up, and stepped forward. Breaking cover too soon, maybe, but oh gods that he could stand up at all…Fawn scrambled after and pressed the bone bolt into his sweat-damp hand.

  The malice circled overhead, looking down curiously. Too high? Moving too fast? It flapped it vast wings and went higher. “Whit, wait,” Fawn gasped as he raised the crossbow, wavering after its target.

  Instead of the malice descending, the company rose to its feet. Turned faces their way. Started to m
ove in a stumbling bunch. Finch called anxiously, “No, you don’t have to kill them! Just pull those walnut necklaces off them, and they’ll be fine!”

  Oh gods…!

  Berry took a grip on her stick and stepped forward grimly. Fawn, desperate, jumped out and waved her arms frantically skyward. “Down here, you stupid bat-thing, you malice-bat…stupid thing! This is what you want! Come and get it!” She danced back and forth. Oh, come and get it. “Stupid malice!”

  Whit gulped as the malice, with another lazy wing flap, dropped suddenly closer, eyeing them. Still beyond reach of any knife or spear. More wing beats sent gusts of cellar smell tumbling toward them as it hovered, legs drawn up. Fawn wondered how long their shields would stand up to the malice’s full concentration, then realized she was about to find out, because they had surely won all its attention now. Its legs extended—it was coming in for a landing. The morning grew darker, like a cloud drawing across the sun, but the sky was cloudless and the sun wasn’t up over the ridge yet…

  The shaking crossbow steadied, Fawn knew well at what cost. Yes, Whit! A snap of release, a deep thrum from the string, a white flash as the bone bolt flew upward. A thwack-crack as it entered the malice’s abdomen, spread broad as a target as its wings stretched to scoop the air.

  The malice’s surprised shriek pierced Fawn’s ears, dimming abruptly as darkness descended on her eyes. Am I being ground-ripped? But Dag said it would hurt… Through the boiling black clouds, Fawn saw the malice’s wings blow off in both directions and tumble earthward as its body disintegrated. Rank matter showered down. The blackness shrank inward, hard and tight. Was this death? Oh baby, oh Dag, I’m sorry—

  Dag came awake on a sudden, indrawn breath, and stared around, heart thudding for no reason that he could discern. All was quiet, the woods fog-shrouded, but the world had lightened since he’d dozed off under this ledge in a black chill. The sky shaded upward from gray to pale blue. An hour after dawn, perhaps? It would be at least another two hours before the sun cleared the ridge and began to warm them, but already the mist was shredding away as the air began to stir. His two charges still slept; or at least, Owlet slept, and Pakko lay in a pain-hazed doze that Dag could find no reason to disrupt.

  Fearfully, Dag tested his marriage cord coiled on his upper arm. She’s still alive. At least that. The tiny hum seemed disturbingly muted, as it had ever since Dag had anchored Fawn’s walnut shield into her ground. Was it more muted now? Why? Was Fawn traveling farther from him? Ordinary distances had never affected their cords before. Dag tried to encourage himself: Sumac will know to look after her, but the dire part of his mind that wouldn’t shut up had to add, If Sumac is still alive. Would his scout Tavia find any survivors at all in the valley, let alone Arkady?

  He rolled his shoulders, propped uncomfortably against the rock wall, and scowled at his right leg, stretched out before him. He’d finally loosened his boot for fear that cutting off circulation would lead to cutting off his purpling foot, and as he’d expected, the ankle was now too swollen to tie it again. Soon he would need to get up and go refill their water bottle. He tried to muster a proper medicine maker’s concern for his charges, instead of frustrated rage for being fixed here. He and Tavia had made Pakko as clean and comfortable as possible before she’d left last night. Dag’s last reserve was one strip of dried plunkin in his pocket. Pakko’s body was the most depleted, but his pain muffled his hunger, and keeping Owlet silent might prove the more urgent task…

  With his thoughts chasing their tails like crazed cats, all hope of dozing off again faded. As silently as possible, Dag levered himself to his feet with his stick, gathered up the water bottle, and began hobbling down the hillside. This was going to take a while.

  When Dag at length returned, Owlet was awake, cranky, and fearful. Pakko was eyeing the farmer child with a glazed sort of alarm. Even in his dreadful pain, the patroller was holding a tolerable ground veiling, which won both Dag’s gratitude and respect; Owlet, of course, blazed like a beacon.

  “Oh, good, you’re back,” said Pakko. A tension in his tone reminded Dag of just how long Pakko had lain up here alone, lost and hopeless.

  Dag settled himself by the man’s side, leg out. “Ayup. Water?”

  “It’ll just make me piss myself again.” Pakko grimaced, looked away, hiding helpless shame.

  “I’m a medicine maker. I’ll deal with it.” Dag revised this slightly. “You help guide the bag, I’ll hold your head up.” He slipped his hand behind Pakko’s head; Pakko raised an arm, though it made him gasp. Together, they managed to get another good drink down the injured man. Absent gods, what a pair. We’re not half a patroller between us.

  Owlet circled around Pakko and crept into Dag’s lap; Dag gave him a drink, too, with rather more spillage, but the threat of howls passed off with only a few sniffles.

  In the daylight, Pakko squinted at Dag in new curiosity, Dag hoped not too tinged with dismay. “Except for the hand, I’d have taken you for a patroller.”

  “I was, once.”

  “Is that why you went for maker, instead? How was it you were traveling with farmers?” He looked over at the scabbed and grubby Owlet as if the child were the most unlikely part of all this.

  “It’s a long story. A couple of long stories.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Pakko’s air of indifference was a bit too carefully held. Some tale-telling would keep his rescuer safely planted under his eye, right.

  Dag sighed. “Yeah, me neither.” But before he could choose a beginning, a ragged motion through the trees snagged his eye. He sat up, squinting, then grabbed his stick and clambered abruptly to his feet; Owlet, dumped, whimpered in protest. “’Scuse me.”

  He ducked out from under the overhang, and dared to flick open his groundsense. Mud-bat! He snapped closed again. Limped a few dozen paces along the hillside to where a rock slide had plowed open a wider view of the sky, and of the treetops falling away.

  Several hundred paces below, a laboring mud-bat crashed into the branches, fought loose, and struggled for altitude again. It was flying very badly. Injured? Burdened with a load or a captive? It was too far off, Dag thought, for him to pull yesterday’s risky trick with a precisely placed ground-rip, yet if it was taking a prisoner back to its malice, he’d have to try something. But as the creature pumped frantically upward, Dag saw that its back claws were empty.

  It lurched nearer. Had it seen him, was it attacking? One bent boot knife and a cut sapling weren’t going to be enough to bring it down. Dag took a breath, opened himself again, reached.

  Stood stunned. There was nothing in the mud-bat’s ground but bat, natural bat. Voiceless, wordless, stripped of reason. Terrified and confused to find itself in this all-wrong, too-heavy, dying body. Frantic to reach the cool refuge of its dimly remembered cave, far to the east, out of the horrible hurtful light. In the hot speed of its flight, with no support from its malice master, its disintegration was proceeding rapidly.

  There was no mistaking the ground of a mud-man that had lost its wits; Dag had seen the little tragedy played out countless times, most recently two days ago.

  Someone has dealt with the malice!

  A good half of the thousand pounds of worry weighing Dag’s heart lifted. His mouth opened, and his lips drew back in an uncontrollable grin.

  The mud-bat crashed again, rose again, and finally tumbled out of range over the ridgeline. Dag tottered back to their shelter. If he could have, he would have danced the distance.

  “Hey, hey, hey, Pakko!”

  “What is it?” Pakko clutched the only weapon he had, the water bottle.

  “No, good news! Your patrol must have found the malice’s lair! Its mud-men are skinned of their wits and scattering. If we just hold out, help has to come. My people might get up here by the end of the day. Yours could even be out looking for you already! They were what, you said, only about fifteen miles north of here when you parted ways?”

  Pakko made a sound of prof
ound relief. His head fell back limply. Despite everything, his lips, too, stretched in a grin.

  With a sense of joy, Dag flung his own ground open wide, releasing that cramped, deaf, blind, No one here and changing it for a flag of welcome, Here we are! Come get us! Pakko’s grin went wider. Even Owlet looked up and cooed, bemused by the sudden cheer of the mysterious, scary grown-ups.

  Dag escorted Owlet back to the streamlet for an overdue morning cleaning, then settled himself again and offered the child a celebratory half plunkin strip, which was grabbed with alacrity. Pakko accepted the other half. The child climbed back into his lap refuge, to gnaw and drool happily. “So, let me see.” Dag thought he might be babbling, but he didn’t care. Pakko was surely the most captive of audiences, and Owlet seemed to find the rumble of Dag’s voice soothing. “You asked for my life story.”

  “I sure do wonder how you stumbled onto me, I’ll say that,” Pakko allowed.

  “Well, I’m from Oleana, originally, but I took a walk around the lake…”

  Later, Dag passed some time tricking a few luckless squirrels and a mourning dove into becoming lunch, a process that both fascinated and fed the fretful Owlet. Peeled, cut up, and cooked on a toasting stick, the game produced hardly a mouthful, but Owlet’s was a little mouth. Dag was more worried for Pakko, who seemed barely able to swallow.

  It was midafternoon when Tavia arrived with Arkady, wonderfully sooner than Dag had dared hope. Unexpectedly, they also brought Calla, Indigo, and pack loads of supplies. Dag ducked out from under the ledge, where Owlet was napping, and hobbled forth to greet them.

  Arkady, still catching his breath from the climb, grabbed Dag by the shoulders as though he didn’t know whether to hug him or shake him. “I never thought I’d see you alive again! Ye gods, what horrible things have you been doing to your ground this time?”