“Chances are,” said Fawn, “we can circle back later and collect our gear again. If we live. And if we don’t live, we won’t need it anyway, right? ”

Sage still looked torn.

Whit put in helpfully, “Sage, your anvil would be the last thing thieves would run off with. It takes two fellows just to lift it!”

“Not if it’s still in the wagon. They can just take the whole rig.”

“We’ll have the mules,” said Fawn. Cleverly not suggesting that a malice could just chain up its mud-men slaves to haul it all off, good girl.

Dag gave her a grateful nod.

Sage wavered, then resigned himself to unhitching his team, Indigo helping. Dag hurried to greet Remo and Neeta, returning on foot from scouting up toward either ridge.

“Nothing up on my side within groundsense range,” reported Remo.

“Mine either,” said Neeta. “No physical signs, either. Just animal tracks and old travelers’ camps.”

Dag eyed the high ground overlooking them with disfavor; that there was no hostile eye up there spying on them now didn’t mean there hadn’t been an hour ago, or any time this morning.

“Should we feed folks while we can? ” asked Fawn.

She was thinking, as always. Dag said, “Hand snacks only. Don’t light a fire.”

Everything waited on Sumac and Barr. The company was actually closer to the next big settlement riding forward than back, and the passes were about the same climb in either direction. At least the road behind was known to the farmers now. But until they actually located the malice, it was a guess which direction was truly safer. If the malice proved sessile he’d go after it with a quarter patrol without hesitation, Dag decided, but if it was more advanced, sense demanded they go neither south nor north, but cut across country west to Laurel Gap Camp and the nearest reinforcements. Or did it? Dag imagined dragging this whole gaggle of farmers over fifty miles of broken terrain, mud-men in pursuit, and bit his lip. He would certainly have to send a pair of patroller couriers swiftly on ahead. Reducing the farmer youngsters’

Lakewalker guardians by two… He turned to more immediate calculations.

“Rase, let me see your sharing knife.”

The boy already had it out of his saddlebags and slung around his neck, good. He pulled it out on its thong and displayed it; Dag ran his hand lightly over the sheath. A good making. “Seems sound,” he said aloud. “If we take on a sessile, you’ll be the centerpiece of the attack. This is the experience you came north to get; it just came on a little sooner than you expected, is all.”

Rase’s nostril’s flared, in pride and fear. “Yes, sir.”

“Whose heart’s death is in there? ”

“My great-grandfather’s. About two years back.”

“I see.” Dag touched his forehead in respectful salute. “How’s your ground veiling? Have you been keeping up your drills? ” With Sumac as his patrol leader, Rase surely ought to have been.

“Yes, sir!”

“Good. I carry a primed knife, too, but I’ll hold mine in reserve.”

“It’s lucky we have two knives in this patrol,” said Rase.

“That wasn’t luck, that was preparation. Know the difference. Preparation, you can control.” He gave the young patroller an encouraging grip on the shoulder, which made Rase flash an earnest smile.

Reminded, Dag turned away to rummage through his own saddlebags.

His new bonded knife came to hand first, and he slipped its strong braided cord over his neck and tucked the dark sheath into his shirt.

Next, sifted farther down, he found his primed knife-dodgy, first, and unsupervised making that it was. The sheathed bone itself lay lightly on his chest, but the weight of ugly memories it held dragged like Sage’s anvil. Well, if the renegade Crane’s cruel deeds had any redemption, this was it.

He turned to find Fawn watching him, her dark eyes grave. Her lips moved as if to speak, then pressed closed; she gestured down the stream instead. “So, uh… what’s the matter with Arkady? ”

The maker sat on the creek bank in the midst of a patch of green horsetails, his head bowed to his knees.

“The mud-man, likely. The trained sensitivity that makes good makers also unfits them for patrol. Malice spoor hits them too hard.”

Fawn frowned at him. “You’ve been doing sensitivity drills with Arkady for the past two, three months. What’s that going to do to you? ”

Dag sighed. “I’m not real anxious to test it. We’ll just have to see.”

She came nearer; her little hand rose to trace the walnut-stained knife sheath hidden under his shirt. “I suppose you have to wear this. Just don’t… don’t do anything stupid with it, all right? Remember what you promised.”

Not while I’m aboveground and breathing, her words echoed in the hollows of his mind. “I won’t forget.”

She nodded sternly. Abruptly, he lifted her up, hugged her, twirled her around, and kissed her on the forehead.

“What was that in aid of? ” she puffed in pleased surprise, righting herself as he set her back down.

“Nothing. Just because.”

She ducked her head in a firm nod. “That’s a good reason.”

The farmers were bickering with one another and with the patrollers, but all were making steady progress at sorting out mounts for a retreat, so Dag didn’t attempt to interfere. Packsaddles were rapidly refitted for riders, emptied of their loads and padded with blankets.

Inevitably, Dag supposed, the Basswoods’ so-called riding horse had no saddle. He wondered whether it would be better to distribute the two children with their parents, or with the best riders, which would be a couple of the patrollers. Assuming everyone headed in the same direction.

He foresaw another argument, there. Ah, gah. His brain was doing that mad thing again, running unstoppably and repeatedly down every possible and impossible scenario, even though he knew blighted well that the world never delivered him his expectations.

Fawn brought him a chunk of cheese wrapped in cold pan bread left from the morning. He munched it along with a few swallows of flat, tepid water from his water bottle while he walked a tense perimeter along the turbid creek and around the too-noisy camp, his groundsense straining outward. It was still Arkady, and not Dag, who first lifted his head from his knees and turned his face north. Dag jogged to join him as Arkady stumbled out onto the road and looked up it.

Arkady’s lips parted in horror, and he went greener than when he’d first seen the mud-man. Sumac’s horse was galloping wildly toward them. The stirrups flapped and swung from its empty saddle.

Every patroller in range turned to stop the runaway with a summoning, so hard that the poor beast tumbled to its knees. It grunted up and stood trembling, lathered white between its legs and down its shoulders.

Dag ran up, looking it over for blood or wounds, trying frantically to remember if Sumac had been wearing her leather coat when she rode off in the heat. It wasn’t tied behind the cantle…

Arkady touched the empty saddle and groaned, “No…”

“She’s a Redwing,” Dag said through his teeth. “She lands on her feet. We are survivors…” He whirled and bellowed, “Whit! Fawn, Berry! Get those blighted farmers mounted up! Patrollers, to me!”

People scurried, yelled, stomped. Argued. The patrollers led their horses up and stood in a ragged line, awaiting orders. In an agonized voice, Arkady said, “Go!”

Dag looked up. A mile off, a horse bearing two riders popped over a rise into sight and his groundsense range simultaneously. “Wait,” Dag said.

Arkady’s face lifted, following his gaze. It felt almost uncouth to be watching an expression so painfully exposed, a man’s last hope returned to him.

Gods, Sumac, Dag thought. If the pair of us don’t have heart failure before this is all over, it won’t be your fault. And then she could inherit her captaincy, clever girl. Agonizing minutes passed as the laboring horse cantered nearer.