Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold Read Free Book Online

place was raided by the bandits—or someone—about three days ago, I judge,”
    he told her. “No bodies.”
    “That’s good—yes?” she said, dark eyes growing unsure at whatever expression was leaking onto his features. He couldn’t think that it was anything but exhaustion.
    “Maybe. But if the people had run away, or been run off, news of this should have reached Glassforge by now. My patrol had no such word as of yesterday evening.”
    “Where did they all go, then?” she asked.
    “Taken, I’m afraid. If this malice is trying to take farmer slaves already, it’s growing fast.”
    “What—slaves for what?”
    “Not sure the malice even knows, yet. It’s a sort of instinct with malices.
    It’ll figure it out fast enough, though. I’m running out of time.” He was growing dizzy with fatigue. Was he also growing stupid with fatigue?
    He continued, “I’d give almost anything for two hours of sleep right now, except two hours of light. I need to get back to the trail while I still have daylight to see it. I think…” His voice slowed. “I think this place is as safe as any and safer than most. They’ve hit it once, it’s already stripped of everything valuable—they won’t be back too soon. I’m thinking maybe I could leave you here anyway. If anyone comes, you can tell them—no. First, if anyone comes, hide, till you are sure they’re all-right folks. Then come out and tell them Dag has a message for his patrol, he thinks the malice is holed up northeast of town, not south. If patrollers come, do you think you could show them to where the tracks led off? And that boy’s—bandit’s—body,” he added in afterthought.
    She squinted at the wooded hills. “I’m not sure I could find my way back to it, the route you took.”
    “There’s an easier way. This lane”—he waved at the track they’d ridden up—“goes back to the straight road in about four miles. Turn left, and I think the path your mud-man took east from it is about three miles on.”
    “Oh,” she said more eagerly, “I could find that, sure.”
    “Good, then.”
    She had no fear, blast and blight it. He could change that… So did he want her to be terrified out of her mind, frozen witless? She was already sliding down off the horse, looking pleased to have a task within her capacity.
    “What’s so dangerous about the mud-men?” she asked, as he gathered his reins and prepared to mount once more.
    He hesitated a long moment. “They’ll eat you,” he said at last. After everything else is all over, that is.
    “Oh.”
    Subdued and impressed. And, more important, believing him. Well, it hadn’t been a lie. Maybe it would make her just cautious enough. He found his stirrup and pushed up, trying not to dwell on the contrast between this hard saddle and a feather bed. There had been one unslashed feather mattress left inside the farmhouse. He’d noticed it particularly, while shoving aside a little fantasy about falling into it face-first. He swung his horse around.
    “Dag… ?”
    He turned at once to look over his shoulder. Big brown eyes stared up at him from a face like a bruised flower.
    “Don’t let them eat you, either.”
    Involuntarily, his lips turned up; she smiled brightly back through her darkening contusions. It gave him an odd feeling in his stomach, which he prudently did not attempt to name. Heartened despite all, he raised his carved hand in salute and cantered back down the lane. Feeling bereft, Fawn watched the patroller vanish into the tunnel of trees at the edge of the fields. The silence of this homestead, stripped of animals and people, was eerie and oppressive, once she noticed it. She squinted upward.
    The sun had not even topped the arch of the sky for noon. It seemed years since dawn.
    She sighed and ventured into the house. She walked all around it, footsteps echoing, feeling as though she intruded on some stranger’s grief. The senseless mess the raiders had left in their wake