Fic: Visitors (TSK/Terinu)
Apr. 24th, 2008 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalOkay, apparently there was a bit of interest in this. I'll try to keep the tale short, since I'm just filling time until I can wrestle the plot knots out of Black Hearts
NOTE: The Sharing Knife and related characters and incidents are copyright Lois McMaster-Bujold, Terinu and related characters, incidents and graphics are copyright Peta Hewitt. Neither are used here with permission.
Fawn was gathering brillberries near the top of the ridge when she spotted the two mudmen in the small gulley below.
It was a cool autumn afternoon and she had left Dag by their camp in a little clearing just off the road, while he busied himself gathering firewood to cook up dinner and tended their horses, Copperhead and Grace. She hadn’t been thinking of mudmen or their Malice masters for days. She hadn’t been thinking much about anything, except how tired she was of eating plunkin rinds and the ache she felt in her heart for her husband, Dag, now well and truly cut off from his people.
She dropped to the ground, brillberries squishing in the folds of her blue dress, trying to fight down a panic. If there were mudmen about, their Malice had to be near. Except…
The Malice at Glassforge is gone, so is the one that destroyed Greenspring and Bonemarsh Camp. How could there be another one coming up so soon? Which was followed by the thought, Stupid. Do you think they’ve got a schedule to follow?
They were less than a day’s ride from West Blue, her old home, Farmer country, land that should have been frequently patrolled by Dag’s Lakewalker kin. Except that the last big patrol had likely been Mari’s two months back, and they had been most concerned with the Glassforge Malice.
If there’s a Malice about, Dag should have sensed it himself. Except that Dag’s nigh legendary Groundsense, which could feel an emerging Malice near a mile off, had been shredded and half-crippled by the Bonemarsh creature. It was healing, but the healing was slow and without it he was half-blind.
She tried to think, tried to ignore the pounding in her heart. Dag was the only Lakewalker Patroller, former Patroller actually, anywhere near West Blue, she reckoned, and he had no sharing knife right now to kill a Malice with. Which meant they’d have to ride hell for leather back to his kin’s camp at Hickory Lake to get help. No, would they have broken camp and moved to winter quarters yet? She bit her lip, trying to figure what to do.
See what direction the mudmen are going, then go back and tell Dag what they’re about, she decided. She craned her neck cautiously above the ridgeline, trying stay hidden in the brillberry bushes.
The mudmen were made from foxes, she realized that first off. One had a pelt of fine sandy hair and the other was a more normal color of red fur, white throat and black gloves. Except… Mudmen never look so fine. They’re all lumpy and not right. These two mudmen looked like nothing so much as foxes that just happened to be standing upright, standing on their toes, like cats reaching up to snatch a piece of chicken from a plate. They were still at the bottom of the gulley, looking over a metal box in the lady fox’s hand. I thought all mudmen looked like men, not women. Another oddity, and one that started to scare Fawn even worse. How powerful did a Malice have to be, that it could afford to create mudmen that looked pretty?
That was enough, she figured. Past time to start crawling very quietly back down the ridge and tell Dag what she’d found. She turned around, brushing lumps of crushed brillberries from her homespun blue dress.
And found herself face to face with the third pretty mudman, this one with dead grey skin, a long tail and straight horns rising up from a mane of blue-black hair.
“Hi there,” it said, grinning, arms folded across its chest. She had enough time to think, It’s short, before she yelped and shoved it out of her way with both hands. She managed to slip out of its brief, surprised attempt to grasp her sleeve, before she began scrambling down the side of the small ridge, feeling dirt and gravel skid under her boot heels.
Then something bright and painful hit her in the back of the skull, and all she saw was the ridge rising up to meet her face.
To be continued
NOTE: The Sharing Knife and related characters and incidents are copyright Lois McMaster-Bujold, Terinu and related characters, incidents and graphics are copyright Peta Hewitt. Neither are used here with permission.
Fawn was gathering brillberries near the top of the ridge when she spotted the two mudmen in the small gulley below.
It was a cool autumn afternoon and she had left Dag by their camp in a little clearing just off the road, while he busied himself gathering firewood to cook up dinner and tended their horses, Copperhead and Grace. She hadn’t been thinking of mudmen or their Malice masters for days. She hadn’t been thinking much about anything, except how tired she was of eating plunkin rinds and the ache she felt in her heart for her husband, Dag, now well and truly cut off from his people.
She dropped to the ground, brillberries squishing in the folds of her blue dress, trying to fight down a panic. If there were mudmen about, their Malice had to be near. Except…
The Malice at Glassforge is gone, so is the one that destroyed Greenspring and Bonemarsh Camp. How could there be another one coming up so soon? Which was followed by the thought, Stupid. Do you think they’ve got a schedule to follow?
They were less than a day’s ride from West Blue, her old home, Farmer country, land that should have been frequently patrolled by Dag’s Lakewalker kin. Except that the last big patrol had likely been Mari’s two months back, and they had been most concerned with the Glassforge Malice.
If there’s a Malice about, Dag should have sensed it himself. Except that Dag’s nigh legendary Groundsense, which could feel an emerging Malice near a mile off, had been shredded and half-crippled by the Bonemarsh creature. It was healing, but the healing was slow and without it he was half-blind.
She tried to think, tried to ignore the pounding in her heart. Dag was the only Lakewalker Patroller, former Patroller actually, anywhere near West Blue, she reckoned, and he had no sharing knife right now to kill a Malice with. Which meant they’d have to ride hell for leather back to his kin’s camp at Hickory Lake to get help. No, would they have broken camp and moved to winter quarters yet? She bit her lip, trying to figure what to do.
See what direction the mudmen are going, then go back and tell Dag what they’re about, she decided. She craned her neck cautiously above the ridgeline, trying stay hidden in the brillberry bushes.
The mudmen were made from foxes, she realized that first off. One had a pelt of fine sandy hair and the other was a more normal color of red fur, white throat and black gloves. Except… Mudmen never look so fine. They’re all lumpy and not right. These two mudmen looked like nothing so much as foxes that just happened to be standing upright, standing on their toes, like cats reaching up to snatch a piece of chicken from a plate. They were still at the bottom of the gulley, looking over a metal box in the lady fox’s hand. I thought all mudmen looked like men, not women. Another oddity, and one that started to scare Fawn even worse. How powerful did a Malice have to be, that it could afford to create mudmen that looked pretty?
That was enough, she figured. Past time to start crawling very quietly back down the ridge and tell Dag what she’d found. She turned around, brushing lumps of crushed brillberries from her homespun blue dress.
And found herself face to face with the third pretty mudman, this one with dead grey skin, a long tail and straight horns rising up from a mane of blue-black hair.
“Hi there,” it said, grinning, arms folded across its chest. She had enough time to think, It’s short, before she yelped and shoved it out of her way with both hands. She managed to slip out of its brief, surprised attempt to grasp her sleeve, before she began scrambling down the side of the small ridge, feeling dirt and gravel skid under her boot heels.
Then something bright and painful hit her in the back of the skull, and all she saw was the ridge rising up to meet her face.
To be continued
