“No one but us,” Daen replied. “She didn’t want a retinue. She’d had enough of being looked at sideways by half the court. She just wanted to ride.”
Benni nodded once, a shallow thing. “Then it’s ours to deal with.” The words settled between them, less command than covenant.
The Captain exhaled slowly and walked a few paces down the slope. The camp stretched before him in the dull light – rows of tents dulledby dust and wear, the steady movement of soldiers in the rhythm of readiness. And yet even from this distance, he could sense it: the falter in posture, the drift in focus. They had noticed. Maybe not the particulars, but soldiers always knew when the sky had changed, even if the sun still shone.
“She’s not just their General,” Benni said, the words meant less for them than to steady something in himself. “She’s the reason half of them are still here. The only reason some of them ever were.”
He drew a breath, tilted his head back and steadied himself. Then, he said, “Send the scouts.”
Astrid nodded, not asking which route – there was only one that mattered now. Daen had already begun pulling the route map from his satchel, his fingers steady even as his jaw had tightened. Orders passed down the line, low and measured, carrying the kind of weight that needed no force behind it. Within the hour, five riders had peeled away southward, their figures soon swallowed by the hills, leaving nothing but the ripple of grass in their wake.
And so came the waiting.
The hours dragged, slow and sunless, the grey of the day pressing down until it dulled everything else. Benni stayed near the perimeter, pacing with the restlessness of someone who wanted to be far from here, riding ahead, retracing her steps himself. But the duty of command had its own shackles, and so he waited, shoulders tight, fingers tugging at the seams of his gloves until the leather creaked.
The first riders returned just after dusk, their horses lathered, flanks streaked with sweat and dust. The scouts dismounted wordlessly, and it was the darkness in their eyes that said more than any dispatch. The youngest of them, a boy called Terin who barely had a stubble on his chin but rode like someone twice his age, stepped forward, holding out a stained waterskin. Benni recognised it instantly, even before his fingers closed around it: the patch of stitched leather she’d once tornfrom her old uniform, a superstitious scrap she had never explained.
It was bloodstained.
Benni took it, slow and careful, turning it over in his hands like it might dissolve. The leather was still damp, not from water, but from the rust-brown smear of blood that clung at the seams.
“We found it off the eastern road,” Terin said, voice low but steady. “Just past the river bend near the old oaks, on this side of the Downs. Looked like she’d camped there. Fire was cold, long since dead. Some gear scattered, like she left in a hurry – or didn’t get the chance to pack.”
He hesitated, then drew a slow breath. “We found scuff marks in the earth under the oak tree, blood, too… just enough to know something had happened. And two sets of hoofprints, deep in the soft ground. Two riders.”
“We followed the tracks north, but the land rose hard and dry, and the trail disappeared into the ground. No sign of her and no sign of where they went after that.”
For a moment, Benni said nothing. His face was unreadable but for a subtle shift in his posture—the straightening of his back, the tightening of his jaw. It was the kind of stillness that had nothing to do with shock and everything to do with the impossible calculus unfolding behind his eyes. Astrid’s breath caught, just once, as Daen’s arm sneaked around her shoulders, more so to brace himself than to steady her.
They had barely begun to absorb it – still caught between what they now knew and what it might mean – when the rest of the scouts returned, and they did not come alone.
A low murmur rippled through the outer ring of the camp as the shapes grew clearer through the dim, torch-laced dusk: three horses with riders in battered cloaks, and one slighter figure slouched atop a pack mule, reins held not by his own hands but led. The mule trudgedon, patient and worn, and the man it carried looked no better – dirt-crusted, sun-weathered, with a narrow face and restless eyes that missed nothing.
Benni stepped forward before anyone else could, the merchant’s gaze snapping to him with that particular sharpness born of long roads and too many dealings. There was no bow, no respectful gesture, only a narrowing of the mouth and a quick glance at the insignia on Benni’s shoulder that marked him Captain.
“He was travelling south from the villages beyond the old ridge,” one of the scouts said, swinging down from the saddle with a motion that betrayed both weariness and distaste. “Came up behind us on the trail, wouldn’t stop jabbering. But when we asked if he’d seen anything strange on the road, he mentioned a woman. Bound. On horseback.”
The merchant gave a curt nod, eyes narrowing as Benni turned to face him.
“I was headed toward the Queen’s lands,” he said, the words clipped, impatient. “Looking to trade what’s left before the next line of fire rolls through. Didn’t expect a bloody checkpoint.”
Benni’s steps closed the gap between them. “What did you see? Speak quick, old man.”
“I don’t know who she was,” he began. “Didn’t stop to ask. But three days back, maybe four, I passed a pair on the road that didn’t sit right.”
He paused to look around – at the soldiers, the sharpened steel, the ring of watching eyes. Then back at Benni.
“There was a woman. Her hair caught the light – gold, or close enough – but she kept her head down, never once looking my way. Hands tied. Riding, but not free. A young man led her horse. Quiet type. They weren’t speaking, not when I saw them. Just riding north.”
Benni stepped forward. “And you did nothing?”
The man’s jaw twitched. “What would you have had me do?”
“Anything.”
The trader snorted. “There are men hanging from trees in the hills where I came from. Children starving in villages your lot passed through some weeks ago. I don’t stop for trouble when I see it. Trouble doesn’t stop for me.”
“She’s not –” Benni began, but the man cut him off with a scoff.
