Evander smiled. “You know what I mean.”
The clouds passed over the moon, and Valenna laid her hand on Evander’s cheek. “We can end this war. And we will.”
A breeze blew, and dragon willow petals fluttered across the camp. Evander’s eyes narrowed.
“Have you been sprouting trees frequently?” he asked.
Valenna chuckled, plucking the petals from his hair. “Lately, I’ve turned into a human greenhouse.”
He nodded. “That’s kind of neat.”
“Only when I cry, though.”
“That will make gardening less relaxing.”
He stood, stretched, and milled through the sleeping conscripts, kicking the soles of their boots to wake them. The camp roused under a cloud of muttered complaints.
When Evander kicked Haldir, he jerked, firing a shotfire blindly. The crew ducked in unison, the muttering growing to a rumble, and Valenna whipped around, her heart in her throat. Evander straightened, looking annoyed.
“Where did you get that?” Evander exclaimed, snatching the weapon from Haldir.
Below them in the guts of the mountain, something shuddered.
“Show some nerve,” Evander hissed. “You’re a bleeding colonel. Now get up, we have to move or we’ll be caught on the barrens in the sunlight.”
Haldir scrambled to his feet, puffing. He was so pale, he was practically translucent. Valenna held out her hand to Evander as he returned to her.
He dropped his head onto her shoulder and groaned. She wrapped her arms around him.
“You can manage Haldir,” she said.
He let out a long sigh, then stood, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “I’ll wake Samara. It’s too dangerous to leave her here alone, so she’ll have to come with us. Can you start leading them toward the shore? We’ll bring up the rear.”
“What’s your plan?” she asked.
“We’ll split into two groups. I’ll lead one crew and scout the forest edge, you take the dunes and the manor. Move fast and stay low.”
Valenna cleared her throat, and the crew turned toward her like one body. Was all this attention and respect because she’d grown some trees and maybe summoned the Sunbird? Until that moment, Valenna had never understood the power of a symbol. Sunbirds to Talwaith, hydra to Ashkendor, the witch child to Sennalaith.Symbols move armies, turn the tide of wars.
With a show of confidence she did not feel, she led the way down the narrow path to the rocky beach.
The current was powerful, the water frigid and bitter with brine. Valenna sucked in her breath as she lowered her body into the dark shallows. There was no need to swim; she just floated as the current sucked her rapidly through the narrow strait and toward the open sea. Before she reached the glimmering expanse, the beach jutted out suddenly, and her feet scrapedagainst rough sand. Shivering, her limbs numb, Valenna splashed out of the gently lapping water. Ignatius, Elspeth, and Rosemary joined her.
Behind her, Evander, Samara, Haldir, and Giles started in the opposite direction.Valenna knew Evander had given her the best of the crew and taken the weakest for himself. These small sacrifices frightened her—they were the kind of acts that got men killed on the battlefield.
The moonlight pooled in silver patches on a long, crescent shoreline. A hundred paces from the ocean, a line of steep dunes, about as tall as a man, broke the flat expanse. Beyond the dunes lay an open stretch of dry bristle grass that ran to a dense forest of scraggy, dead pines.
Small bunkers built of hardened sand and stone punctuated the dunes, one every thirty paces. These were meant to guard the beach. A few faded shirts, socks, and some trousers hung out the windows, drying in the breeze.
So Scathmore wasn’t abandoned, but it wasn’t heavily fortified either.
Valenna waited for a cloud to pass overhead, then she and her group stepped into the cloud’s shadow and moved with it to the dunes, where they crouched out of sight of the bunkers.
The shadowy bulk of an old manor house rose above them into the indigo sky. It sprawled to the edge of the dune where a corner of its foundation jutted through the sand. A hollow ache filled Valenna as she studied the crumbling brick and shattered windows. This had been her mother’s house. She was born in it. And though she couldn’t remember it, she knew that she had spent her first quiet weeks safe in its walls. Now it was a ruin overlooking a waste.
Forcing herself to think like a soldier again, Valenna shifted her focus. The manor house stood four stories tall, with ten windowsfrom left to right. The courtyard wall, a little taller than Velanna, had broken down in places, the sand mounding over the rubble. A light burned in two of the windows, and a dragon snorted somewhere inside the courtyard. A small detachment must be stationed inside. With the right weapons, snipers could fire down from the windows and desecrate a landing army, shoot dragons out of the sky, destroy a dreadnought. Still, with light resistance from the sky, it was an easy target for a skilled dreadnought crew, even with the bunkers armed.
Leaving her group by the dunes, Valenna crawled over the sand on her belly, making her way to the wall behind the house. Inside, a tile-paved courtyard gleamed in the moonlight. Two outbuildings lay deserted, and a small fighter dragon dozed in a semi-circle of dead dragon willows.
