Page 128 of Beds and Blades

“As will I.”

Flavia.

I looked between them. “Good. One man who refuses to let me die and one woman who will never let me forget it.”

Cato looked at Gaius, then Flavia, then me.

“Getting inside quietly is your part,” he said. “I’ll make certain Morvanna has no attention to spare for you.”

His gaze returned to the road.

“Did the smaller force reach the city?”

“Yes.”

“And Scipio took it?”

“In a single day.”

Cato absorbed that.

“Good,” he said, and smiled.

Then he turned toward the formation and issued his orders in the command voice.

The garrison shifted around us.

The plan was in motion.

***

We split at the treeline.

The riders broke toward the village, loudly.

They had been ordered to be seen, and they committed to the task.

I watched them go and felt, briefly, the weight of what I had asked of them. They would draw every eye in Nema and trust me to do exactly what I had promised in the darkness behind them.

I turned Velox toward the eastern side of the village.

Gaius and Flavia followed.

We rode into the trees.

Nema lay four hundred meters beyond the treeline. I carried the war-room map in my head: the layout, the distances, the geometry of a signal village documented during two resupply rotations.

A main road ran north to south. The council hall stood at the center. It was the largest structure and the easiest to defend, which made it the most likely place for Morvanna to hold a valuable prisoner.

Through the bond: Skip.

His fear was still there, but something had changed beneath it.

He could feel me now. Resolve. The forward motion. The certainty that I was coming.

Hope answered.

Then fear surged again, sharper than before. Not afraid for himself.