As they rode out into the countryside, Ihra quickly realized why the guards had struggled to find anything that would lead them to their missing captain. The ever-present rain had washed all tracks away, leaving the road a muddy morass that was difficult to navigate. Still, there was nothing they could do except press forward.

The narrow valley the fort guarded quickly opened again into a larger vale dominated by thick forests and rolling hills. A few scattered farms dotted the countryside, but the land was mostly abandoned until they reached the first village marked on the map, about a two-hour ride from the fort.

On a different day, the village might have seemed picturesque; the low-slung homes, with their stone chimneys and thatched roofs, and the patchwork fields surrounding them evoked a certain bucolic charm. But the pouring rain and the endless sea of muck drowned out any positive impressions the village might have made.

The villagers confirmed that the captain and his men had passed through there on the day they'd disappeared, and continued up the road toward Merôm, but that was all they could tell them as the captain had never returned.

Returning to the road, they slogged on for another mile before a glint in the corner of her eye caught her attention. "Whoa, boy." With a quick tug, she reined Keres̆ in and focused on the object. It was well hidden by the tall grass and overgrown shrubbery that lined the road, but there was a sliver of silver that was out of place in the forest. "Hold a second, I might have found something," she called to the others as she slipped off Keres̆'s back.

Mud splattered halfway up her thighs as she landed in a puddle, but Ihra ignored it and jogged toward the silver gleam. She slowed as she got near, readying Aphora's misericorde in case it proved a trap, but no one leaped out at her.

Hidden behind the wild grass and buried beneath a pile of dead leaves and mud, only a sliver of the object remained visible, but as she knelt down beside it, Ihra could tell that it was definitely a piece of forged metal.

Ignoring the bitter cold gnawing at her hands, she clawed at the muck and leaves. The metal object rapidly grew in size as she unearthed it, and Ihra recognized it. It was a breastplate, much like the ones the soldiers in the castle had worn. Her hand froze as she touched something soft that was neither mud nor detritus. A breastplate and a body, she grimaced.

"What do you find?"

Brushing the mud off her hands, Ihra stood up and turned to the side to give Jasper a view of the body.

"Guess we found our missing patrol."

"Looks like it. But maybe not all of them." She started counting the mound of earth and leaves hidden amongst the grass. "Do you know how many men were on the patrol?"

"Let me check. I think I wrote it down somewhere." Hunching over to protect the documents from the rain, Jasper thumbed through the maps the guards had given him. "Eighteen," he replied after a moment. "Two were sick and didn't go, so it was just eighteen."

She frowned, recounting the mounds of earth. "I think there's thirteen here, so it's not all of them."

"So some of them might still be alive. Any tracks you can follow?"

"Probably not, but I can try."

"Good, take a look. In the meantime, I'll grab the others and start digging through the mounds. Maybe we can identify some of them."

Ihra was more than happy to leave the others to their grisly task. Returning to the road, she tied up Keres̆ before venturing into the woods. There was no hope of finding any tracks - the rain that continued to pour down had long since washed those away, but it wasn't long before she stumbled on a beaten-down path.

The trail through the trampled grass was narrow enough to be dismissed as a deer path but, having no other leads, Ihra decided to follow it anyway. The trees grew denser as she left the road behind, choking out the tall grass, but the trail continued on, and when she was about a hundred feet into the trees, she found what she was looking for. A large notch had been cut out of a birch tree and seared with a torch, the charred wood standing out starkly against the white trunk. That definitely wasn't made by deer.

Resisting the urge to continue further down the path, she returned to the road. The others had been busy in her absence. Jasper walked past her with a grunt, hoisting an armor-clad man over his shoulder as he carried him over to the road, where the others they'd uncovered had been laid out. "Find anything," he asked.

"Maybe," she chewed on her lip. "There's a trail that leads deeper into the woods that's being used by people. Didn't go too far down on it, though."

He stooped over and gently laid the body on the ground beside its fallen comrades. "I sent Tsia back to the village to get some help. It didn't feel right to leave the bodies to rot out here. When she gets back, we'll check out the trail."

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They finished digging out the bodies long before the princess returned. Ihra had counted the mounds correctly, but had been proven wrong about the numbers. The last mound had two bodies in it, bringing the dead up to fourteen, but that still left four of the guard unaccounted for - including the captain, whose body was not among the buried.

It was another hour before Tsia reappeared. Her usually curly hair hung low over her shoulders, drenched by the still pouring rain, and even her tsussim looked as miserable as a drowned rat, with its glossy, black coat caked with layers of mud and its mane a mess of tangled knots.

A line of equally bedraggled villagers trailed behind her, walking beside a pair of sturdy farm carts. They helped the farmers load up the bodies, and Ihra reluctantly slipped them a few coins to bribe them into taking the bodies back to the fortress. Then, as the villagers departed back down the road, Ihra led the group back to the forest.

Thunder cracked overhead as she found the deer path again, and the rain intensified. Full-fledged waterfalls rumbled down her back as she slogged up the narrow mountain trail, her eyes glued to the ground at her feet as she navigated the slippery grass and treacherous rocks. The walk was an exercise in misery, but the one redeeming grace, she thought, was that it was unlikely that anyone would ambush them in this weather.

Still, she kept a wary eye out as they passed one marked tree after another. There was nothing else to see, though, until they reached the two-mile mark.

Ihra dropped to the ground as a dim light flickered in the trees ahead. "Get down," she hissed. She crouched low in the mud, narrowing her eyes as she strained to see the light's source. It wasn't moving - of that she was sure - but it was hard to tell how large it was. A bonfire? A lantern?

She scooched over as Jasper crawled up beside her. "What are we stopping for?"

"The light," she replied tersely.

"There's a light?" Jasper asked, without any real surprise, before sighing. "Of course, there's a light. Stupid low vision," he muttered. "Is it the bandits?"

She squinted again, and this time was able to make out a little bit of the area around the glowing light. A dark hole, grey rock, a space empty of trees. "I think it's a cave," she whispered back. "But we'll have to get closer to be sure."

Abandoning the trail, the group crawled through the cold mud, sticking close to the dense underbrush between the trees. As they got closer, Ihra could see she'd been both right and wrong. There was indeed a cave buried in the side of the hill, its mouth a yawning chasm of darkness, but the light hung from the side of a small cottage next to it.

In front of the cave mouth, a ring of seats surrounded a burnt-out fireplace, but aside from the single glowing lantern, there was no indication that anyone else was around. They couldn't have been gone that long, though, she reasoned. Even an oil lantern could only burn a few hours before guttering out, and a torch would burn out even faster.

"Should we sneak closer?" Jasper whispered. "Honestly, this place looks like it might just be somebody's home. Or maybe it's a mine," he ventured..

But Ihra shook her head. "If it were a mine, there'd be a real path to the road, something wide enough for a cart. I don't know-" She paused as her ear perked up. There was a noise coming up the mountain toward them, the sound of voices, she realized after a second. "Down!"

As they shrank into the bushes, the boisterous voices grew nearer. Despite the torches they carried, the black-clad men shrank into the shadows as they ambled up the path, hidden by the rain and the general darkness of the day. Grotesque masks hung loose around their necks as the bandits approached, unconcerned about being seen.

She couldn't tell if any of them had been the ones to attack them two nights before, but it was obvious they belonged to the same group. Two of them, however, stuck out for a different reason - unlike the others, they wore the dull iron armor of the soldiers.

"How much longer till you make your move on the fort?" One of the guards asked as they walked past the party's hiding place. "I'm getting sick and tired of camping in the woods."

"We'll move when Ammatu tells us, and not a moment sooner," a black-clad man at the front snapped.

"And when will that be? The fort has never been more vulnerable," the guard retorted. "Who's going to defend it? Damqa? I'm starting to think your precious 'mother' doesn't have the balls to attack."

The shriek of metal filled the air as the bandit in front drew his sword and, pivoting on his heels, kicked the legs out beneath the guard. The Corsyth dropped in the mud with a grunt and raised his hands in surrender as the bandit placed his blade against the guard's throat. "You will not speak ill of the Ammatu," the man spat. "She will act when the time is right, and if you do anything to threaten that, I will gut you like a pig."

"Easy," the man pushed the blade aside carefully, brushing the mud off his armor as he rose to his feet. "Are you really telling me you don't have any doubts? There's nobody left in command, and the garrison is a fraction of what it should be. What more is she waiting for?"

The Zalancthian sheathed his sword with a scowl. "Another party has entered the scene."

"Reinforcements?" the Corsyth asked incredulously. "There's no way the Emperor paused his campaign to help out this fort, so who could help - the merchants? We can beat whatever mercenaries they hire."

"It's not the merchants; Ammatu's not sure who it is." The man replied tersely. "But a traveling party with at least one mage scattered one of our patrols the other night."

"So? You bastards run at the drop of a hat," the other man scoffed.

"Not this time." Ihra crept through the underbrush, trying to keep up with the party as the bandits resumed walking. "Zakaril hung back and took the potion. Bloody fool probably thought he'd get glory for bringing down a mage."

"And?"

"The party killed him. Our contact at the castle warned us that they brought his body with them. Until Ammatu has a better idea of their capabilities, she wants us to wait."

Ihra was forced to stop as she reached the edge of the undergrowth, and the men's conversations faded into the gathering gloom. But at least she'd learned something. There was still a traitor in the castle.

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