By the third day, Behn was sick and tired of snow, and rejoiced when, at last, they left the thick drifts behind and entered a warmer clime.

Obi and Triss were equally pleased with the change; the party's spirits had sunk very low over the past night, which had been particularly miserable and cold, and lifted noticeably as they passed into a region where a warm autumn yet reigned in full glory. Triss apologized for snapping at Behn over breakfast, and Obi, who had fallen into a sullen silence the day before, struck up a friendly conversation with Behn, asking him about his uncle's stables and what they ought to expect once they reached Lastiff.

"I've only visited a few times," Behn admitted, "and I wasn't there long. I used to go with my dad to the annual ale festival. There are competitions and prizes for the best brews, not to mention bragging rights for the winners. Once I got old enough to handle myself, though, my dad started leaving me behind to run the shop while he was away, so he didn't lose the revenue for the week. I kinda missed traveling with him, though."

"You'll see him again soon," Triss said, coming to walk alongside them as the path widened. "In fact, it might be easier to convince your uncle to lend us only two horses rather than three. You could take a wagon back to Dern. I'm sure your father will be glad to know you're alright. Harrald, too. He must be worried sick over Galen."

Behn frowned at the implication that he would opt for an easy ride home rather than press on into further hardships at her side.

"Your mom must be worried, too," he said pointedly, but immediately regretted it. He knew that Triss's mother was a touchy subject, and he hadn't meant to bring it up like that, but the words had escaped him as unstoppably and unexpectedly as a loud, stinky fart.

Judging by the look Triss shot him, they were about as well received as one, too.

"Sorry," he said, flinching under the flash of her glare.

"I'm sure she is," Triss said. "You can give her reassurances for me as well, when you see her."

"You can give them yourself," Behn said, with forced cheerfulness, "when we return home together."

"I'm a deserter, Behn," Triss snapped. "There's no 'triumphant return' in my future. If I'm caught, I'll be sentenced to forced labor or hanged — preferably the latter, from what I've seen." She shook her head. "Once this is over — once Galen is safe from the order — I'm not going home. I'm going north, into Yotaim."

"Yotaim?" Behn crinkled his nose. "What's in Yotaim, apart from frozen wastes and a few scattered villages? Oh, and ice giants, if you believe the tales."

"My brother," Triss said. "Tristan's last message came from an outpost there."

"Triss..." Behn knew his pity would be, if anything, less welcome than his mention of her mother, but for some reason, he couldn't convince his stupid mouth to stop talking. "It's been years. Tristan—"

"Is dead. I know," she snapped. "I'm not expecting a happy reunion. I just want to find out what happened to him. I couldn't give my mom the family and the crowd of grandkids she hoped for, but at least I can give her that, even if I can't give it to her in person."

"You're only twenty," Behn argued, squaring his shoulders stoutly. "You've got plenty of time to do anything and everything you want. You can adventure across Sakkara until you find someplace and... and someone to settle down with. Then you can—"

"What? Have twelve children and take up knitting?" Triss scoffed. "No thanks. I'd rather meet an early, honest end than wither and worry myself into dust."

"You're not your mom," Behn said, taking an ill-advised guess at the root of the problem. "Everyone she loved has left her, one by one, but that won't happen to you. You just need to find someone who can make that promise honestly. Someone who'll stick by you, no matter what."

An ugly expression twisted Triss's pretty features into a sneer. "Someone like you? No thanks, Behn. I don't need anyone to take care of me, and I certainly don't need to be stuck taking care of someone else for the rest of my life. Some people are better off alone."

She quickened her pace abruptly, and Behn fell back and let her go. If that's how it was, maybe they would part ways in Lastiff after all. Behn would serve his purpose, and then he'd go home. He had no desire to hang around where he wasn't wanted.

A familiar hurt settled over his heart like a dark cloud. There was a reason he spent so much time at home, helping his dad, and it wasn't simply a desire to be useful. Before he'd met Triss and Galen, and other than Triss and Galen, he had no friends. Nobody wanted to play with the fat little baker's boy — unless they were in it for the free cinnamon rolls — a conclusion he had reached too often in the past. It had left him distrustful, and fearful that anyone who wanted to be his friend really wanted something else. Except for Galen and Triss.

Now it seemed like maybe even their companionship grew more from pity than from true affection, and in that, at least, he and Triss were similar: pity was the last thing Behn desired.

-✵-

Triss felt awful — like she'd kicked a sweet puppy and made it cower, or tossed a kitten in a pond just to see if it could swim; like she'd done something incredibly mean, in other words, which she had. The look on his face was proof enough that her sharp words had struck Behn's heart — as she had intended. She had hoped to save that conversation until they reached Lastiff, had hoped that Behn might even raise the idea of returning to Dern himself, but when the opportunity arose — when he had unwittingly stoked her anger and prodded at her inmost fears — the words had come easily enough.

Now she regretted them bitterly, but could not take them back. Once or twice, Behn approached her with an open, questioning look on his sweet face, clearly with the thought that they might yet reconcile and set things right, but Triss forced herself to turn and walk away from him each time, knowing that if she gave him half a chance to speak, she would not be able to resist reassuring him of her friendship and affection. Thus, while their surroundings grew increasingly pleasant and warm, the atmosphere between the two friends remained cold. Both spoke to Obi, but hardly spared a word or glance for one another.

Obi proved to be an expert forager and supplemented their diet of dried food with fresh mushrooms, which baked nicely in the coals of the fire, and brewed an invigorating tea from the bark of a young sapling, which he cut in careful strips so as not to harm the tree. It wasn't much, but after a few days of nothing but bean paste, it seemed like a feast. Soon they had even better fare and enjoyed a salad of peppery watercress Behn found growing beside a clear stream, and the roasted flesh of a pheasant that Triss shot with her bow.

They whispered a prayer of gratitude to the bird whose life had been cut short to sustain theirs, but the sense of pure nourishment derived from the meal quickly assuaged any trace of guilt. No edible part was wasted, and the rest they left for scavengers to enjoy.

Of their quarry they saw little evidence, but Triss picked out traces here and there that, while not conclusively made by Rea, were, at the very least, signs of someone traveling fast and light in the same direction as themselves. Then, on the fourth day after leaving the snows behind, Obi discovered the remnants of a small campfire at the base of a meadow, and among the ashes found conclusive proof that they were still on her trail.

"This is Rea's work, most certainly," Obi said, holding up a half-burnt stick, one end of which had been whittled to a peculiar spiral point. "She makes carvings like this when she's on watch. Says it helps her stay awake and pass the time."

"This is almost more troubling than finding no trace at all," Triss remarked, taking the stick and examining it.

"Why?" Behn asked, puzzled by their unhappy expressions. "Doesn't it mean we're on the right track?"

Obi answered. "Yes; but Rea took pains to erase her trail thus far. This carelessness is out of character."

"Either she left this sign on purpose for some reason, or something forced her to abandon her campsite unexpectedly," Triss explained, and shivered as the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

Suddenly, the forest, so peaceful a moment before, now seemed full of unseen threats.

"We will proceed with caution," Obi said. "No talking. Hand signs and whistles only. Guard standard."

Triss snuck a glance at Behn. He looked alert, but not frightened, and gripped his walking staff determinedly, as if ready to face anything for his friends.

He was full of spirit and good heart. She'd seen young recruits like him before: the Guard chewed them up and spit them out like a dog with a bone. Triss shook her head and moved forward to take the lead.

-✵-

As Triss and Obi moved ahead, Behn fell back to cover the rear. It was just as well, he thought; he didn't know 'Guard standard' signals any more than he knew how to do magic, which is to say not at all. He did his best to stay quiet and alert, nonetheless, eyes peeled for signs of movement among the vibrantly colored trees.

He didn't expect to be of any real use, and never imagined that he might notice a sign that Triss or Obi missed; so, when something soft squished beneath his boot, he nearly ignored it and kept walking. There was something unpleasantly familiar about the sensation, though — something he recalled from his earlier childhood, which had partly helped to form his dislike for his uncle's prized beasts.

Pausing, he crouched and carefully pealed back the thick layer of fallen leaves, beneath which were the unmistakable leavings of a horse.

Behn looked up, but the others had not noticed he had stopped, and continued along the path. They were almost out of sight.

He knew the Guard used the calls of various birds to signal different things: one for 'halt' and for 'danger spotted,' and so on, but he didn't know which meant what. He did not know the calls of many birds to begin with, but figured he must do his best with what he had.

"Cah-caw!" he called softly with his hands cupped around his mouth.

Obi paused and looked back at him with a quizzical expression, and further ahead Triss rolled her eyes. Doubling back, they crouched at his side to see what he had found.

"Horse dung," he whispered. "About two days old."

Triss swore and began brushing more leaves off the path. The thick red and gold carpet gave way to bare earth, revealing the marks of shod hooves.

"Shit. It looks like a whole squadron passed through here," she said.

"The Guard?" Obi asked.

Triss shook her head. "No. The Guard don't mark their horse's shoes like this. These are imperial cavalry."

"What would imperial cavalry be doing out here?" Behn asked.

"No idea," Triss said. "Probably headed to Lastiff for a change of horses, or maybe to Dern, or somewhere else in Thryn. Who knows, but I bet this is what spooked Rea. Her fire looked about the same age as these tracks."

Obi straightened and stretched, releasing his breath in a sigh. "Well, the good news is they're long gone. We can relax, I think. Good work, Behn."

Triss scowled, and Behn resisted the very childish urge to stick out his tongue at her. She was always the best at everything; surely, she could afford to give him one small win.

-✵-

Triss didn't like the fact she'd missed such obvious and important signs, even if they'd been covered by fallen leaves. She should have thought to look beneath the detritus covering the trail. That's how a tracker had to think — to see events in sequence in time, and to extrapolate from observations in the environment. Obviously, in a forest full of fall leaves, it made sense that the leaves would fall and cover the traces of what had come before. Her only consolation was that Obi hadn't thought of this either.

Meanwhile, she'd been distracted by thoughts of Behn, and Galen; of her mother, her brother, and the home she'd never see again. Her thoughts had been everywhere but in the present, and that was a mistake she'd seen get guardsmen killed. She resolved to remain focused from then on, to ignore Behn's puppy-dog looks and Obi's playful banter, and to retreat into the cold, professional demeanor that had earned her half a dozen unfavorable nicknames among her fellow guards.

She frowned at a host of unpleasant memories. She wasn't the best because she wanted to show off or show anyone up; she was the best because she wanted to survive.

It was a relief when, near evening of the tenth day since leaving the Haven, they left the woods behind and arrived at a broad plain, nestled between two arms of the mountains. Further south lay the pass for which they aimed, and straight ahead on the eastern side the town of Lastiff sprawled along a broad, shallow river.

The town was not built for defense, but to be open for commerce and trade, and thus had no outer wall, which allowed the party to approach from whatever angle they pleased.

As they joined the road on the northern side and followed it towards the town, Behn noted a strange brown cloud hanging low in the sky to the east.

"What is that?" he asked, pointing.

Obi squinted and shielded his eyes. "Could be a grass fire."

Triss shook her head. "No, it's not smoke. It's dust," she said, frowning. "It's an army on the move."