It wasn't until the following evening that Will knew Lewellyn was following them.

They had ridden slowly through the area Will suspected the druid tribe would be, leaving plenty of trails, fires with fresh coals, and even some clothing remnants snagged on branches. They would have to be idiots if they couldn't track them by now, Alyss knew. She had only basic tracking skills, and even she could have found this camp by now. A group of forty three riders moving along a large road should be simple enough to find, and with the extra clues, it shouldn't take them any time at all.

They were only a few hours from the Solitary Plains, in a fief just north of Stamford, and she hoped Lewellyn would intercept them soon. Alyss wanted this whole thing to be over. The tenseness of it all, not knowing when Lewellyn would appear, or how she would attack, or what she would even do, was fraying on everyone's nerves.

She could tell Will was at his wit's end, and rightfully so. He rode at her side most of the time in order to keep her company and, most importantly, because he wasn't obligated to speak with her. If he rode with the soldiers in their escort, he would be obliged to chat with them, answer their many curious questions, and be inevitably uncomfortable with the attention.

And his only other option, and worst of them all, was to ride with King Carr.

His Majesty, when given the chance, would not stop talking. If a moment of silence stretched longer than he deemed comfortable, King Carr would launch into another story about his youth, or his time with the druids, or any other petty tales he kept in his dusty attic of a mind. And occasionally, to Alyss's horror, he would offer her advice about her pregnancy. A crotchety old man, with no wife and no daughter, slightly off his rocker, giving her advice on giving birth? Terrifying, to say the least. For this reason, Will would frequently ride out in front of the group, as he was doing now, scouting and keeping watch, but also using it as an escape from the King's babbling.

"Delaney, my wife from many years ago, back when she was giving birth to... to..." the King's voice broke as he whispered his dead son's name, "Athol, she would always drink honey lemon tea and have massages to help her back pain. That really helped her feel a lot better, especially when she was really big, all blown up like a balloon." He wiped a lingering tear from his eye, which had been a common occurrence in the last few days. He sat on the back of his wagon, swinging his short legs over the edge as two horses pulled it from the front, looking up at Alyss's tall form atop her horse.

"Oh, really?" Alyss murmured politely, not really listening. Her gaze was fixed on Will's back, no more than a gray smudge in the distance, watching to make sure he was alright. It made her nervous when he nearly disappeared like this, where she couldn't be sure if the smudge she was staring at was him anymore. She liked it much better when he was safely by her side, where he couldn't be ambushed by anyone.

But she also knew that if anyone in this escort could hide from an ambush, or survive one, it would be Will. It was why he had been assigned to the mission, after all. He had to do his job.

So she let him go, with only a lingering smile and a kiss good-bye, biting back the worries on her tongue by chewing the inside of her cheek until it bled.

She heaved a silent sigh of relief as she saw the smudge of Will's cloak getting closer now. The form of Tug became clearer and clearer as he cantered quickly back to the escort, his face tired.

As her worry lifted momentarily, she realized the King had continued speaking, probably to himself, for the last few minutes. "...and the last thing she had, right before she gave birth, she wanted to prevent complications and got some really great advice from a midwife to get daily massages on her-"

"Thank you, King Carr, for all your helpful advice. But please, I think I've heard plenty for one day," Alyss interrupted hastily as Will rode up to them. "See anything?"

Will nodded, a glint in his eye Alyss hadn't seen since the showdown in the throne room. "Finally, yes. They've got a camp set up a few kilometers from here, with fresh smoke. There aren't any villages nearby, from what I can see. So unless some other large group wearing white is camping there, I'd say we found them."

Alyss felt some of her anxiety melt away. "Thank god, we can be rid of them and go home," she said quietly.

"You found them? Excellent, excellent," came the unwelcome and grating voice of the King from the back of his wagon. He waddled towards the little group, low to the ground and covered in shadow by their horses, and called out shrilly, "Halt, everyone, halt! We'll camp here for the evening while Ranger Will goes off to find the tribe!"

Alyss rolled her eyes subtly, and caught Will's as he did the same. They shared an exasperated smile as all the men around them slid off their horses and began making camp for the night. Within a matter of minutes, fires had been started, meals were being prepared, and the horses were sent to graze.

Will and Alyss dismounted together, and staked out a piece of land off to one side for their own camp, far enough away from the King and the men so that they could have some privacy. Alyss, tired and hungry from the day of travel, gratefully sat down on her cloak to rest at Will's insistence. Will started a fire on the dirt with some chips of wood, and had Alyss's tent up in a few short minutes.

Eager to escape from the prying eyes of the men, the King, and perhaps even the druids she suspected were skulking in the trees, she murmured, "I'm going to lie down for a bit until dinner is ready. Can you wake me when there's food?"

Will nodded quickly, laying her bedroll inside the tent and tying open the front. "Of course, don't worry. I'll wake you when everything is ready."

She gave him a grateful smile, and accepted his gentle kiss as she crawled on hands and knees inside the small tent. She left the blanket underneath her, removed her boots, and lay back onto her thin travel pillow, staring up at the canvas ceiling of the tent. She heard Will close the entrance with the canvas ties for privacy, and then his ghostly quiet footsteps, nearly inaudible even this close, moved away from the tent and off into the rest of the camp. He was probably looking for firewood, or going to report to the King. Whatever he was doing, it wasn't her concern. She closed her eyes, drowsiness making her limbs heavy. She rested a warm hand on her stomach, imagining her baby as she drifted off to sleep.

Only a few minutes had passed since she closed her eyes when she was disturbed by a strange rustling noise outside her tent near her head. It couldn't possibly have been Will, it was much too loud and clumsy. But it wasn't a large person, their tread was quite light and Alyss thought she may have even heard the swishing of skirts.

Suddenly, a low voice hissed in her ear, "Don't call the Ranger, or I'll slit your throat." A cool metal knife pressed against the soft skin of her cheek, where Will had only just kissed her.

Lewellyn. It has to be. "What do you want?" Alyss whispered, trying not to flinch as the metal slid along her skin, millimeters away from cutting her.

"Don't sit up, don't move. Stay exactly where you are. I just want you to tell me what happened. I"ll ask the questions, and you'll answer them, that's it. Do you understand?"

A pebble pressed into the small of Alyss's back, but she didn't dare shift around to move it. It wouldn't hurt to tell her what's happened. It won't stay a secret for long anyway. I'll play her little game for now. "I understand."

The knife moved again as she seemed to adjust her grip. If Alyss had to guess, it seemed Lewellyn was laying on the ground behind her tent, lifting the edge of the canvas and sliding her arm, with the knife, in by Alyss's face. Shrouded in shadow and the trees and shrubs surrounding her and Will's camp, no one would see her, not even Will. She felt along the seam of her dress, where her sheathed saber would have been... if she was still wearing it. But she had removed it and her other hidden weapons when she had dismounted, assuming the danger of the day was over. She had thought wrong.

She was on her own.

"Where's Athol?"

"He's dead."

She heard Lewellyn smother a gasp of shock. Her next words were tight, wound up with anger and sadness, her voice rough and broken. "How did he die?" The knife dug into her cheek and Alyss pressed her head into her pillow to avoid nicking herself.

"He tried to kill me and the other Rangers, and then King Carr. We fought him, and he refused to surrender. We had to end him."

"And that's why King Carr is still alive," Lewellyn whispered bitterly, and Alyss could hear the tears in her voice.

Alyss remembered Will's words from the throne room. You love her, don't you? "I'm sorry about his death, I know he was important to you."

She sniffled, and the knife shook. "Important to me, yes, but he loved me more than I loved him. He used me for my powers, and I used him for his charisma. He thought I loved him, but he lied to him the whole time." Her voice rose with anger. "And now he's dead, and I can't tell him."

Alyss swallowed hard at her words. She lied, too. "Why are you here? If you didn't love him, then why are you avenging him?"

"I may not have loved him, but I planned King Carr's assassination with him, and I'm here to see it through."

The knife shifted down to her neck, and Alyss was finally able to turn her head to see the arm, swathed in a dark cloak, reaching in through the bottom of the tent. Her face, pale in the moonlight, peeked through the corner, and Alyss was struck by her beauty, and the fact that was nearly the same age as herself. Her most striking feature was her eyes. They glowed a warm tangy orange, a stunning color, and in the darkness they shone like a wild animal's, reflecting the light of the moon.

She reminded Alyss of a cornered wolf, lashing out as it faced death.

Alyss spoke just above a whisper, but quieted down as the blunt edge of the cold knife pressed directly on her windpipe. "You know you won't succeed. We know where your camp is. We'll find you, and we'll take you with us. We're going over the border, and King Carr will lock you and the others away."

"My tribe has done nothing wrong. They followed my orders, believing they were serving Esus. They all are innocent, and if you question them about any of this, they'll prove it. They know nothing, and they'll go free in the end. But I? I will run. No one will find me, not even Ranger Will."

"It seems he already has."

Alyss held back a gasp of relief as the cool, calm, quiet voice of Will cut through the dimness and whispering. He was standing at the front end of her tent, and she now noticed his nearly silent footfalls approaching the head of the tent slowly, and she could even see the shadow of his cloak pass by along the wall.

The knife pressed hard again. "Get up! Up, now!" Lewellyn hissed, seizing Alyss's arm roughly. She was dragged clumsily out of the tent by her wrist, along the ground, and then Lewellyn wrenched her up to her feet. By the time Alyss had time to look around she was being pulled back into the dark forest by Lewellyn's strong hands.

Will stood a few meters away, calmly resting both hands on the hilts of his knives. His face was tight, but relentlessly composed. In this dark little corner, no one else could see what was happening. It was only herself, Lewellyn, and Will.

Lewellyn pulled her back another step, the knife now pressed against Alyss's ribs. The baby.

Will's voice, cold and hard as stone, echoed across the space. "It's a good thing I decided to come back and check for extra firewood around the tent, or else I might not have seen you threatening my wife back there. Why are you here, wasting your last days of freedom?"

"Let me leave, Ranger Will. Or I'll slip this knife between her ribs and leave her to bleed out while I run. Your choice." Alyss tried not to wince as she dug the knife into her side with malice.

Will didn't even twitch. "Please, go ahead. I won't try to stop you."

"Why? Don't you want to kill me, too? Like you killed Athol?"

"I know where your camp is. I'll find you soon enough, I don't need to sacrifice anyone's life to capture you." His left hand drew the collar of his shirt aside, flashing the bandage in the moonlight. "Athol tried to initiate me, you know. You nearly got your wish, I was moments away from becoming a member of your tribe."

Her eyes widened as she recognized where the bandages were, and she realized what must be under them. "You have the mark? Even without speaking the oath, you are already informally initiated."

Will shook his head, covering the bandage back up. "It means nothing to me, and it won't stop me from finding you and putting you in a prison cell. Not tonight, but soon." Alyss didn't see his stone mask falter even once, but her trained ears could hear the slightest of tremors when he claimed the mark meant nothing. She knew Will too well not to notice it.

But her attention was drawn back to Lewellyn's hands as they trembled against her wrist and side. Her resolve was weakening. "So you'll let me go? One druid to another?"

"I will, for tonight. You have my word."

Alyss couldn't see Will's face because of his hood, but she kept her eyes locked on him.

After a long pause, she felt Lewellyn's grip loosen, and then it was gone and she heard the frantic crunching of her boots on the dry leaves as she sprinted into the forest.

Alyss took a slow step forward when she knew she had gone. Will immediately reached for her, and they hugged tightly.

His hand stroked her hair as he murmured, "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine. She only wanted to find out what had happened to Athol."

"Tell me everything she said over dinner, alright?"

Alyss nodded, and gestured back to the forest. "Are you sure you don't want to go after her?" She paused as another crashing sound echoed through the trees. "It sounds like it would be an easy job."

But Will only shook his head, scowling. "It was stupid of her to even come here tonight. It only confirms the fact that her camp is nearby. And I'd rather catch her and all the rest of the druids together. Her alone isn't very efficient, and this way we'll have a lovely trail to follow tomorrow morning when we track them to their camp."

"Thank you. For saving me, I mean," Alyss added almost sheepishly.

Will smiled softly. "You would have gotten out of it one way or another. She wasn't there to hurt you, she was just scared."

"And she obviously doesn't know how well you can shoot, or else she wouldn't have shown up like that."

He chuckled. "It's true, if I really wanted to, I could have dropped her in a second. She didn't use you as a human shield very well at all."

They strolled back into the camp to get some dinner from the soldiers, and Will leaned over to the captain of the Redmont men. "Double the guard for tonight, your best men. We just spotted a druid."

He nodded curtly, and began relaying the orders.

When he turned back to Alyss, the glint was back in his eye.

"She's about to learn just how well I can shoot."