The convoy was almost—not quite—past the village they had first encountered when they crossed the Gate, and Kordas was about ready to put that potential source of problems out of his mind.

I am putting more furlongs on poor Arial than I ever did at home, Kordas thought, as he neared the midpoint of the convoy, after having ridden all the way to the end and back, making sure that everything was going according to plan. The only complaints that the people at the end had were that the herds in front of them had decimated the available browse by the time they reached a spot. But they admitted that their beasts were not suffering. The mages always made enough grass to grow to feed the herds overnight, and Kordas could see for himself that the horses and herds were still in good condition, so he just chalked the comments up to “people need something to complain about,” and was glad it was nothing worse than that.

If worse came to worst, so he had been told, some of the mages would be able to make grass grow even in the dead of winter. He didn’t know how to do that, but Sai had assured him that for the “green mages,” of which there were several, it was not only possible but trivial. At least, as long as they themselves had adequate rest and food. This was how the Imperial gardens at the Palace had been able to produce fruits, vegetables, and flowers all year around.

“Rose,” he said to the Doll riding behind him. “Ask the Dolls with the green mages to say I want them to do something about the grass all along the riverbank please. More of it, please, not less of it. People at the rear are complaining the ground has been eaten bare.”

“Certainly, Lord Baron,” the Doll replied pleasantly.

Kordas wanted the expedition’s pace to be brisk, not least because the faster they were, the less of a shock they would be on the ecosystems they passed through. One of Jonatan’s crude but true remarks was that most environmental-theater spellwork was like building a wagon, but good luck, you weren’t allowed to move from where you were standing. The act of building a spell kept the mage from observing all of its possible effects, because its structure as a spell at all was in the way of their senses. That, factored with the scale of some undertakings they had in mind—yes, a thing could be attempted with magic, but minor effects on a smaller scale became major ones that tipped over into entirely new dangers once they crested certain thresholds. “Inconvenient” side effects at room-scale, like glass breakage, became “the ground split open, and we’re losing cows” at village scale.

Non-mages don’t think of it much, but if a mage is there to talk with you, it means they’ve survived their own work, and you should be impressed. A universal truth of magic-casting was that if energy was being altered, formed, repurposed, or modulated, that meant heat would be a byproduct of the alteration, as much as a millstone made heat while doing its work.

Small wonder that magic is most practiced in the winter, when the heat is needed anyway.

The mark of mastery was if the mage was crafty with where to dump the heat. Snap spellcasting, like combat tactical spells, began with the mage stabbing a unseen “spear” of anchoring magic into the earth, and an instant later, the spell was castable without igniting one’s own clothes. Or fellow casters.

The expedition’s mages were being as safe as they could, and the spellcasting standards they’d agreed upon built firm anchors, like lances stabbed into hay bales, and sent the thermal recoil from magic manipulation deep into the ground, to simply warm up stone. Now, scale that up a hundred times, and that’s a lot of heated earth, which could be devastating to the life cycles within a land. Bugs, fish, and worms don’t take well to being boiled in their bathwater while some mage makes plants grow furlongs away. Kordas had placed the natives’ and the expedition’s survival into the mages’ hands, and muttered a short prayer of thanks for the cadre of mages with them—and that so far, they all liked and backed him.

I wouldn’t take kindly to boiling in my bathwater, either.

The convoy wasn’t moving any faster than a leisurely stroll, but that was to be expected. They were moving through a broad shallow, and boat piloting was all about dodging sandbars against the current—a sluggish current, but it was definitely still a factor—and the ratio of barges to horses was definitely a big factor. Some of the narrower barges were simply used as floating piers, and wagon ferries were employed to get livestock through past unsympathetic terrain, and were shuffled to wherever they were needed. This slow pace meant that the barnyard fowl could forage and still keep up with their shelter-barges, and the swine, sheep, and goats easily could do the same. It also meant that people stuck as “passengers” could do some frog hunting and fishing, and for the time being, the management of the kitchen barges wouldn’t need to think about slaughtering more animals than they needed for a single communal meal. It was all part of Isla’s carefully calculated organizational plan. There were so many barges and people per kitchen; so many supply barges for each kitchen; and methods for splitting or filling rosters when a boat got stuck, or some accident disrupted progress. Each kitchen got a set amount of fresh meat for the morning meal, depending on whether people in that group had hunted or fished for it, or if they’d drawn lots over who was going to supply it from their herds. Breakfast was usually the biggest meal, and the one that featured things that could be baked or stewed overnight in the coals of a small fire. Dinner was flatbread, cheese, and pickled or raw vegetables; as part of the stockpiling, Kordas and his people had been storing waxed wheels of cheese for two generations, and there was a lot of cheese on those supply barges. Supper was flatbread, and soup or pottage. For a treat, there was flatbread and jam, jelly, or honey. Anything that turned up besides that, well, the people who found it got to decide what was done with it. They’d waited until the weather had turned cold to start their journey, so the bees were all sleeping in their hives and the hives could be closed up and packed together on their own special barges.

At this point, if anyone was hoarding treats, the amounts were insignificant, and wouldn’t matter to anyone’s survival in a crisis. The only exception to the “each kitchen gets meat from the barges assigned to it” was when Kordas, who had more farm beasts than anyone else, allotted one of his to some part of the convoy that was animal-poor. And so far, no one was complaining about the food, or the way the food had been allotted. Isla is an unsung genius at this.

Just as Ceri had advised he get others to do, Kordas had been spending every bit of free time thinking of every possible disaster he could, and trying to work out a way to prevent it or at least soften the effects.

“Kordas,” said Rose into his ear, making him jump. The Doll was so quiet that even though she was riding pillion behind him on Arial, he often forgot she was there. “Villagers have come running to the rear of the convoy, begging for help.”

At first, what she said didn’t quite register. The villagers? Begging for help? But—

Idiot. There was only one reason they would come running to the convoy for help. Oh gods. They’re being attacked by something they can’t fend off by themselves. Or worse. Something, maybe, that farm implements couldn’t drive off.

Or we attracted it with our noise. None of what we do has been quiet, and for good reason—we don’t know what kinds of creatures are ahead, so making a commotion should scare away predators that might otherwise have a go at them. But, there are no guarantees out here—we could attract things too.

He considered not helping only for a fraction of a moment. There really was no choice; if nothing else, he had to set an example to the rest of his people that standing aside and doing nothing when others were in trouble was not going to be looked on with favor. His actions, fortunately, spoke louder than his inner monologue.

Oh gods. I’ve never actually fought anything deadly but the Emperor.

His heart clenched, then raced, and he blessed the foresight that had led him to strap on his crossbows and quiver this morning along with his sword and dagger. “I am responding! Tell the guards in the back third to arm up, and form on me at the tail,” he said, turning Arial on her heels and sending her back in the direction he’d come from at a canter. “If they have horses, use them. If they don’t, get running. Brief Isla and Hakkon, set reserves, get some Mage-gazes on the situation and advise. Sound horns in the tail quarter, and get me more information!”

His heart pounded in his ears, keeping time with the drumming of Arial’s hooves. She had entered the particular intensity that made her so prized by Kordas. She wasn’t just “running,” she was running selectively, actively planning steps yet to be taken. She wasn’t compliant, she was determined to get wherever she was pointed. Kordas felt Arial switch up to her “spark” by the rapid, subtle swings of their center of gravity as horse-and-rider, as her hips and withers moved to their fastest route for each stride. Kordas and Arial were a single unit made of man and mare, surging ever faster. To Kordas, his lower back felt like he was rowing while also being the waves; all the momentum flowed, and the wind bowed before them.

His “Guard,” for the most part, consisted of his own personal guardsmen and farmers and hunters who were at least on conversational terms with weaponry. They didn’t really have uniforms at this point, but they at least knew each other. It wasn’t an impressive force by Imperial standards, but it probably passed for an army here.

And if they were lucky, sheer numbers would overwhelm whatever had alarmed the villagers so badly.

A group of about forty guards, mixed between mounted and foot, had gathered for him when he arrived at the end of the convoy, and Arial reared upward when she rounded to stop. Pacing and punching his fist in his palm, with them was the agitated blacksmith and a young lad, who looked ready to promise the moon for some kind of aid. As soon as the blacksmith spied Kordas, he bellowed “You! Come on! We need ye!” and pelted off in the direction of the village.

“You heard him!” Kordas shouted to the hearteningly responsive would-be fighters, about half of whom were mounted. “Move out! Foot, follow him at speed!” Barely slowing by half, Kordas held his crossbow high and shouted, “Engage by heart!” a phrase known by educated soldiers that meant, “Use your best judgment and compassion.” It was a command guiding how soldiers should react to what they were about to see, as well as a reminder that they were going to be seen doing so. At this moment, too little of the situation ahead was known for him to give any more specific orders. The cry bolstered morale immediately. It told soldiers and guards that their senior commander trusted them, and that led by him, theirs was a righteous cause. The sound of senior soldiers repeating “Engage by heart!” fell away behind Kordas, and his heart surged. It was the first time he’d ever given that command outside of games, and it felt right.

Kordas and the mounted guards overtook the reluctant blacksmith and passed him, leaving him to serve as a guide for those on foot. By horse, the distance was trivial, yet Arial already outdistanced the escorting riders. Bad form, for several reasons, and Kordas noted, hopefully not as a last thought, that a field commander being the first upon a battlefield was never likely to end well. The village was just over a hill, and Arial answered his urging with her best speed again. He’d be there in a heartbeat.

Screams met his ears as the village of rock-built cottages came into sight, and he drew the compact, deadly light crossbow and cocked it by the lever of the pommel. He had a bolt nocked and locked before he saw the cause of those screams.

With a belly-twist of revulsion and horror, what he saw, he instantly knew, were no natural creatures. His first impression was that they were voids, an absence of light, not just “black,” but like light wasn’t allowed to be near them. When they moved, the things didn’t hold a definite outline. Their edges stuttered in and out randomly, as if they were sun-shimmers tearing the air itself. Mages like Kordas were more used to otherworldly and horrific things than nearly anyone except, maybe, the rare Summoner, and these things were unnerving to Kordas. The stone in his stomach told Kordas that these had never even been natural creatures.

Oh no, no, tell me we didn’t open up a demon pit. Tell me it’s not an overrun. Tell me we didn’t cause this.

These unnatural foes they faced were a pack of . . . leaping, dodging, vanishing things. Things that looked like the bastard children of a snake and a greyhound, by way of a demonic midwife, with enough of a mastiff to make them enormous. They didn’t so much run as flow through each other’s paths with those shuddery, waving silhouettes only adding to their menace. In color they were a smoky black, with skin that gave an impression of smooth scales rather than hair when it gave up some light. Reactant to their movements, strobes of colored light in vaguely geometric designs lit up and moved down their bodies. The skin displayed afterimages of the creature’s background or others of their kind every second, or darkened to make fake shadows. Sometimes the lights flared and dazzled, but added up, the main effect was to make these things horrifically hard to keep track of. The things had long, long necks, too long by far, and arrowhead-shaped heads that were an uncanny mingling of viper and canid, with yellow, pupilless eyes that actually glowed. The teeth in those narrow muzzles were needle-sharp, too numerous, and as long as a man’s thumb. They had bodies like greyhounds as well, but the legs and tails seemed unhealthily stretched, and the bodies unnaturally flexible.

They swarmed along what passed for a lane among the cottages, attacking, nipping at, and attempting to drag off anything they saw. Three of them had faced off against the prize bull, two more challenged the young stallion, and one had seized a screaming, half-grown pig by the hind leg, and the pig was swiftly losing the battle to get away. The villagers attempted to fend the creatures off with anything they had at hand, but the things merely ignored adult humans in favor of livestock. Some of which—no, most of which—were the animals from the passage deal.

Kordas made arm gestures and his guards set themselves in short lines and made ready for archery, and the horseborne fanned out behind them, bringing up assault bows. In rushes of releases, arrows and crossbow bolts filled the air between them and the pack of those unholy things. All the shots were carefully aimed. He saw them aim.

He saw the shots fly true. He expected shrieks or howls when the arrows found their targets; instead, there was nothing. No sound of reaction. The shafts that outright missed the creatures made normal thwap noises when they hit, but the few that struck the creatures made no noise at all—nor did the creatures. It dawned on Kordas what this would mean if the creatures weren’t out in the light like this. You couldn’t see them coming, or count them once they were in your presence . . . and you couldn’t hear them close in. Not even running around do they make noise, and they should still have made some kind of yelp when they were struck. Wait, maybe they did, but we couldn’t hear it. Yes! I bet that is it! When they trip or crush something and knock things over, we don’t hear that either. It’s not just that they are silent, it’s that they’re stopping sound.

Arial froze stock-still, refusing to come any nearer to these creatures than she was now. Kordas saw that of the scores of shots taken, only the few heart-shots had been effective. The other wounded creatures paused just long enough to chew off the shafts before looking for the source of their pain.

“Heart-shots!” he shouted, and he nocked another bolt, firing it as soon as he got the crossbow cocked. “Center of the chest! Heart-shots!”

Disturbingly, the monsters’ worrying at the livestock all stopped in the same instant, and they wholesale ignored the villagers. They fixated on Kordas and the soldiers, and to Kordas’s dread—they multiplied.

The creatures oozed and slunk around buildings, climbing over carts and under fences to gather into a roiling mass of shadows, half-bodies, and shimmers. Each of the creatures appeared to split and expand, though it was almost unfollowable how quickly or how many they might be by the moment. Scores of pairs of yellow eyes turned in unison upon the archers as the creatures massed together. The exact size of this mass of darkness wasn’t even clear, because groups of the things would dodge and leap in and out in knots of movement, making the eye follow them. Then there were hundreds of yellow eyes, all moving in pairs, with more joining into the deepening darkness all the time. They were all ignoring their previous prey. All getting closer.

How many are there? Were there hundreds that have been invisible? Were they there all this time, or waiting to arrive? What is this? We can’t fight this many—anythings.

The hypnotic, fear-provoking gathering of creatures split into two slow flows. One mass fixated on Kordas. The others closed in on the ground troops, and the tension finally broke. With a slithery sort of sigh, what looked like thirty or more masses of the things came at the defending guards, closing ground as a pack, and moving faster than any canid Kordas had ever seen before. And still eerily quiet. It could make you think they weren’t even really there.

Like they were illusions.

Kordas didn’t actually think; a decade and a half of Imperial training in war games dictated his change in tactics. His gut knew, before his mind said a thing.

He gathered his power within himself, reached for the nearest ley-line, stabbed his anchor into it, and just as the pack leaders got within two barge-lengths of the front lines, he threw up a curtain of fire right at their noses, between them and his guards.

The weirdling beasts ran straight into it, and despite being entirely hairless, somehow caught fire. Kordas sent the flames roaring upward, and pushed the conflagration against the rush of the creatures. Harm spells could be “mixed,” and his fire wave had been mixed both to cause physical burns and to dispel the cohesion of any illusions.

That should have broken their illusions, so now we can pick off the real ones.

And still, the creatures made no sound as they broke and ran in all directions, biting at their burning flanks, shaking their heads and pawing at their eyes. They rolled on the ground, trying to put themselves out, or thrashed around, felling hedges and stacked-rail fencing. The fire only made discerning their shapes more difficult, and hundreds of pairs of eyes looked out from the darkness while they regrouped.

They—weren’t illusions. Oh, what have I done? All those eyes—they’re still there. They weren’t illusions. My best shot was maybe two-thirds wasted breaking illusions that weren’t there. I was so sure. Now they’re closing, and I used the wrong spell.

By this point the blacksmith and the guards afoot had largely switched to hand weapons, and the blacksmith screamed at the top of his lungs, “Ware the bite! Ware the bite!” as he charged toward one of the things and swung his sledgehammer at what appeared to be its head. The blow connected well enough that the thing’s head was forcibly deformed two handsbreadths to the left from the rest of its body. There was no sound except for the huff of exertion the blacksmith had put into it.

Ware the bite? What about the bite? Biting, attack . . .

“Poison fangs!” Kordas shouted—even if that wasn’t the actual truth, it was close enough to make his people watch themselves. Horse troops maneuvered themselves into hit-and-run attrition on the creatures, succeeding in kettling many of the things, then chopping them down in waves of weaving ride-by attacks. The foot troops and the villagers formed into back-to-back defensive lines, with crossbow reloaders in the middle, and edged toward Kordas. They were soon enveloped, but held their own. These creatures preferred to nip at their targets, presumably to make use of their toxic bites. Amidst the expanding, shifting battlefield around him, Kordas saw the unfortunate creature the blacksmith had clocked in the skull stagger away from its pack. Toward Kordas. It ultimately dropped a horselength away from Arial, and still afire, it expired on its side right before him. Some of its skin had charred to ash. To Kordas’s momentary shock, he saw that the whole surface of its body that wasn’t burned had eyes. Pairs of glowing eyes looking outward, squinting, and peering around, while the body that bore their images died.

They weren’t illusions. The creature’s undamaged skin was murky-dark, with hundreds of convincing eyes glowing in it. They suddenly made themselves seem like hundreds—which would cause complete panic in their prey, and to anyone who could sling a spell, it undoubtedly had to be an illusion, right? It was a trick. To make someone . . . think it was an illusion . . . be impressed by themselves . . . get cocky for figuring it out . . . and waste a spell. Which I did. I fell for it. And now they’re breaking off, just . . . retreating.

The beasts—the ones that still could—fled into stands of trees as far from the village as they could find. The ones that couldn’t run met their ends from axes and scythes, arrows, crossbow bolts, and one Spitter in the hands of Beltran, when he was charged at. Unexpectedly, Beltran dropped his Spitter as soon as he’d fired it, covering his hand up and screaming amidst a sudden cloud of frost. He shook the damaged hand and Kordas could see it seemed intact, though frosted over. Spitters shouldn’t do that. Permanent enchantments in the metal safely hold the cold inside. Without that magic, as often as not they’d explode and take a hand with them. With a second thought, Kordas realized that the weapon had fired before Beltran even had a finger on its trigger. It was going to go off anyway. Beltran happened to be aiming when it did.

It wasn’t long until everyone entered the dazed “What just happened?” phase of combat. Monster bodies twitched, dogs barked, people yelled for their children. A quarter of the combatants were at the stage of after-action shock in which staring was the maximum they could offer anyone. Another quarter rotated among each other, repeatedly asking if everyone was okay. Kordas couldn’t blame them. Nobody could have been ready for that.

Kordas dismounted and extinguished the flame curtain with a gesture, and the poor blacksmith sat down heavily right where he was. His gore-pasted hands were shaking. Kordas went to him, leading Arial, who was getting over her own experience. Kordas was still filled with the lightning of his first actual battle, and felt as if, if he could win against that, he could conquer anything. Right up until that end. If the reinforcements hadn’t run to the rescue, those creatures could have strung defenders out and picked them all off over the course of hours. I am never going to tell anyone how close that was. Everyone but me saw a successful fire attack come out of me, and I won’t bring up the details.

But his brain was back in control now, and not his training and instincts. His instincts wanted him to pursue those things; his mind warned him that was a bad idea. Still, this was a win, and while there were injuries, there had been no deaths he knew of yet, and a win felt—

Euphoric. He hadn’t felt a crippling moment of doubt or fear once he’d spotted those beasts, and now that they were dead or fled, the feeling coursing through his veins right now was as heady as distilled spirits.

The blacksmith looked up at the Baron with tears in his eyes. He was obviously no stranger to fighting, and even more obviously, this village was his life. He’d have died today if that was what it took to make his people safe. “Y’s good a fighter as diplomat. Y’came. I’se desp’rate, an’ ye came t’help. Arter how we met ye—ye helped us anyroad.”

Calm down. Think. Choose your words carefully. Kordas went to one knee, and offered his kerchief to the blacksmith to clear up the—substances—caked on his hands from the battle. The big man accepted gratefully, and offered the disgusting remains of the cloth back to Kordas. He declined. “You didn’t treat us any differently than we might have treated you, if our positions had been reversed,” he said, hanging his crossbow back on his belt. “What in the names of all the gods are those things?”

He looked down at one with a bashed-in spine—the “eyes” on its skin had faded away, and its death twitches fired off broken patterns of lights on its skin. A dozen or more dots of light came up through the intact skin and clustered as bright strobes. Do they do that to attract attention when they fall, to draw off attackers from the others? Are they sneaky even when they’re dead? His mind was still processing what all had even happened, and he did take notice of something. He knew what coursing-hounds should look like, lean, but with good muscles. He could see every bone on this thing’s body; the strange, hairless, smoky-gray hide was stretched as tight as a drumhead over its bones.

“And why are they starving?” he added, wondering out loud.

The blacksmith got to his feet. “Dunno what they’s called elsewhere,” he said, slowly gaining back his composure. “We calls ’em hell-dogs. They got poison fangs. They stay ’way. Ne’er see’m like this.”

“Was anyone bitten?” he called over his shoulder, but no one answered, so he took that as a negative.

“Dunno why they’s starving,” the blacksmith continued. “There be plenty game hereabouts—”

But Kordas was now going from body to body, and he noticed that there were differences in each of them. All of the beasts looked to be starving, but some had twisted limbs, some had swellings of the hips or shoulders, and some had bloated bellies, incongruous on those bony frames. “They’ve either got some sort of disease,” he said aloud, “or they’re far, far too inbred. Maybe both; maybe they are so inbred that they’ve all got the same crippling diseases.” He looked back at the blacksmith. “I don’t think more than four or five escaped. They were all wounded, and I don’t think they are going to last the next moon, much less last the winter.”

“From yer mouth to the ears of the gods,” the blacksmith said fervently. “They ain’t never come into the village; we only ever had run-ins with them out huntin’. An’ then it was on’y two or three. That whole pack come down on us like a thunderstorm.” The blacksmith picked at his ear with a twig, freeing up some wet who-knew-what from the side of his head. “They fought wit’all they had. S’like if they didn’t, they coulda dun nothin’ more. An’ us, best day, we couldn’t’a done what ye did. How’ll we ever thenk ye?”

“If someone comes through here after we take down that door in the air, pretend we were never here,” Kordas told him promptly. “I don’t think anyone will, but if they do—”

“What? Travelers?” the blacksmith said, his face a study in abject stupidity. “Nah, we ain’t seen nonelike, the bank allus looks like thet. The wild pigs tear it up somethin’ cruel, this side of the river.”

Kordas clapped him on the back, and went to check on his guards.

Despite the shudders and nightmare-inducing sights, they were utterly unscathed, and though they lamented the loss of the arrows and crossbow bolts, no one wanted to touch the carcasses to dig what was left of the heads out. The villagers were emerging from their cottages and the blacksmith directed them to haul the bodies into a single pile—and Kordas noticed that none of them touched the bodies directly. They used shovels, or strips of rag tied around the feet. The men building the pile of bodies used pitchforks to manipulate them.

When they were piled up, the blacksmith returned to Kordas, hands clasped on the shaft of his hammer. “I don’t s’pose ye’d bring down the magic fire agin to set them things t’ash?”

Kordas chuckled shakily. “As long as I’m not likely to need it because another pack of those things is on the way—”

“Nay, no, don’t think so,” the blacksmith replied, but looked warily over his shoulder as he said so. “They went after th’ beasts ye traded, an’ hit’em an’like, but didn’t kill’em. S’like takin’ th’milk, y’ken? Like they meant t’come back, but, when battle started, ’twas for their lives then, an’ they was gonna fight ye.”

“They could have all escaped unharmed if they’d run, but they attacked us. So what was so special about those trade animals?” Kordas murmured. He thought on it. They were all fine beasts, they’d made the journey without harm so far, and they’d stuck with their barges until they’d been traded. Ordinary. Ordinary for where he was from, maybe, but ordinary for here? To be honest, probably, since the species of animals were close enough to the natives’ that they should have interbred just fine. There was some part of this that would have made sense to them, that he was missing. Something wasn’t wrong. He scratched at his left ear. No, something was unclear. The things were uncanny, but apparently acting in their “normal.” Kordas squinted and scanned around the aftermath with his mage-sight. He made himself receptive to minor, background magic within a quarter mile, from the villagers gathering up livestock that had bolted, to all the soldiers and guard here, and the residual magic from his spellcasting, which wasn’t there.

Wait, what?

The area was “clean.” More accurately, it was scrubbed wherever the creatures had moved. Not even the tiniest pockets where magic was usually held in seedpods, or bees, bugs, or birds flying through the village held magic right now. He gave an “I’m thinking” gesture to Beltran, who carried over his Spitter wrapped in a kerchief, while he paced and pieced it out.

Unnatural creatures attack new livestock but don’t kill, they all look starved and miserable, and now there’s no leftover magic, because . . . because they took it with them. The traded animals would have had the remains of the tethering spell on them. That’s what was new about them. Kordas took three steps and pulled the Spitter from Beltran’s hand. Its magic, too, was gone. All but a trace in the metal. Its enchantment remains, it’s simply—unpowered. The structure of its enchantment was there, but the energy was only now beginning to recover. He told Beltran, “Sink it in the river when we return. You shouldn’t trust a Spitter once they’ve endured cold-firing. They look fine to us, but they crack up inside and can burst right apart.” Beltran frowned without any pretense; he was not happy about losing his weapon. At least it wasn’t one of the pair he had stolen from the Emperor. “We’ll issue you another one,” Kordas murmured as he looked away.

The things knew I was a spellcaster, yet they went after the troops. It was obvious to anyone that I was in charge, so it made sense for them to go after me as their biggest threat, but they didn’t. They went after those protecting me, leaving me free for more spellcasting. Kordas did not care at all for where this was going. Because? Because they needed the magic. The mortally wounded one tried to reach me. It could have fled or hidden—but I must have smelled of magic to it. Magic it needed . . .

The one that was struck by Beltran’s shot was only a horselength away, and the Spitter was closest to it at that moment. So the things had to be close by to take magical energy in.

Kordas looked Beltran in the eyes and said, “Those things . . . by their emaciated look, even though food was around aplenty, they needed magic to—eat anything. To digest. Food all around them, but—I think this was something to do with their diseases and stunted shapes. Their bodies didn’t work right. This was all they could do, Beltran. It was their last chance to live.”

Beltran asked, “Then how many more are around us? Around the expedition?”

There was a very cold silence between them for a while.

If the Spitter misfired without Beltran, it wasn’t because the spike ruptured the pellet, it was because the pellet ruptured on its own. Contained by the chamber, the pellet decompressed and launched the bolt. If it hadn’t been in that chamber, the pellet could have detonated in every direction. Beltran would have been blown apart. And he was carrying reloads. One of the creatures nearly reached me, too, Kordas thought, and with that came a mental image of everything enchanted he had on him either igniting or exploding. Both of them had come a horselength away from a terrible end.

None of the villagers looked happy about being near enough to the things to stack the bodies. Ultimately, they didn’t pile them as much as pull them near each other and back off. Kordas pulled on the ley-line until he was full of power, then released it with a gesture at the pile of loathsome bodies. Fire erupted from them with a whoom, and a wavefront of heat that made everyone stand back.

The villagers all stared at him with expressions of awe that were very gratifying to him. Even more gratifying was when their expressions changed, first to faint surprise suggesting that something had occurred to them, to a mixture of gratitude and something else, which he suspected meant they had just now put two and two together and come up with a very unsettling “four.”

That he’d had this power all along.

That he could have used it on them to drive them out of their homes and resettle his people in their village.

That he hadn’t. That he’d instead bargained for passage like a peaceable and reasonable fellow.

The expressions turned again, to bewilderment. Because since he did have all this power, why hadn’t he used it on them?

To be honest, he really didn’t want to get into an explanation. Just let them keep wondering and counting their blessings.

“Now,” Kordas said, “I think we’ll be getting on. We may have a very long way to go before we find our new home. But I suggest,” he added, prompted by his training, “that you make some plans, and perhaps some channeling-walls and pit-traps, in case those creatures do return. Where did they come from?”

The blacksmith answered gravely, “North an’ west. We thought y’was mad to take the river. Everything bad in the world is up there.”

Of course it is.

A guard and a villager briskly approached, and offered up sacks of—he didn’t want to go into that right now, but they were undoubtedly body parts from the things. “We was pickin’ up, an’ we thought the mages would want parts of ’em. An’ we was policin’ bolts an’ arrows, an’ we—we thought you oughta see this.” The villager handed over a fistful of arrows she’d tied together. Their tips were spotless, serrated steel backswept barbs, designed to bite deep and stay there, and they bore helical fletching to induce silence and accuracy. None of the arrows were fully intact, but two things were crystal clear about them.

They all had fresh monster blood drying on them, and they were neither of villager nor Valdemaran make.

The silence around the scouts’ campfire was absolute, and it was so cold now that the sun had set that the only sounds to punctuate that silence were the lapping of water against the bank and the barges, and the crackling of the fire in the middle of their circle of tired and hungry faces. The downriver scouting hadn’t been obviously dangerous but it had been painstaking for them, and stopping for rest and reporting over a warm meal was welcome all around. Delia and the scouts listed off the things they’d made note of, and then Amethyst spoke up.

When Amethyst stopped her calm recitation of the encounter Kordas and his Guard had had with the monstrous hound-things, the expressions of weariness, at least on the faces that Delia could see, had been banished. Though they all had food in their hands, no one was taking another bite, and no one was chewing.

For her part, Delia stared at Amethyst in mingled shock and outrage. “Why did you wait until we stopped for supper and sleep to tell us all this?” she demanded, before any of the others could speak.

“Because nothing bad happened,” Amethyst said placidly. Delia continued to stare at her in disbelief. Anger started to rise in her. How dared the Doll not tell them—or at least her!—that Kordas had been in danger? Amethyst had no right to keep such things from her!

But before she could have another outburst, Sai tossed a pebble at her, hitting her cheek and distracting her.

“Amethyst is right,” he said. “There was no point in stopping to hear what was going on. We were all busy with the task the Baron set us, which was to scout ahead for dangers and for potential places to build a settlement. It doesn’t affect us—”

“I’d dispute that,” Ivar replied mildly. “We need to watch out for packs of monster snake-dogs. Or were they dog-lizards? With poison fangs, apparently.”

“All right, point taken,” Sai replied, a little crossly. “But aside from that, we are much too far ahead of the front of the migration to have gotten back in time to help, and Kordas is a perfectly capable mage on his own, besides having had some of his Guard with him. He had Rose. He could easily have had her summon more guards, or more mages from parts of the convoy that actually were close enough to be of some help. No matter what happened, Amethyst knew it would all be over before anyone here could say ‘We must ride to the rescue!’ which would have been stupid, anyway.” He turned back to Amethyst. “Is there anything else we need to know?”

Amethyst shook her head.

“All right, then.” Sai went back to setting up the big pot full of hearty stew they’d be eating in the morning after it spent the night buried in the coals and ash of the cookfire. “Now we know there are strange and dangerous creatures out here, and we need to be more vigilant. There are things that Jonaton, Venidel, and Endars and I can do that will give us some protection.”

“Shield shells,” said Jonaton, rubbing his hands together with anticipation of something more interesting to do than keeping a bored eye on the forest bordering the river. “We aren’t going to need shields all the time, and it would be a waste of energy to keep them up that way, but we should have spell keys and break triggers made up so we can deploy shields in an instant. Big ones for the boats and camp, small ones for each of you.”

“I’ve got good night sight,” offered Endars. “I don’t mind sleeping days to keep watch at night. We won’t be moving in the dark, so the shield won’t have to be as large to cover us and the horses. Might be a time saver, over protecting a whole boat.”

Venidel, Sai’s apprentice, added, “Our first ones should probably make spherical shields, to save time. They can’t stop everything, but they’re strong for their size. I guess we should just go for fast and simple.” Venidel was an earnest, gangly, ginger-haired lad near enough to Delia’s age not to matter, who looked useless, and was anything but. A farmer by birth, affable Venidel had come into his power fairly late by mage standards, but he took it seriously. “Hotseeds could hold the spellcharge, since none of it’s meant to be permanent. I think we have hotseed pod shells in the provisions, though I hate to use them up.”

“We can live with bland soup, as long as we’re living.” Jonaton chuckled. “Straight twigs, cleaned mud, seedpods, what else will we need—”

The four mages dove into a conversation that left the rest of them out in the cold, but Delia didn’t mind; she was too busy trying to sort out her galloping feelings. On top, and dominant, was that Kordas had been in danger and she was angry she had not been there to help him.

Because surely, went her runaway fantasy, he would have seen that I had run to help him, rather than running away to hide. And maybe one of the creatures would have attacked him at a moment when he was unaware, and I could have saved him, and he would have taken me into his arms and . . .

And she found herself blushing so hotly that the fire on her cheeks felt cool, and she was mortally glad there was no one about with Mind-magic to “read” this preposterous faradiddle and laugh at her.

It had been one thing to entertain such fabulous notions before Kordas had been summoned to the Capital, when they had all been safe in the manor and the worst danger any of them faced was a late supper. It was quite another when they were here in a strange land, and when practically within days of the first party crossing the gate, these hellish monsters appeared.

Instead of making up fancies, I should be listening to Sai and the others discuss what magic tricks they can use to ward off danger, and to fight. And I should be trying to figure out how my Fetching Gift can help if some weirdling creature lurches out of the forest with a belly full of hunger and the certainty that we look tasty!

So for once, she listened to her more sensible side and accepted the flatbread-and-jam slice that was passed to her, occupied her mouth with that, and listened while the mages all speculated.

“I think,” Sai said at last, “there was a book in your library, Jonaton, that talked about Change-Circles and what sometimes happens inside them?”

“Oh good gods, I haven’t cracked that book in a dog’s age. And now it’s—” He waved vaguely to their rear. “Well, if I am remembering correctly, if you got two or more creatures caught inside one, there was about an even chance each that they’d die, get weakened in some way, get enhanced in some way, or fuse together in some hellish monstrosity that might or might not die. Something about life itself makes them fuse—there are no accounts of nonliving things joining.”

“That sounds like those snake-dogs, doesn’t it?” Hakkon asked.

“Well yes, except that you never got the same thing twice out of a Change-Circle, and there was an entire pack of those things.” Jonaton pulled on his lower lip thoughtfully. “Amethyst, what did Kordas tell you about them again? Besides the description and the poison fangs.”

“That he believed they were either diseased, heavily inbred, or both,” Amethyst replied. The firelight made the amethyst cabochon embroidered into her forehead glow as if it was a third eye. “Rose saw them, and attests that they did have various obvious deformities.”

“So they probably aren’t the product of a Change-Circle,” Endars opined.

“But . . .” Everyone looked at Venidel. He gulped, but bravely continued. “But there are creatures like worms and slugs, snails, and some fish that don’t need male and female because they are both.”

Delia stopped chewing, because that sounded too mad to be true. But it was clear that the mages, at least, had either known that already, or were prepared to believe it coming from Venidel.

He is an expert on animals and how they react to magic. He was the one who had concocted the idea of the charms put on their animals that kept them “tethered” to their home barge.

The elder mages looked at each other, then back to Venidel, then at each other again. “I suppose it’s possible,” Sai conceded. “We knew that we could encounter anything, and we are officially in Undiscovered Country.”

“The people who live in it certainly discovered it!” Bart Fairweather laughed. “Well, expect the worst, hope for the best, I suppose. It’s too bad none of us can fly. It would be awfully nice to have something or someone scouting overhead.”

Sai and Jonaton both broke up in laughter. “Sadly, flying is a dream,” Sai informed him, as Jonaton wiped his eyes over the change of subject. “Oh, every baby mage dreams of the day he can fly, but . . . well, you can do it, but it’s not very practical. You run out of your own power to control the magic, and when that happens—” He picked up a pebble, held it high, and dropped it. “Splat.”

“The few mages I ever knew who could do it just used it to impress women,” Endars said sourly. “And all they did, really, was rise up to about head-high, spread their arms, and smirk and look important. Or at least they were under the impression they looked important.”

“Did it work?” Venidel asked, now clearly intrigued. “On women, I mean.”

“Yes.” The tone of Endars’s voice, and the way he bit off the word, suggested to Delia that there was a story there.

Probably a sad story about Endars wanting to impress a particular woman—or girl—only to see one of the show-offs win the “contest” before it could start.

“You never see female mages pulling that particularly obnoxious piece of asshattery,” snickered Jonaton. “It’s always the boys with no brains who make up for their lack of wit by strutting and flashing their feathers.” He smacked Endars on the shoulder. “Trust me, anyone who falls for that trick isn’t worth impressing.”

Endars’s mouth squinched over to the side as if he didn’t quite believe it, but he nodded after a moment.

“So you fell for it?” Sai poked back.

“Only twice,” Jonaton replied, and the laugh was welcome all around.

“Besides, it takes a special sort of crazy person to have a relationship with a mage, especially if they themselves aren’t mages,” Hakkon said lazily, as he held up a bit of bread and jam to Jonaton, who opened his mouth like a baby bird wanting to be fed. Hakkon feinted the bite away, then popped it into Jonaton’s mouth. “And would you really want to be with someone as crazy as me?”

“Of course I do!” said Jonaton, and made silly puppy eyes at his partner. “And I am known far and wide for my excellent taste.”

Delia rolled her eyes, recalling a few of Jonaton’s outfits that . . . well, they looked like bags. Colored in hues not found in nature, and with some impressive ornamentation, but bags nevertheless. Not something she would have said was in “good taste.”

“I’ll pass, thank you,” Endars replied, but he didn’t look nearly as sour.

Delia was the first to head for bed, and not just because she was still trying to sort through some very uncomfortable feelings. The barges used for the scouts had been modified. The one the women were using was one of the “kitchen” barges, the kind that would accompany workers to remote sites. It had been modified for Alberdina’s use as an apothecary and infirmary as well as for Sai’s special cooking. The front two-thirds was the kitchen, which was how these were normally set up, but instead of stored food, the back third held the close-stool and the women’s beds and personal storage. And since Alberdina was not young, and one of the bottom beds needed to be reserved for someone injured or ill, that meant that Delia and Briada were on the top bunks. Delia was above Alberdina, and it was just less awkward all around if she was in the bunk when Alberdina came to bed. No chance of accidentally stepping on Alberdina, or flailing and kicking her.

Besides Sai’s food, there was another thing that the scouts had that most of the rest of the convoy didn’t. Apparently a good long while ago, when he first started venturing out past the borders of the Empire, Ivar had come to Sai with a request. He’d wanted some way to remove his scent—and maybe to clean himself up at the same time—that he could use at least daily.

Sai had presented him with a towel that could be used morning and night that did just that. And once they’d arrived at Crescent Lake, he’d been making more such things—even a scrub with a rag and warm water was going to be less than pleasant come winter. The towels were made, he claimed, of mushrooms. They were supposed to be living sheets of fungus that would absorb and thrive on whatever filth was rubbed into them. He’d given two to each of the scouts when they were putting their personal things away. “One to clean yourself, the other to roll your smallclothes in when you go to bed,” he’d said. “In the morning, your smalls will be cleaner than if they’d come from the Baron’s laundry.”

It wasn’t anywhere near as nice as a good long soak in a proper bathtub with proper hot water, but it did clean you really well, including your hair. And Sai hadn’t exaggerated about what the second one did for underthings, either. They came out of the rolled-up towel better than the laundresses had ever cleaned them.

And that was another thing: it was also less awkward if she got her “wash-up” before the others bedded down. She still felt uncomfortable being naked in front of two people she didn’t know very well. It wasn’t that she was particularly bodyshy, but rather that Valdemarans tended to associate nudity with privacy. Healers often made private examinations when the patient was nude, but bathing was done alone, and unless one was extremely wealthy and could afford a handmaid, clothing changes were done in private as well. Therefore, being bare made her feel like she should be alone.

The little stove was going, but it was still cold enough that she hurried through her cleanup and back into a particularly warm, loose shirt and trews and clambered into her bunk. There was just enough soft light from the little lantern at the front door to aid her into place. Outside she could hear voices; it sounded like the mages were bidding everyone goodnight. Then Alberdina apparently said the same. A moment later she heard and felt Alberdina board the barge.

She pretended to be asleep, on her side with her face to the wall. After an interval of soft sounds and the slight rocking of the barge, she heard and felt Alberdina settle into the bottom bunk.

She carefully eased over onto her back and pulled the covers up tight under her chin. There were so many thoughts buzzing in her head, like a hive full of annoyed bees, that it was just too hard to sort them out. And her emotions were tangled up in all of it. Finally one thing rose to the top. Kordas sent me away on purpose. And it wasn’t because of my Gift. Really, there was no other conclusion that anyone with the sense the gods gave a goose could come to.

A part of her was angry, and part of her was jealous of her sister, and another part of her was determined to do so well out here that her name would be in every single report that Rose gave to Kordas on their progress. That part of her was a whole different little tangle all on its own. Send me away, will he? I’ll show him! And Think you can send me off and forget me? You’ll hear about me more often than if I was still back there! And Will you be sorry you sent me away?

Part of her wanted to be vital to the group. She did like them, she liked all of them, and Hakkon and Jonaton she loved like brothers, and Sai was practically her grandfather. She honestly wanted to make them proud of her and happy that she was there, so happy that they’d fight to keep her with them.

Delia had listened to Amethyst’s calm recital of the attack on the village with horror. Even more so that Ivar and Sai had seemed unsurprised to hear about it. As they had lived at Crescent Lake, her early fears of being in a wilderness had faded—with that many people all in one place, it wasn’t really a “wilderness” so much as a temporary city, and the things she had feared, like bears and wolves and pards, if they’d had any sense, wouldn’t come within sniffing distance of Crescent Lake.

The convoy was nothing more nor less than the moving version of that temporary city. Animals, probably even weird magical animals, would hear it coming for a league, and avoid the river while they passed.

But not us. And now it wasn’t just bears, wolves, and pards she needed to think about.

So part of her was afraid.

And part of her didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

And part of her thought, basely, To all the hells with them! Isn’t it my right to choose to keep safe?

And yet another part scolded her for being so selfish.

With that war going on inside her, like a circle of debaters interrupting each other, she somehow fell asleep.