With dawn’s first light paling the eastern sky, the mounted troop of Letherii thundered down the narrow coastal track, the berm of the old beach ridge on their left, the impenetrable, tangled forest on their right. The rain had dissolved into a clammy mist, strengthening the night’s last grip of darkness, and the pounding of hoofs was oddly muted, quick to dwindle once the last rider was out of sight.
Puddles in the track settled once more, clouded with mud. The mists swirled, drifted into the trees.
An owl, perched high on a branch of a dead tree, had watched the troop pass. The echoes fading, it remained where it was, not moving, its large unblinking eyes fixed on a chaotic mass of shrubs and brambles amidst thin-boled poplars. Where something was not quite as it seemed. Unease sufficient to confuse its predatory mind.
The scrub blurred then, as if disintegrating in a fierce gale-although no wind stirred-and upon its vanishing, figures rose as if from nowhere.
The owl decided it would have to wait a little longer. While hungry, it nevertheless experienced a strange contentment, followed by a kind of tug on its mind, as of something… leaving.
Bottle rolled onto his back. ‘Over thirty riders,’ he said. ‘Lancers, lightly armoured. Odd stirrups. Hood, but my skull aches. I hate Mockra-’
‘Enough bitching,’ Fiddler said as he watched his squad-barring a motionless Bottle-drawing in, with Gesler’s doing the same beneath some trees a few paces away. ‘You sure they didn’t smell nothing?’
‘Those first scouts nearly stepped right on us,’ Bottle said. ‘Something there… especially in one of them. As if he was somehow… I don’t know, sensitized, I suppose. Him and this damned ugly coast where we don’t belong-’
‘Just answer the questions,’ Fiddler cut in again.
‘We should’ve ambushed the whole lot,’ Koryk muttered, checking the knots on all the fetishes he was wearing, then dragging over his oversized supply pack to examine the straps.
Fiddler shook his head. ‘No fighting until our feet dry. I hate that.’
‘Then why are you a damned marine, Sergeant?’
‘Accident. Besides, those were Letherii. We’re to avoid contact with them, for now.’