They left the rise better than they found it. Fire beds drowned and raked flat, ash salted and covered, racks wiped down until a stranger would have to work to tell a company had rested there. Stronric took one last look, found it correct, and faced forward. The ring moved out as he set it, quiet and together.

Bauru held far out on the thread, never closer than seventy paces, a hundred when the ground allowed. He and the Mountain Canary were hard to pick out even when the trees opened; when the cover closed again, they vanished clean. Through a brief gap in the branches the raptor showed herself like a hunter, tail a careful counterweight, head dipping and fixing so the gold eye could read what a careless man might miss.

The trail pinched to a narrow root braid with black water on both sides. Stronric raised a hand. "Single file," he said.

Lirian ran twenty paces in front of the file to read signs and test the roots in case Bauru had missed something. Stronric took point, leading the party forward. Rugiel followed behind him, Dane came next with his shield in his hands, Serene at his shoulder with her satchel. Kara walked behind them while Giles held the very rear.

The swamp tried its old tricks, then thought better of it. Roots leaned and shadows stacked, but the rabbit's breath blunted the worst swamp's tainted lies. Torch smoke climbed in straight lines. The sour stink that liked to live in beards slid off. Insects changed their minds and went looking for other business. They walked until black water pooled close on both sides and the trail pinched to a narrow braid of root. Lirian lifted two fingers and dropped to a knee. He did not touch the mud plates he had seen before in other places. He pointed instead to a sign that did not belong to the swamp at all.

"Bauru," Stronric said, low.

A reed twist sat in the fork of an alder, its tails cut square. Three short nicks marked the bark below it, high, middle, low. On the ground, a thumb-sized stone leaned toward the dry ridge to the south.

Lirian raised his palm to halt the rest of the party and Stronric set the file without jerk or chatter.

"Scout's mark," Lirian said, keeping his voice quiet. "Trap ground to the north. He has taken the wide on clean back ridge. We skirt it."

They shifted formation without fuss. Lirian slid back to Stronric's shoulder to read the safe edge. Stronric held the point. The file stepped off along the alder hummocks and the hard old game runs that stitched the south side. Twice Lirian showed where fresh-set plates hid under leaf muck on the bog side, and twice the route Bauru had chosen made those tricks irrelevant.

They never asked the field to prove it was deadly. They believed it and walked around.

"Walk wi' me," Stronric said over his shoulder to Rugiel.

Rugiel eased up to his shoulder. They kept the pace and the quiet. For a dozen steps she only matched his breath.

"When ye were taken," Rugiel said at last, calm and courtly. "Tell me enough to put my mind in the right place."

Stronric moved through the roots as if they had promised not to argue with him. He took a moment to sort out what to say. The whole of it belonged to him for now, yet she had a right to hear enough to stand beside him without guessing.

"Ye were there when the tree got me," Stronric said. "It dragged me for what felt like miles under the ground. Healin' from that took a while. I clawed out and nearly stumbled into a pack of corrupted wolves layin' into the Mountain Canary. I cut them off her, and she led me to a place."

Stronric stopped a heartbeat, thinking of the anchor and the tightening in a man's chest when he sees what a leash does to a land.

"Yes," Rugiel said, gentle but firm. "Go on, Stronric."

"I met someone there," he said. "I will tell ye of him later. Some pieces of that are not my story to give. He was a good man, or he tried to be. He offered to teach me rune smithin'."

Rugiel's step hitched. "Magical rune smithin'?"

"Keep yer voice down," Stronric said, but he did not scold. "Aye. He set me to trials. Taught me to carve a few marks and to respect what I did not yet know. I walked his trail a while." He told her enough to place the Dovren in shape without givin' the name or the deeper turns. He left out the crystal folk. Although Stronric knew she saw there were areas missing from his story, she did not press him.

"That road led me to a room," Stronric said. "A workshop shaped by the hands that came before. Light without windows. An anvil that did not need legs to stand. I was sittin' a rune called Severance when I checked my numbers. The cursed thing tried to press a combat style on me as if the fight knew me better than I know myself. That thought put heat through me. I took the crystal axe and split it rather than be told what I am. Then my head near burst. Something poured through my mind like water through a crack. In the wash of it, a line changed. A new knack sat where none had sat. I do not know how to name it."

Rugiel stared at him, eyes wider than her training liked to allow. "You made a new skill," she said. "How is that possible? Show me."

He lifted an eyebrow. She told him quick, precise, how to share a look at the line. He set his will and pushed the shape to her. She hissed once, a small sound of pain, and he steadied her with a hand before she could wave him off.

"I am fine," Rugiel said, holding up her palm. "At first it was only a heap of gibberish. Then it slid into focus. It hurt, but not badly. More like the pop in the ear on a high road. Stronric, this is remarkable. I have never read of such a thing. And all you did was get angry."

He let out a breath. "I was hopin' ye would know better than me."

"I do not," she said, and her honesty sat clean. "I can only guess. Three things might fit. First, clean costs are paid at the right work. Ye bled and kept your temper long enough to set a stubborn piece true. Second, the right witness. Some rooms are more than rooms. They agree with the labor and make it ring. Third, intent is set like a proper edge. Ye refused a false name and chose a function. If the world keeps its books, perhaps it wrote that refusal as a skill."

"Aye," he said. "I will use it until it proves itself or tells me its name."

"Good," she said. "Guard it. Do not show it to folk who would try to name it for ye. Keep the habit clean."

"When we are out," Stronric went on, "I mean to focus more on my skills. I need to improve them. I learn every day this is not my world and I need to learn to use this world to better benefit us."

Stolen story; please report.

"Which skill do you plan on improving?"

"Rune Smithing," Stronric said. "Master of Axe, Mediation, Duelist, and Trainer."

"Those are all good skills, but why them," Rugiel questioned, the hitch in her brow showing she was sorting through the reasons herself too.

"Rune Smithing and Axe are plain enough. Mediation, because recoverin' my Ruhan fuels the way my fightin' is changin'. I am leanin' on Ruhan more and more. Duelist, because after this it is time we find our kinsmen. I am learnin' this world's warriors cannot stomach their leaders fallin' and they flee after. Trainer, because we will always be outnumbered. We need to harden our brothers and sisters quick once we find them."

Rugiel nodded. "Then you must keep pursuing your strength. We should find a teacher; more hands will make the load easier for you and for us to bear."

"Aye," he said.

Ahead, Lirian's two fingers held, knife point turned toward a crushed sedge line angling to higher ground. A breath later Bauru's thin call carried from the same quarter. Stronric raised his hand and the file settled without chatter. Rugiel slipped back half a pace to her place. Lirian ghosted forward to meet the scout and then waved the ring up in pairs.

Bauru waited on a dry shoulder where the alder gave way to firmer earth. Predator hung easy in Bauru's hands, the string turned outward so it would not rub. The Mountain Canary stood at his knee, head cocked, gold eyes steady.

"Give it me," Stronric said.

"Camp sign first," Bauru said. "Gnolls here. Same filthy fetishes ye burned. Fire's burned doon, pots kicked, tools dropped where a hasty hand let go. Then a lane cut clean. Long blade, shoulder tae hip, hip tae t'other knee. Bodies hauled off so boots dinnae slip. Nae stumble marks. Nae showin' off."

Rugiel's voice was quiet. "Armand."

"Aye," Bauru said. "Carcharodon. He's drivin' hard, means tae arrive. Track runs intae rock where water once ran. Mouth smells o' a keeper. I didnae go in. Better fetch ye than be brave an' wrong."

"Right," Stronric said. "We go together."

Rock began to take the ground back from the swamp by slow degrees. Mud turned to an old riverbed, then to a hard apron where water had once fallen like a sheet and taught the stone to be patient. The air cooled a finger's width. The light leaned toward evening.

"Short drink," Stronric said at a fold where sound sits quiet. They took water, tore some meat, and ate a strip each with no stories. He shifted parcels in the pouch until the odd fullness pressed back in a way that pleased him, then shut it. "Ready," Stronric said, and they moved.

The trees opened like a torn curtain setting the stage with what had once been a gnoll camp. It sat on a shallow shelf of stone above the bog, an apron polished by years of falling water. Three stakes ringed with gut and bone had once marked the camp's pride. Two lay split from top to heel, the third was shaved on a long diagonal as if a giant had paired it with a knife. A cook-tripod lay on its side, legs splayed, pot kicked cold into the sedge. Bed-mats of hide were cut clean through and folded back like pages. A shield lay in two halves with no splintering at the cut, only a single bright plane where a blade had passed and left temper marks like faint rainbows.

When Bauru had first come upon it, the place had been loud with what had just happened, even in silence. Blood had been flung in arcs that read as lanes, not chaos. Bodies had been lifted off the path and stacked quick along the edge. Fetishes had been cut and kicked away so no ankle would find insult. A fresh ring on the rock just inside the dark mouth told where a long blade had clipped stone and kept going without losing its bite.

"Aye," Bauru said now, voice low, pointing with two fingers. "I saw it hot. Never seen cuttin' like it. Clean as a ledger. Fast as a blink. He took the heads o' the lane, turned, and made a door through folk that thought they were a wall."

By the time the ring reached him, the bog had already started swallowing the story. A thin slick of water had smeared the color of the shelf and pulled it toward the edge of the bog. Scavengers had dragged at what could be dragged. A handful of gnolls had crept back to pull their kin by the wrists and vanish into the black water. Wind had laid leaf litter over the worst of the shine. To a hurried eye the camp looked only abandoned and untidy.

Bauru showed them the truth that remained. A tuft of coarse hair caught under a bark lip. The flat dim sheen on a spear haft where sap had been wiped by a quick hand. Two long grooves in the mud that matched the width of a greatsword's point when it bites and turns. A half-moon bright on the stone lip of the cave where steel had rung and left a fresh kiss. The fetishes at the path's edge were not knocked at random. Each bore a single straight slice that severed gut and twine together, a signature of a blade that hated knots.

"Carcharodon," he said, almost to himself. "He came through here like a spill o' white water. Set the mess tae the sides and went on."

The mouth of the cave waited beyond, a black oval cut into rock that wore the long polish of falling water. Pale lichens made a quiet map around the opening. New scars crossed that map in straight lines. The air from within was cool and old, moving slow, with a sour keeper stink under the mineral. Inside the lip, just a hand span in, the stone showed that bright half-ring where a blade had clipped it at speed. A few inches lower, a fan of tiny grit-pits marked where something heavy had been dragged once and then lifted clean.

Bauru crouched and laid the back of his hand to the floor. "Air goes oot and in, slow," he murmured. "Fresh scrape here, feel it rough. He planted his heel at the lip, turned on it, forced all comers tae pass through what he left. When I saw it first, there were six laid neat along that edge. The bog took three, kin took two, the last one slipped doon and the stain ran after it. Looks near empty now if ye do not ken what ye are lookin' for."

Bauru looked up, one eye tight. "Still shocked me, right enough. No swagger. Nae waste. Just the work o' a long blade that meant tae arrive."

Stronric set the shape without raising his voice. "We do this clean. Bauru keeps well ahead and the canary with him. Lirian reads roof and floor, and fixes a reed on any seam that looks like it wants to lie. Dane owns the near corner and sets the rhythm. Serene is his pocket and keeps folk on their feet. Kara watches the margin for tricks from the keeper. Giles holds the rear, keeps the count, and calls the quarter marks. Rugiel with me."

Giles opened his mouth as if to make a case for a brighter post, then shut it again when Stronric looked at him and added, "Rear is a king's seat if it is done right. You see every mistake first. Keep us square."

Giles nodded once, jaw tight, and took up the task with both hands. Kara slid a step nearer him, not to coddle but to keep his line from wandering.

Serene knelt by Dane's boot and set a shallow pan on the stone. She took a thumb of pale rendered fat and worked it with a linen wick between forefinger and thumb until it took. Dane checked the copper caps they had cut from scrap and fitted to the ends of the reeds for wind and drip. He did not light anything. Stronric had said not until the first turn. It would be dark enough inside for the humans, and a flame teaches shadows where to stand.

Rugiel set her palm flat on the stone just inside the lip. Her eyes lowered a moment. "Mother of the Hearth," she said, quiet and even. "Hold this ring. Warm our bones where warmth does not show. Let our steps remember what ground is for." She did not look for a sign. She did not need one. She lifted her hand and met Stronric's eyes. The rabbit at her heel blinked once and the air near their faces steadied.

The Mountain Canary flattened her feathers and made a sound like a cork drawn slow from a bottle. Bauru's mouth thinned. "She kens it," Baura said. "There is a keeper's stink right enough."

Stronric opened the pouch, shifted parcels, and took out four narrow bundles of dried meat. "Eat," he said. "Light rations now, heavier when we are done."

They chewed without speaking, each keeping their thoughts their own. Lirian walked the first three paces into shadow and back, testing the lay with a reed and the knife point. He came out the same way he went in, balance never breaking.

"Floor is stone, not skin," he said. "First ten paces honest. After that the echo sits strange."

"Right," Stronric said. "Three calls if it breaks. Two calls for the quarter mark. If we find Armand, we do not rush him. He has earned the right to be spoken to like a man before he is handled like a problem."

Rugiel's fingers tightened on the haft of her warhammer and then eased. Her face held steady. The steadiness said enough.

Stronric put his palm to the wall one last time. Old water. Fresh iron. A place that remembered being asked to do ugly work and had agreed. He took his hand away.

"On my word," Stronric said in a low grumble, his discontent for what lay ahead plain in his voice. "Not before."

Bauru slipped into the mouth and was gone. The Canary dipped her head and followed. Lirian eased in behind them, reed in his off hand, knife low. Dane lifted his shield half an inch and found the square he would hold if something came fast. Serene stood at his pocket with her staff ready. Kara took the angle that let her see anyone's mistake early. Giles counted quietly to the next mark. Rugiel came even with Stronric.

"Take us in," Giles said with finality and they moved.

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