Two days. That was how long they’d travelled with no further signs anyone else had recently trod the same road. Everything was quiet. Idyllic. Dylan could almost forget the destruction they’d left behind.

Yet, he couldn’t shake the sight of Marin and Tracker emerging from the forest. The grim lines etching their faces. The talk of dead bodies. Their insistence on breaking camp and setting up elsewhere, never mind that it would leave half of them fumbling about in the twilight.

They hadn’t spoken much about the incident since. When Dylan pressed the hound, the man confessed the bodies weren’t from the tower. Whilst the knowledge crushed the dim hope Dylan had of people escaping the slaughter—for even if these people hadn’t made it, knowing some had breached the outer wall meant others might’ve been more successful—it didn’t answer where they’d come from.

There were few options. Given how many dead Talfaltaners had littered the tower grounds, he doubted they had taken the time to drag a few out into the forest. They could’ve been those critically wounded who had then passed away, but the placement seemed odd.

That left them being some poor souls who’d the misfortune of being in the wrong place.

It still left other questions. He might not be as worldly as the others, but he knew anyone claiming to be a merchant also had a wagon or two. And those he had encountered on their journey were always armed, be that themselves or their guards. They would’ve fought. And lost against insurmountable odds. Had they fled into the undergrowth, hoping to evade those who meant mortal harm? It clearly hadn’t worked, but it suggested an explanation for the bodies’ placement.

Yet, things still didn’t quite add up. Tracker had spoken the truth about fighting with blades. It was messy. And messy left signs. If they had survived enough to avoid immediate death, then maybe not the dark marks that wouldn’t fully seep into the compacted earth that was the road.

But what of their wagon? The road might’ve been hard under his boot and baked by the sun, but surely a carthorse or a laden wagon would be enough to make a more substantial impression of their passing. The road’s surface showed not a single mark, be it foot, hoof or wheel.

At least, it hadn’t until they crested a hill at noon.

He hadn’t ever seen an armed force larger than a few people before leaving the tower. The army encampment had merely been a town of tents, its placement for generations moulding its surroundings, expanding slowly as the surrounding forest was culled to serve as fuel for the multiple fires.

What stood before them was vastly different. The trees lining the road had either been stripped of their branches or felled completely. Where the earth hadn’t been trampled into a slurry by an onslaught of feet had instead been hacked open to make fire pits.

Marin knelt by one of them, her hand hovering over the broken ground before dipping deeper. The charred remains of a log jutted from that maw like a decaying tongue. She slapped her palm down onto the cracked charcoal surface, holding it there without a hint of harm. “This is days’ cold.”

“More than that,” Tracker said. The hound crouched by a similar hole, this one cracked and split as though struck by lightning. The jagged edges obscured whatever the man saw within. “I would put all this at no earlier than a week.”

“It just keeps going,” Katarina yelled from her place halfway down the hill. She stood in the middle of the road, her gaze fixed eastward.

Dylan peered into the distance. From their spot atop the hill, he had witnessed the road on Whitemeadow winding on for miles. Even though he no longer had the same height advantage as the dwarf, that more than this patch of the roadside had suffered the same fate was obvious.

He squinted, trying to see even further. If he could just manage to make things clearer, then maybe he would spot those responsible for not only this chaos, but the destruction of his home.

No matter how hard he willed it, the view remained unchanged.

“I don’t understand,” the hedgewitch continued in a more sedate tone as she joined them at the base of the hill. “If they caused this much destruction all along the way, why are we only now coming across it? Why not sooner? Why did they stop at the base of this hill?”

“Siege tactics,” Authril replied, shrugging. “No fire, no tents. Minimise all signs of precisely how big your horde is. It was one of Danny’s favourite strategies.” She rarely spoke of the mercenary company she’d been a part of before the army attack. Most times, it left her sullen, withdrawn and curt with everyone.

“Not an approach I would think Talfaltaners to know,” Tracker pointed out. “There are few structures to besiege out in the ocean and their ships, although reputably fast, are not exactly built to promote stealth in their sailors.”

Authril’s shoulders lifted once more, this time, with an added air of indifference. The two elves hadn’t argued since the other day, but she often responded to the hound’s presence as though he was there only at her whim. “Clearly, I’m not as familiar with sea warfare as yourself.”

The hound’s brows lowered. “Warfare?” he echoed, the word practically a growl as it slipped between his clenched teeth. “If you had witnessed the aftermath of a merchant vessel against a Talfaltaner ship, you would not call it such. No more than you would claim the sea does battle with the shore.”

“Are you saying they’re a force of nature?” the warrior scoffed.

“I speak only of them striking with the same blunt inevitability. Not once have I heard of them exercising finesse. This tactic?” The man gestured to the stark difference between the top of the hill and their immediate surroundings. “I guarantee it was someone else’s idea. Whose? I cannot be certain. But I suggest we be extra vigilant from here on out. There is no telling what lies ahead.”

“There’s no way around?” Katarina asked. She rummaged about in her many pouches, pulling out the old map she had claimed possession of back at the army encampment. “A farmer’s road? Hunting trails?”

“Not this close to the tower,” Tracker replied, the statement surprisingly backed up by an agreeing grunt from Authril, reluctant as it was. “No one lives this close. We will not even see farmland for several more days.”

“Then we should stop wasting daylight and move on,” Marin declared, taking the lead in marching down the road.

Having no other choice, the rest of them followed.

They continued until the afternoon had barely begun to wind down before abandoning the road to press further into the forest than they’d done the previous two evenings. With their surroundings looking as though they had never accommodated visitors so far from the roadside, it took a while to find somewhere that held enough space for everyone.

Dylan set about helping Katarina and Tracker clear the ground for their tents, whilst Marin disappeared into the forest to place her traps and find a stream to fill their water skins. He had offered to save her the trouble of the latter back when they’d first started travelling together. With the forest’s natural dampness, condensing the morning dew that clung to the tents would leave them with more than enough.

Authril had opposed the act then, stating it was a frivolous use of his power. A valid concern at the time as he’d been worn out from not only the battle with the Udynean spellster, but also from combating exhaustion and a lack of proper nourishment. All things that he had recovered from. He would broach the subject tomorrow. No point offering after the deed was done and he’d never find Marin beforehand.

His gaze slid from unravelling his tent to where Authril knelt, hacking out a spot in the earth for the fire. Her efforts had produced little beyond a shallow pit. His magic could’ve done the task faster and deeper, with less strain on him. She knew that, had witnessed it when he dug a hole for Marin to bury the boar’s innards, yet she didn’t seek his help.

He put his back to the sight, knowing full well Authril wouldn’t accept any assistance he offered, and returned to laying out his tent. Tracker, having already finished setting up his own shelter, currently aided Katarina with the enviable finesse of someone who’d spent their life travelling.

Dylan had spent years—decades—wondering what that was like. Night after night, he had wistfully watched the world beyond the tower, longing to walk this very road, to see the fields of Whitemeadow in bloom, to visit the cliffs at Wintervale and smell the sea air for the first time. And he would, in time.

He would’ve eagerly given up all those chances to return home with everything unchanged.

It wasn’t long before the hound came to Dylan’s side. The man didn’t ask if his help in setting up the tent was required, merely took up a stone and started securing the opposite end. “All this would be a lot easier if we altered the sleeping arrangements,” Tracker said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Dylan remained silent whilst tapping the last peg into place. He knew precisely what the man was getting at. He even agreed that, logically, having one less tent to worry about would lessen the strain of finding places to camp. It would likely decrease their chances of being found, too.

Yet the idea of sharing such an intimate space with the hound, of lying next to that warm, lithe form, the very air filled with the aroma of citrus and cinnamon whilst the faint purr in the man’s breath thrummed through his body…

His final hit on the tent peg came down hard enough to crack the stone in his hand. The uneven edges bit into his palm, not enough to break skin, but his innate healing nevertheless rushed to the site to soothe the ache.

Shaking his hand to relieve the tingling such magic left behind, Dylan risked a glance at Tracker. Was elven hearing sensitive enough to hear a fist-sized rock break? Were his hound senses alerted to the small amount of magic?

If the man had noticed anything, he played the part of being oblivious well.

Dylan slowly exhaled. He had to stop these thoughts. It was one night. He’d spent plenty of nights with others. Not as intensely. Nor for as long and definitely not with that level of vulnerable intimacy.

He needed something else to distract him. But what? A scan of their camp showed little left he could assist in without also getting in the way. Training, then. The others were clearly doing their best to avoid any conflicts, but they also travelled in the same direction as the horde that took out the tower. Meeting those who meant them harm had to be inevitable. They needed to be ready.

And he needed to be capable of fending off an opponent without the use of his magic, be his inability due to lack of energy or even being leashed again.

His neck tingled at the memory of the cold metal wrapping around it, the iciness leeching into his mind, the world drained of any vibrancy. Sharper still was the recollection of pain, pinpricks of fire and lightning assaulting his flesh whenever he tried to use magic unsanctioned.

He’d gone into the original leashing blind. He understood that, now. He’d been so sure of what effect the collar would have on him, that it couldn’t be any different to the isolation cells, just portable. And permanent.

Except it hadn’t been. Not that time.

He ran his fingers across the smooth patch of skin at his throat. Whatever fault had allowed his magic to slip through, had saved him from a swift death, would be rectified by whoever was capable of leashing him at Wintervale.

Could he really go through it again? I have to. He was too dangerous to wander about unleashed. Strong. That was what the hound had called him. Strong enough to free himself, to leave him alive and unconscious, hidden from sight and presumed dead.

Just not enough to save any skin but his own.

Unruly. That was a more apt description of himself. Disorderly. Disobedient. Disruptive. Observations repeated by so many. The overseers who forced him to fight in the brawl or die because he had disobeyed. The sergeant who had sent him to the front line when he had only wanted to heal the wounded. The warden who had promised a short existence of abuse no matter how he followed orders.

“We are feeling poorly, yes?”

Dylan stiffened, the hound’s words jerking him back into the present. Both them and the tent stood inside the sphere of his shield. The surface had hardened, shifting whorls of ice coating the outside. I hadn’t even noticed. In its most basic form, a spellster’s shield reacted on instinct, the desire to keep out what was likely to do a person harm. But he should’ve been aware.

“I…” He fought for speech, his tongue unable to form anything beyond a few garbled sounds. Even those scattered as he faced the man. Instead, he fumbled to dispel both the shield and the ice it had formed.

The whole time, Tracker continued to wordlessly watch him, those honey-coloured eyes boring deep. Concern drew his brows together. Was he reconsidering their journey? Their goal? His task as a hound?

Dylan didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t meant for his shield to form, but admitting that would mark him as unpredictable. Dangerous. To everyone around him.

“Am I right in thinking you would still like to learn swordsmanship?”

The man’s question had Dylan’s brows climbing to their highest. After being reminded how the army didn’t allow spellsters to learn any other weapon beyond their magic, he hadn’t bothered to speak with Authril about training. Tracker had brought up that very point and Dylan had assumed the man agreed, but he also hadn’t said as such.

Wetting his lips, he searched for the right words that would leave him sounding adamant without seeming desperate.

“Does the silence mean no?”

“No. I mean, yes. That is—” He clapped a hand over his mouth, physically restraining himself before his babbling talked Tracker out of teaching him. “I want to learn,” he finally managed. “I take that to mean you’ve changed your mind?”

“That would be difficult to do when I had not given you a solid response in the first place. I am open to teaching you, but not here. Not in front of them.”

Dylan followed the hound’s line of sight to where Authril eyed them over the beginnings of a fire. The bared length of her sword casually rested on the ground beside her. He had no doubts that she would object to him learning to use even the smallest blade in the hound’s arsenal.

“Come.” Tracker turned on his heel. “Let us see if we cannot find one of those smaller clearings.”

He stared at the man, unable to even close his jaw, for a few breaths. “Now?” Why was the hound so keen to begin this? Granted, Dylan felt stronger than the day he’d first asked, but he’d seen how much a sparring session could take out of a person. Surely, a meal and a little rest would be the way to go. “Weren’t you advocating for me to rest not that long ago?” Was forcing him to train so soon after the day’s travel some ploy to make him rethink the request?

Tracker peered over his shoulder, the gleam of those honey-coloured eyes just visible beneath the russet lashes. “You wish to learn to defend yourself without relying on magic before we reach Wintervale? You will start now.” He smiled. “Do not worry, I promise to be gentle.” With that, the man vanished behind a tree, leaving Dylan to follow.

They walked through the forest until reaching one of the clear patches they had encountered on their way in. Even to Dylan’s inexperienced eye, the area was too small and uneven to hold three tents without hacking away a great deal of bush or felling one of the enormous trees. But it looked large enough for the basic sparring techniques he had witnessed the soldiers doing at the army encampment.

The hound circled the area, mumbling to himself and nodding. Occasionally, he would kick aside a cone or toss a heftier branch nearer the bushes. “This will do for today.”

Dylan straightened. An odd, nervous bubble hit his stomach. He hadn’t had anyone teach him something so completely foreign in years. “What’s the first lesson?” He discreetly bounced on the balls of his feet, trying to expel some of the giddiness. A lot of it refused to be quelled so easily. “Stabbing?”

Tracker wrinkled his nose. “By the gods, no. We will begin with the basics.” He unsheathed his sword and offered it, hilt first, towards Dylan. “Show me how you hold it.”

“That’s all?” Dylan took up the weapon, his fingers closing around the leather-wrapped hilt. The sword wasn’t as heavy as he had presumed, perhaps the weight of a slinky mouser and just as likely to injure him if handled wrong.

He stared at the blade’s fang-like point, not seeing the weapon at all. The tower cats. He hadn’t seen a single one of them whilst they had walked the halls. They tended to skulk around where there was food or warmth, but even in the library, he’d seen no sign of them amongst the shelves.

“Dylan?” The hound’s concern sat thickly in his voice. “Are you all right?”

He jerked his head up, the sword instantly dipping to graze the ground. “Did you see any cats back in the tower?”

Tracker shook his head, his gaze not leaving the sword. Did he regret handing the weapon over? “They likely fled during the attack.”

“Are you sure? I thought you said Talfaltaners kill anything they believed was associated with a spellster.” They had culled the messenger pigeons and those poor birds had done nothing but sit in their cages. Cats weren’t seen as anything special about the tower, no more so than any mouser would be to a dense population, but he’d no idea how other realms saw the animals.

“They would never harm a cat. Such creatures are sacred to them.”

That knowledge gave only a small measure of comfort. Being slaughtered by wicked people wasn’t the only way they could’ve died. “I burnt the place to the ground.” He stared off in the direction of the tower. With them days away and surrounded by tall trees, he wouldn’t have seen his home even if it hadn’t collapsed. “Do you think I—?”

“No.” The gruff certainty in the man’s voice had Dylan facing him once more. “Like I said, they would have fled into the surrounding forest.” He frowned thoughtfully. “It is possible the Talfaltaners claimed some as their own in the name of rescuing them from evil, but the most you would have done is scorch a few rodents. The rest would have fled.”

Out into the forest. Where there was no shelter, no people to offer up scraps of meat or a warm lap. They’re not pets. Not the way those born outside the tower described them. The tower mousers were bred to hunt, to keep the rodent population from destroying the library and the food stocks. They’ll survive. If what Tracker said was true, if the Talfaltaners had left the cats alone, let them run free into the forest, then they would live.

A piece of the tower would live.

Tracker eyed him as if expecting Dylan to burst into flame. “If you are not well, we can do this another time.”

“No.” He lifted the sword once more. “You promised to teach me.” The sword refused to stop wobbling, the tip never quite swinging where he intended. Still, he tried to keep the length under his control. Gripping the hilt with both hands helped. “So, teach.” He raised the weapon and struck the same pose he’d seen Authril do.

The hound circled him, humming. Those long fingers stroked his chin. His brows drew together, shading his eyes but failing to hide their intensity.

It was a side Dylan wasn’t used to seeing from the man. It set his stomach bubbling anew.

At last, Tracker halted before him. “If I am to be entirely honest, I am uncertain I can make much of a swordsman from you in the time we have. Most start with some sense of form, even if it is a rather poor one. But with you…” The sentence trickled off into a groan.

“My form can’t be that bad.” He was a little unbalanced, certainly. That came from a lack of experience in standing with his arms out. Fighting with magic lent itself to bursts of movement. The snap of a hand, the quick shift of a foot. Strength was measured in power, not muscle.

“Bad?” Tracker gave a low chuckle. “No, no. It would be better if it were merely bad. Atrocious is a far more fitting description.”

He grimaced. Heat slowly slunk from where it had been pooling in his gut to his face. “Ouch.”

“Perhaps you would be more suited to a dagger.”

Dylan shook his head. He might be able to mimic the moves he’d seen from Marin during the rare times she used her hunting knife to spar with Authril, but a shorter blade would require closeness and a swiftness he hadn’t the knack for.

“Very well. Although, I have not had to teach something quite as basic as this before.”

“Basic?” he echoed. He had left any sort of offensive training behind with his adolescence, but surely his moves weren’t that rusty.

“Most people have a certain understanding of at least how to hold a weapon so it will not fly off on the first strike.” The hound kicked up a short branch, catching it in one hand. He stripped a few twigs off the end, trailing dried leaves as he continued to circle Dylan. “But I suppose a spellster child is unlikely to spend their spare time fighting with sticks.”

Dylan frowned. Except for the evening, when they were bundled into their beds to sleep, he didn’t recall having much in the way of time to spare during his childhood. Keeping young spellsters active and using their magic was considered the best way to ensure they were too exhausted to get into too much trouble at night.

Tracker gripped the thicker end of the stick like he would his sword, slashing it through the air. “The cities are always full of children scrapping as if they were warriors. It is not exactly the strict training hounds grow up with, but those children do manage to learn a little through trial-and-error.” He pointed at Dylan with a flourish of the stick. “You, however, do not have such a luxury.”

“I don’t?” The journey to Wintervale would take some time at their current pace. Surely, he could become proficient in sword fighting within such a timeframe.

“No.” Tracker tossed aside the stick. “Fortunately, you have me to teach you.” The hound halted behind Dylan, those long fingers overlapping his own. “Your grip should be firm,” he murmured, his cheek pressed to Dylan’s bicep. “The last thing you desire is for your weapon to fly out of your grasp at the first strike. Nor do you want to squeeze too hard and tax yourself needlessly.” The hand inched its way up Dylan’s arm. “Your wrists must be sturdy, your arms solid but supple.”

“Right.” He could remember that. Fighting with fire or ice demanded a similar stance.

“As for this.” The hound’s other hand fell on Dylan’s midsection. “You should endeavour to keep your core strong like the trunk of a tree. And your legs…” he whispered, his shin slipping between Dylan’s. “They must be spread wider.” Tucking his boot against Dylan’s instep, he gently slid their feet further across the ground.

Dylan glanced over his shoulder at the hound. Having Tracker at his back whilst the fabric of his robe climbed up his leg had him feeling awfully exposed. “We are still talking about sword fighting?”

“That is what you wanted me to teach you, yes?” The man circled to stand before Dylan, withdrawing one of his daggers.

Dylan hadn’t paid much attention to the array of weaponry the hound carried, but this particular dagger looked rather like a thin knife. Unlike the sword, the dagger’s blade gleamed silver. It was quite a bit longer than the alchemist daggers he was used to seeing.

Tracker nodded at him. “Now we fight.”