It was just before dawn, the first hints of light barely noticeable through the overcast sky. Garec breathed deeply, getting a fill of crisp, chill air. His heart was pounding as he stood in the center of his camp. There was movement all around him as his men prepared and ate breakfast or woke their fellow soldiers, but it was quiet, no shouts or bustle, just slow, calculated motion and whispers. Underneath it all Garec could sense a frenzy; the way his soldiers held their shoulders, shifted their eyes, and turned their heads gave it away. The sun would not be making an appearance to mark when camp was to be disassembled, and so the men waited, tense.

  Donnan came up beside him, a solemn look on his face as he regarded the men. “I wish we were here under better circumstances.”

  “Such as there not being a war?” Garec asked.

  “Certainly that, but I meant not needing te resort te this sort of task apart from higher command. Or this method of escape. It’s too much like leaving without saying goodbye.”

  “We’ll be back.” Garec fingered the pocket where he kept his letter. “Besides, it’s easier to make a surprise greeting than a surprise goodbye.”

  Donnan gave a nod. “I do look forward to seeing the look on people’s faces when we make our triumphant return.”

  Garec smiled and took a deep breath. “Sentinels be with us.”

  “Sentinels be with us.”

  Garec could almost hear the voice of Hell whisper, and I’ll be here too. A foolish thing to imagine what he would say. Garec had to remind himself that Hell was never anywhere, and would continue to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

  “Are the boys and Elethe ready?” he asked.

  “They’re helping prep the horses with Sirona,” Donnan said.

  “Good. Well—” Garec scanned the camp, noting that his men had doused their fires and were waiting for him to give the signal. “—that’s it then. Time to ride.”

  He gave a nod then began to march to the stables with Donnan. The men came alive, packing up supplies, and disassembling their tents. They did it with practiced precision, making as little noise or fuss as possible. By the time Garec had reached the edge of the camp, every tent had been packed away, and now the men were forming up behind him. At the back of the line should’ve been his Lieutenants along with the Sprinter, Clarine. If she ran now, it would all be over.

  But no, she would not run. Donnan and his men would stay by his side, the boys would be safe from capture, Elethe would live, and Elyssanar would remain free. Nothing would stop them.

  “They finished quick,” Donnan said, nodding to the line of horses already saddled.

  “It’s a sign,” Garec said.

  “Aye. We’ll ride with the speed of Elysium.”

  Garec climbed atop his horse Fletcher, a strong war stallion, and prodded him towards the road. Donnan soon came up beside him on his own horse along with Elethe. She looked tired and uneasy, but it had been an early start; she liked sleeping in. Garec heard the sounds of his men mounting and riding up from behind.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Elethe.

  “It’s only two hundred soldiers and their horses,” she said casually. “I should be able to manage for an hour.”

  “Good. As soon as you sense Clarine channeling, hit us with all you’ve got.”

  *

  Elethe was never sure how to explain what it was like to sense another Emogician’s channeling. It was like hearing a noise and knowing exactly where it was coming from, only she didn’t hear anything. Or maybe it was like being able to feel a ray of sunshine hitting something far away while standing in the shade, and for whatever reason the sun had different flavors.

  No, that’s stupid, she thought, right as she sensed Worry being channeled far behind her. It was no issue reaching out and Matching the Emogic; all Class 4s could channel to at least ten kilometers away. At Class 3.9, she was limited to only eight kilometers, but that was still nothing to scoff at.

  Worry had a strange taste that rapidly switched between sour and spicy, and the energy was awkward to control, wanting to jump around and zig-zag sporadically. She reigned it in without effort and channeled it, splitting the energy into strands that pierced all the soldiers and horses. Once confident she had everyone, she poured all her strength into the Emogic and shifted it for speed, then nodded to Garec.

  At his command, the Company began to move, trotting horses through the snow. It was hardly deep, and it was the dry sort that blew everywhere, but Elethe was fascinated by the way it moved with their passing. Nothing about the way the soldiers or horses moved indicated that they were really being affected by Elethe’s channeling, except the snow tossed by the horses looked as if it was floating in place. Many others appeared entranced by it as well.

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  “Not something ye see every day,” Donnan said, his voice weirdly warped and muffled. “Whoa, listen te that. Is that my voice? Heheheheh.”

  “Heeellooooooo,” Garec said, and the two men laughed. Elethe got caught up in the ridiculousness of its sound and laughed along.

  Soon all the men were talking and laughing at their own voices. A few even fell off their horses because of it, amplifying the laughter all the more.

  “Never thought we’d be leaving like this,” Garec said, grinning. “I wonder what all this might sound like to everybody else.”

  “Screeching,” Donnan said with a chuckle. “Very high-pitched screeching, if they can hear it at all. That’s how a Sprinter I met a few years ago sounded like when he gave a speech while channeling. Ye’d think the poor man was dying, and he rather looked like he was too.”

  Garec snorted. “Well let’s just hope we don’t wake the entire Fort. Not that I’m worried. How you holding up, Elethe?”

  “Just fine,” Elethe said. “This really isn’t that hard. Like I said, I could probably manage for an hour.”

  “And you didn’t leave Dowyr behind?”

  “Of course not.”

  She saw a gray tendril shoot towards Garec, and he nodded. Dowyr was only a short way back with Weynon and Sirona. They had done a surprisingly good job at saddling the horses. Weynon said he had done it a few times before, and Dowyr had seen it done from enough angles to do it himself.

  They rode on for a time, the soldiers chatting between each other amicably. The bridge into Parasten was guarded, but only lightly, and there were no barriers on it. It must have been a complete surprise to those on guard when an entire Company passed over in the blink of an eye. Likely by the time they would manage to report it, the Company would be at least thirty kilometers into the country.

  Strangely, once past the bridge, Elethe sensed Garec’s anxiety spike. He didn’t show it on the outside—something he had mastered—but Elethe was sure there was something wrong. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so much negative emotion coming from him before news of the war came, and even afterwards it was never that much. It just wasn’t like him. He was always determined and solid, never letting anything get him down. But how was she supposed to confront him about it? There was no way to tell how it might have to do with her family. Could it be something else?

  “Uncle Garec, what do we do if we run into Kircan soldiers?” she asked.

  “Run,” he said, with no change of emotion. “You, Sirona, and the boys at least. The rest of us fight.”

  “What if they have Emogicians? Shouldn’t I counter them?”

  “Only if you can tell they’re Class 4. Otherwise let me handle it. Weynon!”

  Elethe frowned as Weynon moved his horse closer to Garec. So he wasn’t anxious about encountering Kircans. What then? Did it have to do with the Sprinter? That didn’t make sense, he was letting her go once far away enough from the border.

  “What is it?” Weynon asked.

  “When you listen to the land, can it tell you where there are people?”

  “I don’t know, I can ask though.”

  Elethe saw the Emogic of Peace pour out of Weynon, like a stream of sky blue that flowed smoothly through the air and laid gently over the ground like a giant blanket. Weynon focused on the earth for a few moments, as though seeing something beyond it, and blinked as he let go of the energy.

  “It knows we’re here,” Weynon said.

  “What about elsewhere?” Garec asked.

  “I don’t know, I tried to ask but… I don’t think it understands the question. It just knows that we’re where we are. I asked, ‘are there more people far away?’, and it just said, ‘you are here, now there, moving swiftly’. The land doesn’t understand distance. Maybe a bird would know.”

  “Ask if it understands direction.”

  Weynon looked back at the earth and channeled again. After a moment he made a confused look and stopped. “It… sort of does. It refers to the sun like a compass, but there’s also some sort of energy that comes from ‘the core’ that’s like another compass, but I don’t know what the core is or what kind of energy it means. It’s not an Emogic.”

  Garec shook his head. “Keep trying to learn what it knows. If there’s any useful information the land can give us, we need it. And how are the horses? They’re not freaked out, are they?”

  Weynon channeled once again, this time moving the energy to a few different horses around him including his own. “They’re fine, and some would like to go faster. It’s cold and they want to run.”

  “Good, I want to put some distance between us and the Fort.”

  “Fletcher also hopes for a snack.”

  Garec smiled and patted his horse. “Soon.”

  Elethe sensed another wave of anxiety from him as he called for the Company to ride harder. She let her horse fall behind until she rode next to Sirona, who was keeping a hard eye on Dowyr. He didn’t look entirely comfortable with riding despite claiming to have read all he needed to know on the subject.

  “I’m worried about Garec,” Elethe said to Sirona, though her voice hardly carried with the way sound behaved.

  “What was that?” Sirona asked, and Elethe mentally slapped herself.

  “I’m worried about Garec. There’s something wrong, I just know it.”

  “So ask him, fool girl.”

  “Aren’t you worried too?”

  “Plentifully worried, and I suspect it’s because you’re channeling it. The Captain won’t say anything to me anyways, I already spoke with him last night, so stop trying to get me to do your dirty work.”

  Elethe glanced back at the source of Worry she drew from. She couldn’t see the woman, but it sent a chill down her spine knowing that Garec had been willing to trick her into coming.

  It’s only until we’re far enough from the Fort, she told herself again.

  Is that what was causing his anxiety? Having to let her go? She couldn’t believe that, he wouldn’t go back on his word. But if he was thinking about it, having any sort of temptation could explain his emotions.

  Elethe decided to wait and see, and tried to tell herself it wasn’t for fear of the truth.

  There was little talk now, and after about half an hour—to her perception anyway; it had probably only been a couple minutes to the rest of the world—the Company slowed its pace, and she was beginning to feel channeling fatigue. It was faint, but as she expected it meant she had roughly twenty minutes left before channeling would become too difficult to continue. She wasn’t worried about the Sprinter; simply drawing the Emogic out took about as much energy as keeping your eyes open.

  Suddenly Garec called the Company to a halt, and everyone began pulling at their reins. Elethe urged her horse to the front, and she finally saw what had caused them to stop. A small pack of wolves was a short distance ahead of them, though they looked almost frozen in place. She could barely make out their heads turning towards them.

  “Weynon,” Garec called. “I want you to talk to them.”