Chapter 52

The fifteen riders had come mounted, and the road, already poor to begin with, had been trampled into something even uglier beneath the pounding of hooves.

Phillip and his soldiers were drawing close to the outpost near Condal.

They had no expectation of getting supplies there or anything of the sort. Phillip knew all too well what was prepared in such posts for low-grade soldiers like these.

Black bread on the edge of mould, cabbage, turnips, onions ... there might not even be a whetstone to spare.

He had only come to ask a few questions, then make a cursory inspection based on whatever he found. That would be enough to count as having done the job.

And it would be hard to call that dereliction of duty, because every soldier here would draw steel and rush to cut down traffickers the instant they laid eyes on them.

It was only that solving cases and tracking people, the fiddly, difficult kind of work, did indeed wear down a man’s will and make him sluggish. No one was exempt from that.

But just as the troop came nearer and nearer to the place marked on the map as the outpost, one soldier with an especially keen nose suddenly warned the others.

“Something’s wrong, lads! Blood!”

The whole company shed its lazy air at once and went taut like bowstrings drawn back.

You could say battle-hardened veterans had no manners, no learning, but you could not say they did not know how to kill, or how to keep themselves alive.

Phillip, dulled half a beat by the drink, reacted a fraction slower than the others. But he still jolted sharp, sweat springing out across his back beneath his coat, his head clearing by a good measure.

“Stay sharp! Close in and scout!”

The cavalry, nerves pulled tight, thundered toward the outpost in a rolling storm of hooves.

That sort of brutal riding was usually reserved for the edge of a battlefield, when a man needed to stay alert and still be able to break into a full charge at any instant.

Like a blade held ready to thrust.

And as the state of the outpost came into view, Phillip and his men all frowned, almost as one.

“No one around, and no beast or monster either...”

The riders at both flanks peeled off of their own accord and circled out to scout the perimeter. They found nothing.

Only after he was certain there was no immediate danger did Phillip wave a hand and signal the men behind him to slow.

Then the troop came to a halt in front of the outpost.