Dunmere

Dunmere announced itself first by smoke.

Cooking fires.

Chimneys.

A mill somewhere beyond the trees.

Then came the fences.

Fresh-cut stakes had been driven between old pasture walls. Bells hung from wire at knee height. Two farm carts stood ready to be pushed across the main lane. Men and women with hunting bows watched the road beside neighbors armed with pitchforks, wood axes, and one spear that looked old enough to have belonged to somebody's grandfather.

Sandore understood the expression on their faces before the caravan reached the gate.

Relief.

Then they saw the damage.

That changed things.

The caravan slowed.

Heads turned toward the damaged wagons, the bite marks on the legs of the horses, Leon's torn sleeve, Kame's damaged armor, and finally Miuki beneath the rear wagon's canvas.

Miuki had improved greatly.

That was not the same thing as well.

Fen's bandages were hidden beneath repaired armor and a fresh uniform, but she still favored one side when she moved and guarded her ribs without appearing to do so.

Leon noticed too.

He reached the back of the wagon before Sandore could say anything.

Miuki shifted toward the opening.

“I can manage.”

“I know.”

Leon stepped onto the rear wheel hub and offered her a hand.

Miuki considered him for a moment, then took it.

Sandore expected Leon to brace her down the two awkward steps.

Leon did not.

He swept her up in his arms, lifted her bodily from the wagon, hopped down, and set her on the road as gently as if he were putting down a crate labeled FRAGILE.

Miuki froze.

Leon released her.

“There.”

Miuki stared up at him.

“I did not require carrying.”

“No.”

“I was capable of climbing down.”

“I know.”

“Then why—”

“Next time don't fight the giant pig by yourself.”

Miuki's mouth opened.

Closed.

“It was a boar.”

Leon grinned.

Sandore looked away before either of them saw him smile.

The exchange had distracted him just long enough that he almost missed the woman approaching from the village.

She was in her fifties, dark-skinned, with a wool coat despite the mild evening and ink stains at both cuffs. A carved cane struck the road beside her with each step, though she leaned on it less than Sandore expected.

Reeve Ilyra Venn.

The caravan master, Talla, met her halfway.

She did not bother with ceremony.

“We got hit on the river road.”

The crowd shifted.

Questions started at once.

Venn raised one hand.

Silence returned slowly.

“Casualties?”

“None.”

That changed the crowd again.

Not completely.

But enough.

Venn's eyes moved past the caravan master toward the detachment.

“None?”

“Not one,” Talla said. “Wolves came for the teams. Then a boar the size of a cottage came out of the trees. These soldiers held them off. Kept the wagons upright. Kept everyone alive.”

Her gaze found Sandore.

“The captain's people did what they were supposed to do.”

Venn looked at Sandore's insignia.

Then at the three wagons.

“Well. Of course Engrassia can defend its own supplies.”

The words were not openly hostile.

They did not need to be.

A murmur went through the crowd.

Venn continued.

“What I would like to know is whether the same concern applies to the people who live here after the wagons go home.”

Sandore felt every eye turn toward him.

He had prepared for questions.

He had not prepared for Leon to answer first.

“Fair.”

Venn looked at him.

Leon shrugged.

“You're right.”

That seemed to surprise her.

“We've been here before,” someone in the crowd called. “Soldiers ask questions, write things down, then leave.”

Another voice answered.

“And the wolves come back.”

Leon turned toward them.

“Then don't believe the uniform.”

Sandore glanced at him.

Leon hooked a thumb toward his own chest.

“Believe me. I've been here before.”

A few people in the crowd looked at him more closely.

Leon continued before anyone could decide whether they remembered him.

“Harrowdeep. Last time beasts started coming down out of those hills, I was part of the crew that went up there and cleared them out. Ask around.”

That got a stronger reaction.

Murmurs. A few exchanged looks.

Then one man near the edge of the crowd pushed forward.

Older.

Broad through the shoulders, though age had begun to bend him. His beard was mostly gray, and there was dirt beneath his fingernails that no amount of washing had ever completely removed.

“Don't need to ask.”

Leon looked toward him.

Recognition arrived immediately.

“Torbin.”

Farmer Torbin pointed at Leon.

“He's telling you true. That fool was here.”

Leon pointed back.

“Careful.”

Torbin ignored him.

“He and the others went up to Harrowdeep and got the beasts off our road. Then he drank half my pear liquor and complained about it.”

Leon folded his arms.

“You tried to poison me.”

“With pear liquor. You looked like you could hold it.”

“Wimp.” The farmer added.

A few people laughed.

There was less suspicion in it.

Leon mocked feeling hurt at the old farmer’s insult.

Torbin looked toward Venn.

“My point is, Reeve, he came when we needed someone last time. And he did what he said he'd do.”

Leon let that settle for only a moment.

“I'm not asking you to trust every soldier who comes through here. I'm telling you I know this place, I know Harrowdeep, and I didn't come back to write down how bad things are.”

His eyes went to Sandore.

“I came back to help soldiers who intend to do something about it.”

Something shifted.

Sandore felt it.

The crowd did not become trusting.

People rarely moved that quickly.

But the suspicion had lost its balance.

Leon had not waited for Dunmere to remember him.

He had made them remember.

And then he had handed Sandore the room.

He took it.

“Reeve Venn.”

She faced him.

“My orders are not to tell you the Remnant is gone, or that hungry wolves explain what has happened here.”

Venn's expression sharpened.

Good.

At least she was listening.

“We were attacked less than three hours ago by animals responding to a human signal. We found evidence they had been confined, transported, and deliberately conditioned. We also found armed men observing the attack.”

The murmur changed again.

Sandore continued.

“Some escaped. One did not.”

Kame stood near the wagon, silent.

Venn followed Sandore's glance toward him.

Sandore said, “We are not here to decide what this isn't. We are here to find the people doing it and stop them.”

Venn planted the end of her cane in the mud.

“And when you know where they are?”

“We go after them.”

No flourish.

No promise that everybody would be safe tonight.

Sandore had learned enough from Varren to know the difference between confidence and lying.

Venn studied him.

Then Leon.

Then the battered caravan.

“All right.”

The word came reluctantly.

But it came.

“Then you’ll get what we know.”

• • •

The village had a small military station house near the meeting hall.

“Military” proved generous.

It was a squat stone building with four bunks, a desk, a locked equipment cabinet, and enough floor space for Tern to begin complaining about storage almost immediately.

Ellis started an inventory.

Pell carried in cases from the wagon.

Tern directed both with the resigned efficiency of a man who had expected other people to stack everything incorrectly and was relieved to have his expectations confirmed.

The rest of the detachment gathered outside with Venn.

She pointed toward three people waiting at the edge of the square.

“Renn Calder. Trapper. Knows more about wolves than anyone in Dunmere.”

An elderly dwarf with one cloudy eye regarded Kame as though deciding whether he might be worth speaking to.

“Mara Pell. Herbalist.”

A woman in her early thirties stood with her arms folded tightly across herself. Green stains marked her fingertips. She looked as though she had not slept properly in days.

“Her husband Tomas is one of the missing.”

Miuki's attention fixed on her immediately.

“And Dalen Moss.”

A sixteen-year-old boy stood half behind the meeting hall door.

A strip of hair had been torn away above one temple.

“He saw more than he told us at first.”

Dalen looked down.

Venn's voice softened slightly.

“He was frightened.”

Leon looked at the boy.

“Seems sensible.”

Dalen looked up at that.

Pixal examined the three possible conversations.

Then the village.

Then the children watching from around a rain barrel.

“This sounds boring,” she concluded.

Sandore looked at her.

“They are interviews.”

“Exactly.”

“Pixal—”

“I'm going to go look around.”

She was already walking away.

Sandore considered stopping her.

Then decided he would rather know what happened when Pixal was allowed to investigate than discover what happened when he tried to assign her a schedule.

“Stay in the village.”

She walked backward three steps.

“No promises.”

“Pixal.”

She smiled.

“Fine.”

Then she turned and vanished into Dunmere.

Sandore sighed.

Leon clapped him on the shoulder.

“You're getting better at that.”

“At what?”

“Knowing when you've lost.”

• • •

Renn Calder's shed smelled of pine tar, old smoke, damp earth, and animal hide.

Kame liked him almost immediately.

Fen did not appear to like or dislike him.

She liked the wolf.

Not in the ordinary sense.

The animal was dead.

Fen liked information.

The carcass had been laid carefully on a clean hide rather than hung as a trophy. Its paws were straight. Its jaw had been tied closed with cord.

Renn watched Kame examine it.

Kame lifted the fur behind the wolf's shoulder.

A healed puncture.

Then another.

“Repeated injections,” Fen said as he crouched beside her.

“Agreed.”

She took out a small lens.

Kame ran his fingers along the animal's chest.

Scarring beneath the fur.

Not random.

Pressure.

“A fitted harness.”

Renn grunted.

“That's what I thought.”

Kame lifted one forepaw.

The pad was worn oddly.

Hard wear.

Stone.

Not the damp roads and soft fields around Dunmere.

He checked the other paws.

Same.

Kame leaned closer to the fur near the wolf's neck.

Something pale clung deep beneath the coat.

Dust.

He rubbed it between two fingers.

Fine.

Mineral.

Fen held out a folded piece of dark paper.

Kame tapped the dust onto it.

She examined it through the lens.

“Not road dust.”

“No, too fine and too consistent.”

Kame returned to the ears. Some powdery metallic residue was present around them.

He remembered the wolves on the river road.

Sound hurts us.

Must move.

Must bite.

“They kept it somewhere with a stone floor,” Kame said.

Renn crossed his arms.

“Kept?”

“Not briefly.”

Fen looked up.

“How can you tell?”

Kame indicated the paws.

“This is not travel. Same wear over time.”

He touched the wolf's shoulder.

“Then they exercised it.”

“Controlled?” Fen asked.

Kame nodded.

“Short bursts. Repeated.”

He looked at the ears again.

“And they put something metallic and powdery in the ears.”

“An irritant maybe? To make the sound cause pain,” suggested Fen.

Fen examined the dust that they had collected more closely.

“Survey stone?”

Kame considered.

“Could be.”

“A mine or survey tunnels would explain both,” he said.

Fen's eyes brightened.

“Harrowdeep.”

Kame looked at the wolf, nodding.

“Maybe.”

Renn seemed to approve.

He touched the dead wolf's flank.

“People here want poison set in every orchard now.”

Kame's expression tightened.

“Some of the wolves attacking may need to die, to protect the village.”

Renn looked at him.

Kame continued.

“But they are not doing this by choice.”

A long pause.

Then the dwarf nodded.

“Good.”

Fen looked between them.

“That may be the fastest and quietest I have ever seen two people become friends.”

Neither man answered.

• • •

Dalen Moss expected Leon to accuse him of cowardice.

Leon could see that before the boy said a word.

The boy sat on an overturned bucket behind the meeting hall, elbows on his knees, staring at the ground.

Leon sat on a second bucket.

It complained under his weight.

He stood again.

Dalen almost smiled.

Leon leaned against the wall instead.

“So.”

Dalen waited.

“You ran.”

The boy's face tightened.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Dalen looked up.

Leon shrugged.

“If a wolf comes at me, I might punch it. That's because I'm stupid in very specific ways.”

A reluctant laugh escaped the boy.

Leon continued.

“You're sixteen. You saw men moving with wolves that were killing people. Running sounds reasonable.”

“I left Tomas.”

There it was.

Leon stopped smiling.

“You saw them take him?”

Dalen nodded.

“And Eris Vale.”

“Tell me.”

Once Dalen started, the story came quickly.

Three men moving near the animals.

Not running from them.

Walking with them.

One carried a short rod or horn.

A narrow wagon followed behind with slatted sides with an old metal badge fixed to it.

A circle crossed by three descending lines.

Leon did not recognize the symbol.

Not precisely.

But he remembered the leftover imperial survey equipment at Harrowdeep well enough that the description bothered him.

“You followed them?”

Dalen looked at him sharply.

Venn had not said that part.

“Yes. I followed.”

“How far?”

“Past the orchard. Along the drainage lane.”

“And?”

“The wagon turned toward Harrowdeep.”

Leon became very still.

“You're certain?”

“Yes.”

“The old road?”

“Yes.”

Dalen swallowed.

“I wasn't supposed to go near it.”

Leon nodded.

“That's probably why nobody told you the most important discoveries happen where you're not supposed to go.”

The boy looked up.

“That is terrible advice.”

“It is.”

Leon pushed away from the wall.

“But you came back and told somebody.”

“Eventually.”

“Eventually counts.”

Dalen's shoulders loosened a fraction.

Leon looked north.

Harrowdeep.

He had told them it might be Harrowdeep.

He had also told them he'd cleared it.

Apparently both things could be true.

That was irritating.

• • •

Mara Pell's kitchen was too warm.

A kettle steamed over the stove.

Bundles of drying herbs hung from the rafters.

Miuki sat opposite Mara at the small table, careful with her ribs.

Sandore occupied the third chair.

Mara had been composed when they arrived.

Too composed.

The kind that required constant effort.

Sandore recognized it because officers did something similar before casualty reports.

“Tell me what happened to Tomas,” Sandore said.

Mara's fingers tightened around the cup.

For a moment, Sandore thought she might refuse.

Then she looked down at the table.

“He was helping the Weller family with their sheep.”

Her voice was steady.

Too steady.

“The wolves got into the pen. Tomas ran over because of course he did.”

Something close to a smile touched her mouth and vanished.

“He always ran toward trouble.”

Miuki said nothing.

Sandore had begun to understand that her silence was often deliberate.

Space.

Mara filled it.

“There were people outside the fence. I saw them afterward. Boot prints in the mud. Drag marks.”

Her thumb moved over the rim of the cup again and again.

“And the horn.”

Sandore and Miuki exchanged a glance.

They knew that sound now.

The sharp notes from the ridge.

The way the wolves had recoiled before obeying.

Mara continued.

“When it sounded, the wolves stopped.”

Her voice thinned.

“They just stopped. Turned north. Like someone had pulled them on strings.”

She swallowed.

“Tomas was on the ground by then.”

Sandore stayed very still.

“Alive?”

“I don't know.”

The answer came too quickly.

Then, quieter: “There was blood.”

Mara's eyes fixed on nothing.

“Not enough.”

Her breathing changed.

“That's what I keep telling everyone. Not enough blood for what they say happened.”

One hand left the cup.

It trembled.

“I went to the fence after. His blood stopped there.”

Sandore said nothing.

Mara looked at him now.

“Stopped.”

As though he might understand what nobody else had.

“There were boot prints beside it. And something heavy had been dragged through the mud.”

Her composure began to fracture.

“So either the wolves learned to wear boots, Captain, or somebody took him.”

Sandore felt the room tighten around that sentence.

Mara looked toward Miuki.

The cup slipped in her hands and struck the table.

She caught it before it fell.

That was the last thing holding her together.

Her face folded.

A sob escaped before she could stop it.

Mara covered her mouth.

Miuki was already moving.

Not quickly.

The pain in her side would not allow that.

But she reached across the table and took Mara's hand.

Mara tried to apologize.

Miuki stopped her.

Gently.

Mara's shoulders shook.

“I should have gone after him.”

“You would have been taken too.”

“I don't know that.”

“No,” Miuki said. “You don't.”

Mara looked at her.

Miuki did not offer false comfort.

Sandore watched that carefully.

Most people, faced with this kind of pain, rushed to fill it with certainty.

Miuki did not.

“We will look for him,” she said.

Mara's eyes filled again.

“Alive?”

Miuki paused.

Sandore understood the pause.

So did Mara.

“I will act as though he is alive until I know otherwise.”

Her grip tightened gently around Mara's hand.

“And I will bring him home to you...”

Mara's face crumpled.

Miuki continued before hope could become misunderstanding.

“...either way.”

There it was.

Not false reassurance.

A promise of closure.

Sandore felt the weight of it settle into the room.

Mara nodded, her sobs now smaller.

Miuki looked toward the window.

Evening light had begun to fade.

Then she said, almost as though reciting something she had carried for a long time:

“Nymara, let me see the path that others cannot. When someone is lost in the dark, make me the light that reaches them.”

Mara listened.

Sandore did too.

The words were foreign to him.

He knew the Fey Court existed. He knew that far to the east, on the other side of the Remnant, reverence for them was more common. He had heard some of the names in stories and old rural customs. The name “Volanthes” appeared in Miuki's personnel file because patrons who provided soldiers with battlefield manifestations tended to be listed in the paperwork.

But this was different.

Not doctrine.

Not a line in a file.

A prayer offered because a frightened woman had run out of useful things to hold.

Mara wiped her face.

“Who is Nymara?”

“The Lantern Below,” Miuki said. “She watches the hidden paths. The lost, especially lost children. Those trying to find their way home through darkness.”

“Do you believe she'll find Tomas?”

Miuki considered that.

“I believe that we should give her hope to work with.”

Mara laughed once through the tears.

Small, but real.

Sandore found himself looking at Miuki differently.

• • •

They left Mara's house after dusk.

For several steps Sandore said nothing.

Miuki walked beside him more slowly than usual.

Her armor was repaired, but the battle still showed in the careful way she turned.

Finally Sandore asked, “Nymara?”

Miuki looked over.

“The Lantern Below.”

“I gathered that.”

A faint hint of amusement touched her face.

Sandore continued.

“I know Volanthes is your patron.”

“That is in my file.”

“Yes.”

Miuki's tone indicated she was aware of exactly what was in her file and what was not.

Sandore chose his next words carefully.

“I didn't realize your faith involved other Archfey as well.”

“It does.”

“Even though Volanthes grants your abilities?”

“Yes.”

Miuki looked ahead.

“The Fey Court is not structured like your temples.”

“My temples?”

“Like Engrassian temples,” Miuki corrected.

Sandore conceded the point with a small nod.

“We do not devote ourselves to one power to the exclusion of others, or pretend ones with whom we disagree do not exist. Different Archfey govern different truths. Different dangers. Different kinds of hope. We respect, revere, and sometimes fear, them all.”

“And Volanthes?”

That answer came easily.

“The Hurricane's Heart.”

Sandore had heard the title.

“Freedom. Chance. Wind…”

“...Change,” Miuki added. “The moment when what was fixed stops being fixed.”

Sandore thought of the wings.

The shield.

The sword.

The impossible strength behind all three.

“And he gives you your gifts?”

“When he feels like it.”

Sandore looked at her.

Miuki's face remained perfectly serious.

“Your god is unreliable?”

“He is Archfey. The gifts are his, not mine.”

That apparently explained everything.

Sandore couldn’t tell if she was serious or if he was supposed to laugh.

Instead he said, “The prayer was yours, though?”

Miuki was quiet for a moment.

“Yes.”

He recognized that he was approaching a boundary.

So he did not ask what had caused her to write a prayer about helping people lost in darkness.

They kept walking.

• • •

Pixal found the children before the children found her.

This was mostly because children were terrible at surveillance.

Three of them followed her from the square.

One hid behind a fence post too narrow to conceal half his body.

Another attempted to crawl beneath a cart and kicked a bucket.

Pixal let them continue for almost a minute.

Then she turned.

“Your technique is embarrassing.”

All three froze.

The smallest girl pointed at the boy behind the fence.

“It was his idea.”

“Traitor,” he whispered.

Pixal crouched.

“Do you want to help me catch the people with the wolves?”

That ended the surveillance exercise.

Within ten minutes she had six children.

Within twenty, nine.

Children knew where adults had told them not to go.

More importantly, they remembered things adults dismissed because the adults hadn’t asked the correct questions.

Pixal walked.

Climbed.

Asked.

Listened.

At the orchard, she found the first approach line.

North.

Broken brush and old wheel marks.

On an old signal fire hill she discovered a location where someone could have watched without being seen from the lane.

Then she found another.

Two observation positions.

The retreat line was harder.

One of the children solved it.

“My da says nobody uses the old drain road because it floods.”

Pixal looked at him.

“Show me.”

The drainage lane cut behind the orchards, half-swallowed by weeds.

Narrow wagon marks remained in the damp earth.

They headed north-east.

Pixal followed until the lane joined an older road.

She knew the name before the child said it.

“Harrowdeep.”

Pixal's expression went still.

Then bright again.

“Well.”

She paid the children in copper coins, two pieces of candy, and one button she claimed had once belonged to a duke.

The duke had been invented.

The button was real.

By the time she returned to the station house, the others had begun comparing notes.

Pixal walked in last.

She leaned against the doorframe.

“I found your route.”

Sandore looked at her.

“My route?”

She pointed toward the map.

“North approach. Animals released from a wagon. Two observation points on signal fire hills. Then they withdrew through an old drainage lane.”

Her finger traced the line.

It stopped at the road Leon already knew.

“Harrowdeep.”

The room went quiet.

Kame’s stone dust.

Leon’s survey wagon.

Pixal’s tracks.

Everything was pointing directly at Harrowdeep.

Pixal smiled.

This time there was no playfulness in it.

“So,” she said. “When do we leave?”