Her own tent was the same size as Shallan’s but seemed larger, since she had to it herself. Technically these were four-man tents, but only if you stacked everyone together like logs, and no one had more than a single backpack of possessions. Two fit fine; one was perfect, so far as Kero was concerned. Lerryn didn’t care about sleeping arrangements so long as everyone was under canvas and someone took responsibility for the tent itself. If they took on anyone without his own shelter and they ran out of Company tents, Kero might be ordered to share, but until then, she had her privacy.

She was glad of it, as she packed her belongings down with practiced ease, and began rolling her bedding. The trapped bandits were going to be massacred. She knew how completely logical that was. And she didn’t like it. If she’d had a tentmate, she’d have had to talk about it, and she didn’t want to. The sooner I can shake the dust of this place from Hellsbane’s hooves, the better I‘m-Suddenly she heard something on the edge of the camp. Confused shouting, too far away to make out words, but there was no mistaking the tone. There was something wrong, desperately wrong.

For only the second time since she’d joined the Skybolts, she dropped her mental shields and searched for a coherent picture among the jangle of thoughts—looking for the person who knew what was going on.

Lerryn.

She found him, on the picket line, directing incoming scouts who were galloping up to the line in panic, while the Company hedge-wizard sent up the emergency “come in” signal beside him.

The thoughts in his mind were clear and organized, as cool and unpanicked as her own would be if she were in his place. Though what she read there would have sent anyone else into the kind of panic the rest of the camps were showing.

For all the guesses had been right—these were no “bandits” the Companies had pinned, these were Karsite regulars. But somehow, some way, they had gotten word of their position across the Border, and Karse had sent out a real army to close in behind and catch the Companies in a pincer maneuver. The odds, depending on who Lerryn talked to, were either two or three to one, in the Karsite favor.

Kero pulled out of Lerryn’s mind as invisibly as she had insinuated herself in, glad now that she had not given in to temptation and had brought only what Hellsbane could comfortably carry. The tent would have to be abandoned, of course. There was no percentage in standing and fighting, and there was only one way of dealing with this trap before they were all caught in it.

Run.