“What's going on?” Niklas whispered, body tense and straight as a rod where he stood pressed against Ren's side.

“I don't know,” Ren replied.

A brief moment of silence followed Anik's words. Swallowing, Ren squared his shoulders and directed his words to the woman on the horse, who he assumed was the leader, giving her a friendly smile. “Thank you for your help. You saved our lives.” He glanced briefly at Anik, but Anik's expression was impossible to read.

To Ren's relief, the woman grinned, patting her horse on the shoulder. “Always happy to cut down Skarlan scum,” she replied, her accent thicker than Anik's, though not unpleasant. Whatever Anik had said to them, it at least hadn't made their situation worse.

Next to him, Niklas shifted, and Ren turned to see him clutching his arm. His sleeve was torn and the skin stained red.

Ren bit his lip. “You're bleeding.”

“It's just a cut. I think I scraped my arm on some rocks when we fell,” Niklas said, although he had paled considerably.

“You should come with us,” the woman on the horse offered, riding up to the two of them. She leaned down, eyes trained on Niklas' arm. “We have a camp nearby. You can rest and bind the wound before you move on.”

Ren extended his hand to her. “Thank you. That's very kind. I'm…Berin,” he said, and widened his smile. “This is Niklas and Anik.”

“Sifa,” she said, giving his hand a brief but firm shake. “And it's no trouble. Us little people gotta stick together.”

“Absolutely.”

She straightened and led the way on horseback towards the trees, waving a hand in the air.

Picking his bag up from the ground, Ren followed, Niklas close behind. Meeting Anik's eyes, he shot Ren a pointed glare, one eyebrow raised. Ren decided to ignore it.

Sifa led them through the undergrowth to a well-hidden clearing, the surrounding brush so dense that the fire lighting up the surroundings couldn't be seen from the outside. Several heads raised when they approached, then bowed to Sifa in respectful greeting. The camp housed eight people in total, all of them Lowlanders. It had been difficult to see in the darkness, but by the light of the fire, black ink stood out clearly against patches of exposed skin, the lines and swirls similar to the ones Anik bore.

The Lowlanders crowded around Anik the moment he dismounted and spoke to him both in the common language and their own. Ren listened to him patiently answering all their questions and asking some of his own. Ren didn't interfere. He had never been surrounded by this many Lowlanders before in his life, and he hadn't imagined it ever happening without a knife buried in his gut. They weren't all as intimidating as Anik had been when Ren had approached him in the cells, but the woman who had killed Ren's horse kept shooting him glares that sent shivers down his spine.