Motionless, she let the sounds weave colour and form into the silvered nightscape, savouring the soft, damp fragrance of disturbed soil. Four Tressians. Maybe five. Walking with their usual graceless tread. Following the streambed at the hill’s foot, two score paces distant. Not arrayed as hunters – at least, not hunting her. Ashana be praised for that small mercy.

The commotion moved off to the west. Good sense dictated she withdraw. Garbed as a Tressian though she was, there was no hiding the olive skin that was so rare in the Republic but so common beyond its eastern border, nor her loose, black tresses. She refused to plait her hair in the style of Tressian nobility, let alone crop it in the fashion of their pauper-class. Were she taken, her captors would soon deem what she was, even if exactly who remained beyond their wit.

But then Melanna had never been one for caution, even that born of good sense.

She threaded her way through the undergrowth, skirting tangled or muddied paths in favour of ground that would bear no sign of her passage. An old game, practised as a child beneath the eaves of the sprawling forest of Fellhallow.

A thin cry and a crash of branches heralded the hunt’s end. Dark shapes converged on a fallen man. He lay on heels and hands in a tangle of ivy, scarlet robes muddied and torn, and his heavy jowls taut with rage. Misplaced defiance when confronted by four drawn swords.

“Wolf’s-heads!” The man’s fury did nothing to hide a northwealder’s immaculate nasal diction. “You’ll hang for this!”

Laughter pealed through the night.

“Brave words, my lord archimandrite.” The woman shouted to be heard above her fellows. “You weren’t quite so bold in the fight.”

Keeping low, Melanna crept towards the confrontation and sheltered behind a stump. The speaker was an older woman; thin, with cropped white hair and a patchwork phoenix tabard belted tight across her chest. Her companions were men, heavyset and rough-shaven. They waited on the woman’s lead, expectant and respectful. Melanna envied her that. In Tressia, a daughter was every bit as respected as a son, not a commodity wrapped in damask.

“I am a servant of Lumestra, not a soldier.” The man spoke with haughty pride.

The old woman’s sword-tip tapped the underside of his chin. “I know who you are, Arzro Makrov. You’ve blood enough on your hands for a hundred soldiers. Someday, that debt will come due, eminence.”

“Better it be now,” muttered another wolf’s-head. “Save the bother later.”

Agreement rumbled about the group.

The woman shook her head. “Kill him, and they’ll send another. No shortage of worthies.”

A wolf’s-head stalked closer to the man, a grim smile on his lips. “All of ’em bleed.”

“No.” The woman’s tone brooked no argument. “There’s more than one way to deliver a message.”

“I still say we kill him.”