“So—now we look for the supply route?”

“Exactly.”

The rest of the night passed quietly; Arcolin checked with the surgeon and saw that both the wounded were sleeping under the influence of numbweed. The rain stopped sometime before dawn, though the clouds and ground mist impeded visibility almost as much. Arcolin looked at the obvious track the enemy had made going up and down the slope to the stream.

“Armor up,” he said to Burek, back at the tent. “We’re going to scout the stream, on horseback to save time, while the cohort breaks fast.”

They rode up to the road first, looking for traces, but rain after the attack had washed away any traces between the camp and the road.

“Do you think they came on foot?” Burek said. “To coordinate, covering more ground …”

Arcolin shook his head. “I think they came at least partway ahorse. I’m hoping to find some evidence, and perhaps the horses will help us.” At that moment, his mount lifted its head and pointed its ears to the right, toward the stream. “Like that,” Arcolin said. He felt his mount’s sides swell and tremble, precursor to a whinny. He tapped the horse on the neck. “Quiet, you.”

Burek’s horse was looking the same direction; Burek slipped off and clamped the horse’s nostrils. Far to the east, Arcolin heard a distant whinny, then others nearer, from the direction of the camp. “At least three horses,” Burek said. “No … four, five …”

Arcolin raised his brows. “Are you that keen of hearing?”

“No, Captain. I spent years on a horse farm. Someone over there has a mare, and walked her past a stallion … that was the first whinny. They wanted to find out where our horses were.”

“Well … they don’t know we’re here, then. That’s good.” Arcolin rode on, attending to his horse’s reactions and to the look of the ground. There … a pile of wet, rained-on horse droppings. And there—a round hole, another, that could have been made only by horses carrying riders in the mud. The trail to the stream showed clearly when they came to it. Rain could not disguise the hoof-chopped leaves, the place where horse after horse had skidded a little on a steep downslope, creating a hillock at the bottom, the pock-marks of many hooves in the mud.

“Can you estimate how many?” Arcolin asked.

“Not more than a dozen, I think,” Burek said. He dismounted and looked more closely. “It’s muddled—they used this trail both ways, rode back over their tracks. Shod horses and barefoot both … this track’s distinctive, an unusual shoe. This … here’s a barefoot horse with a bad flare on the right fore. Much work in this muck and it’ll go lame.” He walked up and down the track while Arcolin held his horse, bending now and then to measure a track with his hand. When he came back he held a shoe, bent nails hanging from it.

“This one will definitely go lame if they don’t have a farrier,” he said. “I still think ten to twelve, and that they rode double on the way in—the few good tracks I could find pointing to the road were much deeper, even after the rain.” He put the horseshoe in his saddlebags and remounted. “The horses aren’t that good. By the hoofmarks, most have some problem. Bought cheap at a horse fair, I’m thinking, and overdue for hoof work.”