More quickly than Arcolin expected, they were across, the wagons reloaded, and on their way. The next village site, when they came to it, looked clearly deserted—the cottages no more than tumbled stone walls pierced by saplings and weeds. It had backed on the woods, with fields before it … fields now growing up in weeds and bushes, even young trees. The village well, surprisingly, had a few flowers, barely withered, on its curbstone.

“Someone uses this,” Devlin said. “And it smells clean.”

“Dip a bucket,” Arcolin said. The wellhouse and axle were gone, but the stone edging was remarkably clean. Someone was maintaining this well—someone who cared about the merin. The bucket came up with clear water that smelled fresh. Arcolin dipped a handful—it tasted as clean as it smelled.

He took the bucket and walked around the well, pouring a thin stream. “Thanks to the merin of the well, for the good water,” he said aloud. “We honor the Lady and her handmaidens. No harm will come to this well by our use.” Then he turned to Burek and Devlin. “We’ll camp here tonight. A solid defensive perimeter. When my tent is up, I want to talk to both of you.”

While Devlin organized the camp, Arcolin rode out into the fields a short way, weeds brilliant with yellow, blue, and white flowers up to his horse’s belly. Ample cover for a force to approach on that side, the old furrow ridges and hollows concealed by tall vegetation. He saw no sign of disturbance, off the wagon track, but with the thick growth he knew he could miss such signs easily. He rode across the wagon track and there, near the forest edge, found a well-traveled footpath running just along the margin, between field and wood. Well-traveled, but not by many, and the only footprint he found was bare.

In the last year of Siniava’s War, he’d seen the like: peasants driven from their villages, eking out a poor living in the edges of woodland, hiding from everyone. A clean well would be a boon to them. And such people would not welcome brigands any more than soldiers. If he could convince them to talk to him, he might save the cohort time and blood.

He rode back to the camp, now bustling as his people dug a ditch, cut stakes, and laid out the campsite itself. All were at work but the sentries and the scouts he’d assigned to patrol beyond the perimeter, even Burek. As he dismounted, he caught a glance from Devlin; he nodded, tied his horse to the tail of a wagon, and went over.

“Problems, Sergeant?”

“Not exactly,” Devlin said. “But—I have a feeling.”

“So do I,” Arcolin said. “There’s a lot more going on than some brigands bothering farmers or merchants. Is the feeling about this place, or more than that?”

“I wish we had two cohorts,” Devlin said. “Or all three. Marching through the woods today—I don’t know, sir, I just—it’s been a long time since I felt like we were a small group.”