They exit the tent seconds before the blazing curtain overhead collapses it behind them. She sees the rest of the camp is also on fire now. She sees Savages fleeing the interior of burning tents on their hands and knees only to have their throats cut or heads lopped off by the blades of pursuing shadow warriors. She sees a stray Skrain soldier in blood-splattered armor, weaponless, running for his life through a camp upon the ground of which his kind ordinarily wouldn’t deign to piss.

They must’ve hit the Skrain encampment first, quietly slitting sleeping throats, before the flaming arrow volleys began.

Evie breaks into a run, pulling Brio along as needed. He half hobbles, half skips to keep up, grunting through ground teeth without complaint. She deflects the blade of a black-clad warrior who rushes them, and opens his flesh from neck to shoulder with a swipe of her own. Her plan is to flee back through the Skrain encampment. Her hope is that the night force deployed by the Sicclunans has moved on, and she and Brio will be able to escape if they can just make it past the slaughter and razing of the Savage tents.

Both her hope and her brief plan are dashed upon the rocks as Evie halts Brio in midhobble.

If it weren’t for the firelights they might have continued melting in to the shadows, but the rippling amber reveals an entire battalion of the black-clad warriors marching toward them in formation from the remnants of the Skrain encampment. Unlike their stealthy vanguard, each of these soldiers has long swords sheathed at their hips in addition to a short sword. Held aloft and at the ready are wicked-looking double bladed battle-axes and horse-cutter spears. Whether the Savages before them attempt to flee or are foolish enough to attack head-on, the masked battalion never breaks rank as they cut down the enemy.

If she weren’t cradling Brio directly in their path, Evie would have to admire the tactical precision of it all. The Sicclunans are not only tearing a page from the Crachian war manual, they’ve improved upon it. The fiery arrows and two-warrior tent incursions created the same chaos caused by the Savages, yet with far more bloody and lethal effect. Now their main force is sweeping through the camp to clean up anything and everything that’s left.

Evie turns just in time to glimpse Lariat, several yards ahead of them, uncross his arms and decapitate a black-hooded head between the triangular blades of his matched katars. She briefly and frantically looks around, searching for other members of the Elder Company, but there’s no time even to call to the old man standing over the newly headless corpse. Evie can only hope Spud-Bar’s wagon made it clear of the camp without encountering the night force.