Evie dons the black head and body veil of a Sicclunan night warrior over her rags, and two of Sirach’s best stealth fighters guide her over the border and through the Skrain patrols without incident. It’s Evie’s first up-close experience with watching the shadow warriors operate, and if she didn’t fully appreciate the Sicclunan’s discipline and training before, she’s now in awe of both. The black-masked warriors move without a single sound, their hands and feet seeming to touch the ground without disturbing it. They can both see perfectly in the almost total darkness, and for a mile ahead. They become every shadow they enter, and surveying the landscape ahead, seem to possess the ability to instantly discern a route, however circuitous, that will conceal them from even the most direct gaze.

They instructed her to stay close and do what they do, and those are orders Evie follows to the letter, doing her best to match them step-for-step, crawl-for-crawl, always keeping pace on their heels. It becomes more arduous with each passing hour, but Evie is determined. She compels her mind to remain sharp and attentive and her limbs to never slacken.

The night warriors lead her through a grove of dying trees, and at the edge of the grove, concealed in the brush, they silently bid her to join them shoulder to shoulder to peer out across the valley beyond.

The garrison is an ominous keep of black stone guarding the main road through the western border of Crache. The towers on either side are filled with the Skrain’s best archers and artillery weapons. The keep walls extend around an expansive ward of rice paddies and fish hatcheries that feed the tall bamboo barracks rising from its center. Anyone traveling the main road attempting to enter or leave Crache has no choice but to pass through the keep. On any normal day the garrison would hold five hundred soldiers, but across the border the days have become anything but normal.

Circumventing the keep walls is no easy task, but it pales beside the larger challenge; the garrison is completely overrun by Skrain and Savage Legionnaires. The barracks and ward have overflowed beyond the walls, and a huge encampment has been erected along the main road leading to and from the keep gates. It adds several further layers to her approach, and Evie knows she’ll have to go on alone; the Sicclunan stealth fighters will only increase her risk of discovery beyond this point.