Disappointingly, when Cade emerged from the cabin, he found no camp at all. Rather, a dismantled shell, with the very palisade and surrounding cabins reduced to a few scattered logs.

The sun had hardly risen, and the sky was a wan dark blue that put Cade on edge. The area remained a hive of activity, men running to and fro, loading tools and supplies onto rickety wagons, alongside the piles of logs that had once made up the small fort. There were no animals in the traces, and instead the soldiers themselves were harnessed to the front.

“Good, you’re awake.”

It was Marius, his eyes shadowed after what must have been a sleepless night.

“You work fast,” Cade said.

Marius grinned. “The men were eager to leave. And once the walls come down we are open to attack. Fear is the greatest enemy of idle hands.”

He waved away the look of worry on Cade’s face. “I have scouts watching for the enemy. That is one benefit of this flat, cursed land. No surprises.”

Cade relaxed, if only slightly. There was no telling what technology the Grays had at their disposal. They may have put up with the Romans in their land thus far, perhaps reserving their soldiers and resources for whatever challenge their equivalent of Abaddon had in store for them.

But this was now part of the game. And with the slaughter of their patrol—one tenth of their entire army no less, if Marius’s guess at their numbers was accurate—they would be making moves soon.

“Should I tell the others to come out, so you can take their wood too?” Cade asked.

“We cannot take everything here,” Marius said, scratching the shadow of stubble on his chin. “There are only six wagons—all we could salvage after we lost our first battle. A waste to leave all this wood. Perhaps we will return.”

Cade saw that it was not just the cabin that remained. The cannons set in the walls had also been abandoned, left in the dirt where the gun platforms had once been.

“You aren’t seriously leaving the cannons too?” Cade asked, pointing at the rusted hulks and the iron balls scattered beside them.

Marius chuckled. “Our friend Louis told us what they were,” he said. “But we have never been able to use them. No … powder, I think he called it.”

Cade sighed. Of course. Gunpowder had existed in the time of the Romans, but had only been used in east Asia. They would have little idea of how to make it. Then again, even if they had known, they would have had a slim chance at best of gathering the ingredients in this alien world.

“What will you do when we move to the new fort?” Cade asked. “Now that my friends and I are here, things must be different.”

Marius laughed. “Ask Atticus,” he said. “The man tells us nothing of his plans. Long we have asked to attack once more, to end this eternal waiting. But instead he still tries to draw them out. Over the years, we have ambushed their patrols, whittled down their numbers. But look at us.”