The ground here was kept open near the walls, so that archers could shoot from above. Gaborn could never have sneaked into the castle from here, not unobserved.

The hillside became steep just below the pussy willows, where it led into some deep birch and alder woods that were so dark that Gaborn could hardly see. Yet it was only a small grove, a triangle of trees barely two hundred yards long and a hundred wide.

Through the trees Gaborn spotted the river now, broad and black. He could hear its soft voice burbling.

He halted, grabbed Rowan’s ankle to stop her from crawling farther. On the far side of the river he saw movement: nomen and frowth giants setting camps in the darkness. The nomen were black shadows in the fields of grain, hunched and clawing. Gaborn knew that the nomen, who preferred to leap on their prey from trees in the starlight, would be able to see well in the night, but he did not know how well.

Though the nomen had invaded from the sea a thousand years before, the Runelords had decimated their numbers, had even gone so far as to sail to their own dark lands beyond the Caroll Sea to wipe them out. Long had their war cries been silenced. They had not been fierce warriors, but were cunning fighters in the darkness. The nomen were now little more than legend. Still, rumor said that nomen inhabited the Hest Mountains, beyond Inkarra, and that they sometimes stole children to eat. The Inkarrans seemed never quite able to wipe the last of the creatures from the rain forests. Gaborn didn’t know how much of the tales to believe. Perhaps the nomen could see him even now.

But the woods grew thicker off to the left—and Gaborn spotted a wide diversion dam made of stones. The mill. Its huge water wheel made a great racket, with its grinding and the water splashing.

“Let me lead,” he whispered. He moved slowly now through the pussy willows, eeling on his belly, not wanting to attract the attention of the nomen on the far side of the river till he reached the shelter of the woods.

They were outside the city wall now, on a steep bank that overlooked the River Wye to the east, the moat to the south. He hoped Raj Ahten didn’t have soldiers posted in these woods.

He took his time as he led Rowan deeper into the grove, careful not to snap a twig.

Up on the hills behind him, in the heart of Castle Sylvarresta, he could hear distant cries of dismay, shouts. Perhaps a battle had broken out.

Other shouts nearby mingled with the noise, cries of hunters, shouting in Taifan, “Go that way! Look over there! After him!” Raj Ahten’s trackers were searching on the other side of the city wall.