The sun had already dipped below the trees of the Westwood forest by the time they made camp for the night. Jezren hadn’t needed to instruct the experienced members at all, each falling into a practiced routine they’d lived a thousand times. Mattin and Brenam unhitching and settling the horses, Ana and Jocon gathering wood for a small cookfire.

  Rurik seemed to take Ryn under his wing, correcting the inexperienced youth with surprising patience when Ryn laid out his bedroll in a depression that was also beneath a rather large dead tree limb. “Still a widowmaker even if you don’t leave a widow behind,” Rurik said with a laugh. He clapped a large hand on Ryn’s back and nearly sent the slimmer man sprawling before he caught himself.

  Jezren had set his bedroll at the far edge of their camp, on a slight rise that gave him an unobstructed view of both the camp and the road. And the cage. Terja set herself along the same rise, her bound hands clumsily laying her bedroll perhaps a dozen paces from him. He told himself it was to avoid some of the more openly hostile looks from the other company members.

  Tolan proved himself a better cook than Jezren was accustomed to, although that wasn’t a terribly difficult feat. Most mercenaries rarely fed more than themselves and soldiers- or at least those Jezren had served with- seemed to think char was a vital seasoning.

  By nightfall, most of the company sat near the cookfire, the conversation light and general; which estates were likely to hire soon, which paid the best, and which ones weren’t worth any wage. Jezren poured himself a serving of the piping stew and then filled a second cup with little attention to the conversation. As long as they didn’t come to blows, he didn’t much care what they talked about.

  He headed back up the rise with both cups, stopping just shy of where Terja sat. Even now her gaze held defiance. He held out a cup, blinking back unwanted memories. “We’ll reach Wodstrem tomorrow, and after that the Shatterwilds. You’ll need your strength.”

  She stared at him for a moment, but the defiance softened somewhat to a measuring look that unsettled him. It felt as if she was cataloguing him piece by piece. A voice in the back of his head wondered if she would notice the piece still tethered to the cage.

  She took the cup only slightly awkwardly with her bound hands. He took the opportunity to look closely at the bindings. They weren’t so tight that they cut circulation, but her wrists were starting to chafe where they rubbed against each other. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been bound, but they were probably already beginning to stiffen.

  He set down his cup and kneeled in front of her, loosening the ropes around her wrists enough to give her at least some movement. She didn’t speak, just watched him work with that calculating gaze.

  Once he’d finished he stood, retrieving his cup and heading back to his bedroll without a word. He could still feel her eyes on him as he sat, leaning back on one arm. He did his best to ignore it.

  “Awfully considerate for a Dominion man, Captain,” she remarked.

  “I’m not Dominion,” he replied flatly, sipping tentatively at the steaming stew in his cup. He didn’t dare look at her.

  The conversation from the cookfire drifted past them. Brenam and Seris argued amicably over something or other while Ana laughed at something that made Ryn flush.

  “Not Dominion,” Terja added, keeping her voice low enough not to carry to the fire. “Just willing to take their coin and do their bidding.” It wasn’t harsh, not exactly, but there was an edge to it.

  Jezren took a mouthful of stew and chewed thoughtfully for a moment, his gaze straight ahead. She was here because she had made a deal with the Sanctum. He chose his words carefully. “I do what keeps me alive. Same as you.”

  That earned him a quiet, almost derisive huff. “We are not the same,” she replied, but the hardness had left her voice. He glanced at her in spite of himself to find her gaze distant, a faint smirk pulling at the edge of her lips.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He turned his attention back to the camp and tried not to think about what exactly Terja had meant by that.

  Conversation ebbed as the stew ran out and the company settled in for the night. Jezren had given himself first watch. He never slept well, but it was always worse on a job. Being in a company was too similar to his time in the Swords for his mind to be at ease, regardless of the circumstances of the job.

  Ryn was the last to quiet, obviously unused to the thinness of a bedroll and the unevenness of rocky soil. Even Terja’s breathing had slowed to a steady rhythm before his, though Jezren noted the tension still in her limbs and doubted it was more than a doze.

  Soon enough, Jezren was alone with his thoughts. And the cage.

  It had pulled at the force buried within him since the moment it had entered the outpost. The fitful moonlight that filtered through the trees of the Westwood cast a silvery sheen over the sharp-edged runes that flowed like water over stone. He’d spent the day as far from it as he could without seeming to purposely avoid it.

  He circled the camp experimentally, drawing slightly nearer to the iron monstrosity with each pass. Each time his rounds brought him near it, it pulled at him harder. Each time the magic within him responded more fervently.

  The moment he stepped within three paces, what had been a distant tether felt more like a stout rope wrapped around the force buried within his chest. It pulled not just at the magic, but at the very air within his lungs. A strangled grunt escaped him as he stumbled back a step, forcing down a wave of panic as leaves swirled around his feet despite the stillness of the night. He went to one knee, forcing air into his lungs and the magic back into the confines of his chest.

  He quickly glanced around the camp, but no one stirred around the remnants of the cookfire. He forced his breathing to steady and rose, taking another step back from the cage. He eyed it for a moment but it was the same as before; dark iron almost invisible in the night except for the cryptic runes that held the fickle moonlight. Had it brightened for just a moment when he got too close, or had he imagined it?

  He straightened his gambeson and turned back to the camp. On the far side, on the small rise that gave an unobstructed view of the camp, he could just make out the form of Terja sitting upright on her bedroll. He turned away immediately and moved to continue his rounds.

  Of course she had been keeping an eye on the cage. Her cage. From the rise she could see anyone who approached it. She must have been dozing and heard him stumble. Even if he had imagined the cage’s reaction to him, there was little doubt she had seen his reaction to it.

  Jezren tried to continue his rounds as his mind raced. He watched her through the periphery of his vision. She hadn’t moved to raise any alarm. She hadn’t made any sound at all. Out on the road in the dead of night there was little anyone could have done, aside from binding him as a prisoner. Or killing him outright. But why was she not alerting anyone?

  As he neared that side of the camp, she came into sharper focus. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest, her hands resting on top of them. The gaze she fixed him with almost stopped him in his tracks not because of its intensity, although it was incredibly so, but because of its familiarity. The calculating look of someone who knows what they’ve seen and is trying to judge exactly what to do about it.

  Strange you’d know that, Captain. The commander’s voice rang in his ears as if the man were standing beside him and not a decade in the past.

  Jezren cleared his throat and tried to blink away the memory, but closing his eyes only brought the man’s face into focus. He opened them quickly and forced himself to continue forward.

  Terja watched him for a short time more, then awkwardly laid back on her bedroll and went back to dozing. Jezren continued his rounds, although now giving the cage a wide berth.

  This was not the mountain village. There was no point in running here in the Westwood. Dominion patrols were routine and once the cry was raised he’d be found in short enough time. No. If he was going to run again, he’d need the Shatterwilds. And that lay on the other side of Wodstrem and the Hraeda River.

  Terja could be planning to raise the alarm there. Wodstrem’s temple was small but patrols used it almost as a waystation. But why wait? Why not now?

  By the time Seris came to relieve him for second watch, his feet and thoughts had walked the same path a hundred times. He waved her off, back to her bedroll. She raised a brow but did not object to the extra rest.

  Even on mundane jobs Jezren always took the precaution of exhaustion to ensure a dreamless sleep. Now, with a prisoner of the Sanctum at the very least suspicious of him, he wasn’t sure he’d dare to sleep at all.