The first scout died at dusk.
Kael had been watching the way station from the tree line for two hours a stand of dark pines on the ridge above the coast road, still and cold and invisible from below. The building itself was small, stone-walled with a slate roof, tucked into the curve of a low hill like it had grown there. One thin thread of smoke from the chimney. Three horses in the paddock at the back. A fourth had been there an hour ago, now gone south with the man Kael had been waiting on.
Tarn was in the grass to his left. Brann to his right. The three warriors from the column fanned out behind them in a loose half-circle, all five of them swallowed up by the shadows between the trees.
The scout came out at the change of the light. Young witch, dark-haired and thin, dressed in sout
