* * *

  The cloaked rider nodded to Lycera, then remounted her bird, and set off again from whence she’d come. In the dim early morning light, the mottled camouflage of her garment and the bird’s coat soon rendered her near-indistinguishable from the background of the savanna scrubland.

  “What is it?” asked Kera.

  Reading the communique, Lycera murmured in disappointment, shaking her head as she returned to the overlook where Kera lay prone.

  “Says… the enemy’s spearhead is at the banks of the Set already, down south,” she said.

  "I thought they were supposed to be more than half a season away, still.”

  “Me too,” said Lycera. “Before we left Capria, the most pessimistic predictions I’d heard put them at the river by the end of spring. But not before. And certainly not already preparing for a crossing. It’s the artillery, if I had to guess. We’ve recorded so much of it in transit, behind the front out here. Setet doesn’t have anything like that, to match what we’ve seen.”

  “It has to be,” said Kera. “Imagine fighting through a bombardment like that during the evacuation, except from a hundred smaller guns instead of two big ones.”

  “Either way, this will be the last contact we have with the west before we return to friendly lines. H.Q. says it’ll be too dangerous to send any more riders. And as long as the frontline keeps getting pushed back, it's possible we could be cut off entirely, so they’re telling us to either track down our lead soon, or to start heading home.”

  Kera looked back out over the savanna ahead. It seemed so vast and free, for a territory under hostile occupation. The only sign of warfare’s touch were the ruins of Atum-Ra their expedition had approached once more, still far to the north-northeast in the basin beneath the overlook. Much of the surrounding grasslands had regrown patches of green since they’d last dwelt in that ruin’s shadow, but the broken stone remained.

  War had come to those lands, indeed. That was impossible to forget, not least due to the twinge of unnatural fear snaking its way to Kera, there. That hint of a distant malevolence she felt on the plane of sense, emanating from the city’s corpse. A hostile presence of vis she’d met once before, made known to her again, even at that distance.

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  “Are you asking for what I think?” asked Kera.

  “Of course,” said Lycera. “You’re my X.O.”

  “I think… I think we should go for it. One final push, to hunt down that lead,” said Kera.

  “Really? Every day traveling north is two fewer we’ll have to get back to our lines.”

  “What does it matter, even if we never make it back? If the frontline’s collapsing, it's not like returning just to reinforce the trenches will make much of a difference. What we’re doing now is how we might make a difference.”

  “You and I wouldn’t be going into the trenches,” said Lycera. “Tanhkmet needs skilled officers. That’s what we’d be depriving him of.”

  “And that’s what we’ll be getting for him, if we can find Junius, and Theodora, and all the others.”

  “We don't have the time to actually liberate any prisoner–of-war camps on this expedition anymore, Iumatar. Not anymore. Narrowing down where they might be held, maybe…”

  “No…” said Kera, turning back to their view of the ruins. “No, I think there’s still a way we do this. We placed our lead in Ventium, right? We’ll make it there in under a week if we cut due north, right now. If we stop giving the ruins a wide berth, and just ride straight past.”

  “What? Even the enemy won’t go near… whatever that is, in Atum-Ra…”

  “Exactly,” said Kera. “So the enemy won’t be tracking us, even if we ride in daylight.”

  “Don’t you think it’d be wise to respect a danger that even the Albians are afraid of?” asked Lycera.

  “We won’t actually cross the ruins themselves. Just skirt the edge, as we ride by. It won’t feel good, but I know firsthand that unease we’re feeling is just psychological. A trick of the haunt’s vis. And I have reason to believe we might be safe enough, as long as we don’t enter the city limits. I was there, right before the evacuation, when… when that danger first took hold, in the ruins. I think I know what it wants. And I think… it's stuck there, searching for it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Not at all,” said Kera. “But if the frontline keeps collapsing… sooner or later, someone has to make a play.”