AN: Ok, so two things. 1: I do not know much about equestrianism, nor have I ever had practical experience at it, so my apologies to equestrians who find some of the information provided...lacking. 2: Despite huge personal reservations, I have opened forums in which to discuss more at length any questions you might have regarding the Dark Wars and its universe in general.

As always, I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Cheers,

Marquis Black

Willis whistled.

"Look at 'em go."

His unit was crouching on a hillside about two hours away from their camp, observing the serpentine movements of the Imperial Army column as it made its way across the plains towards where they would establish camp. The noise would have been deafening, they were sure, if it hadn't been for the Warders Silencing everything within range.

"Kinda makes you wish you were with them, doesn't it?" asked Jameson rhetorically. "Instead of crawling on the ground like we are."

One of the remaining soldiers, a blonde, short-cropped woman smacked him upside the head, upsetting his helmet onto the ground. "This crawling is going to save their hides!" she rebuked her comrade.

Jameson glared at her. "Yeah, yeah," he agreed dismissively as he put on the helmet once again and fastened it under his chin. "Seriously, though. Why all the paranoia? We've not seen hide or hair of the enemy since we started. Everything points to us having the perfect element of surprise!"

"Maybe the boss is worried that we shouldn't, and so the enemy's lack of movement doesn't make sense?" suggested Willis. "After all, it's pretty damn hard to miss the Air Fleet landing troops upon troops."

"So maybe we got lucky, yeah?" suggested one of the other soldiers, a young, redheaded Irishman. "I mean, what's to say they haven't been paying attention?"

Willis looked at the new recruit askance. "With the Death Eaters biting the dust and the Imperial forces marching through Europe? He'd have to either be the most overconfident bloke I've ever heard of, or just damn stupid!" he said. "And seeing as how the boss doesn't seem to think that either is the case, I'm of a mind to agree with caution."

Willis decided to leave off his tirade there, noticing the wind picking up on a southerly course. "Excellent. Wind's in our favour," he told his unit, picking himself up. "Come on, on your horses! We have to make the most out of this wind!"

The five man team rushed to their horses and quickly saddled up, realizing the importance of using winds going in the opposite direction of the enemy. If the enemy had hounds or animals of any sorts (say, dragons), such winds would blow their scent far away from them, allowing them to gain greater ground in less time.

Willis was the first on his horse, a chestnut stallion which he'd affectionately named "Treebark" for its brown colour. "Come on," he prompted his horse softly, "Let's ride!" he then ordered the rest, rifles slung on their backs.

The group stayed close together as they rode, their horses grunting as they exerted themselves to keep up the speed demanded by their riders. It wasn't as if they were unused to the strain, but considering the length of the voyage intended, it was sure to tire out the war horses eventually.

Willis, of course, was at the head of the group, his soldier's overcoat flapping wildly behind him as he and his steed kept up a steady, if somewhat speedy pace. His men, however, were no slouches themselves, nor were their horses, and so they were never more than a few meters apart.

To the sergeant, the ride was blissful. It was freedom incarnate. To ride on open plains and through woods, with nothing but the wind and the elements to worry him. It was ecstasy itself.

They rode on for hours, briefly stopping for intervals of about thirty minutes to let the horses rest. At these points, the soldiers would usually sit in a circle and exchange stories, while always keeping an eye open for any nearby disturbances. So far, there had been none, and none of their magical traps had been set off.

It was quite weird, in Willis' opinion. Even the Death Eaters had staged more proactive defenses of their bases. From the reports filtering in from Continental Europe, the remaining hold-outs were proving to be a challenge, so determined were they. It made sense, in a way, Willis supposed. With the weak-willed gone in the first waves of mass surrenders, all that remained were the determined, cunning, veteran, and fanatic. Unlike the rest of the Death Eater forces, these would not fall easily.

So why did their final, true opponent act like a rookie?

Willis wasn't one to question orders, but even his meagre (in his opinion, anyway) observational skills told him that something about this whole operation was dodgy. There was no reason for which the enemy would allow the Imperial Army to land and move so close to Hogwarts unimpeded. It was just tactical sense to dog your enemy as he moved, to lower the amount of troops committed to the final confrontation.

None of that had happened to them. Why?

He had been of a mind to cancel his patrol and just go back to the Brigadier and beg the man to hold the operation until they found out what the hell was going on. The temptation had been strong enough for him to slow down the pace of his scouting party—so much so that an Army colonel had managed to catch up in a few hours.

Even now, the temptation was still strong in his mind to call off the operation, but now it was out of his hands. There was a Colonel in charge this time. A woman he respected, no less. After all, Colonel Susan Bones was a hero of the Empire; a decorated warrior who had stood shoulder to shoulder with her men in Harrisburg and led a successful last ditch defence, even as official regulations would have punished her for doing so. Thanks to her actions and that of many others like her during the battle, that silly bit of legislation had been thoroughly scrapped in the next official Parliamentary session, leaving the choice of being at the frontlines with their men up to the officer's discretion.

So calling off the operation was out of the question. He couldn't, and wouldn't, override his superior officer. No matter how much his gut told him to do so.

The breaks during their rides became more infrequent as they neared their destination, having already gone through two full days of riding. It was harrowing, and the horses were going to need a lot of rest after they reached the point, but they had made amazing time. Initial estimates had put their travel at four days; they would be reaching their goal in three and a half days.

'More time to scout the place out,' reasoned Willis, barely noticing as Treebark sent up the water in the puddle at his feet as he galloped past. It had rained the previous day, and while the sky was still cloudy, at least they wouldn't be pummelled by the rain today.

It had also been nothing short of a miracle that the wind had not turned against them. For the full ride, it had stayed consistently southerly, masking their scents far more effectively than anything Willis could have cooked up. It was as if heaven itself was favouring the Imperial cause.

'Yes, and next thing you know, we'll be shouting God Wills It as we ride into battle,' the sergeant thought sarcastically.

"How much further?" he heard one of his men shout behind him. Miles, no doubt.

"Four hours!" answered Jameson with equal sound level.

Willis gave a silent thanks to the deities that be that his party had at least one wizard (having two was simply blissful to him). It made tracking and cartography so much simpler. Jameson had been given the coordinates of the place in question, and so now he used his magic to guide the group, and would call directions as they approached the relevant areas.

"Any changes?!" shouted Willis. He knew Jameson was quite focused on his task to get them to the right place, but it didn't hurt to ask.

"Alter course northeast in forty minutes!" shouted back Jameson. "Terrain's going to start slopping down to the path between the mountains! We need to stay clear of it!"

Willis gave an inaudible grunt of acknowledgement, focusing his attention on his horse as the beat whinnied plaintively. The hard ride was starting to take its toll on the poor horse, and Willis knew it. He rubbed the stallion's dark neck reassuringly and with obvious affection.

"Hold it together, Treebark, we're almost there," he whispered as he leaned forward, obvious worry in his eyes for his horse. "Just a little longer."

Whether or not the horse could understand, Willis didn't know, but it did seem to him that the stallion seemed more determined as its hooves began to increase the pace slightly. Behind the dark leader, the other horses were similarly increasing their speed, blindly following their leader's prompt.

Soon, they had reached the area Jameson had been talking about, and that's where his wizard shouted out a warning.

"Map's indicating unknown life-forms headed south, northeast of us!" he shouted. "They don't seem to have noticed us, but they're moving amazingly fast!"

That warranted further investigation, in Willis' professional opinion. Raising his right hand, he motioned for the horsemen to follow him as he pulled Treebark's reins to the right, making the stallion move to his desired direction.

They rode for ten minutes before Willis had Jameson check the enemy positions again. The resulting answer surprised the veteran sergeant.

"They've completely passed by us!" Jameson had said disbelievingly. He checked his map spell to make sure he hadn't botched things up. He hadn't. "They're already two miles south of us!"

Willis couldn't help but gape at the man's claim. His first instinct was to demand that he try his spell again, certain he had botched it up, but having seen Jameson do that before he recanted, instead deciding to trust the wizard. Still, that meant there was an exceptionally fast moving group of life forms headed south towards the Imperial Army column.

He had to make a decision, fast. The only way to beat them to the column was for Jameson to Apparate, but that meant stopping their ride north exactly where they were, since Jameson had to Apparate to places he had seen, lest he risk non-lethal dismemberment (a concept Willis still couldn't wrap his mind around). Still, it was worth the wait if it meant the Army was aware of the imminent potential danger.

Raising a fist, he had the group halt their ride and immediately turned to Jameson as the horses slowed to a halt. "Get back to the vanguard of the column and let them know what's coming, now!" he barked out the order. Jameson gave his superior officer a serious nod and promptly disappeared from his saddle, his horse barely registering the absence, used as it was to the wizard's disappearing act.

To the rest of the group, Willis levelled a serious expression. "Their tracks couldn't have been more than a mile or so from here. Miles, you and Porter guard Jameson's horse. O'Neill, you're with me. We're checking out the tracks. If we're not back in an hour, assume the worst."

With that, the sergeant and his designated partner rode off, Willis at the head of the two-man squad. He had a feeling that whatever he'd find, he wouldn't like it, and though he would have loved to have a wizard on hand, neither Jameson nor Hilliard were on hand, so he had to make due without excessively breaking down the group and leaving them all vulnerable to lone ambushes.

O'Neill and he rode for about fifteen minutes before they reached a sight that surprised Willis. He had been expecting tracks, of course, but this was something else. The very earth around the tracks seemed dead, and the grass immediately surrounding the tracks were in flames. It wasn't dangerous enough to warrant a wildfire alert, but enough that it caught his attention.

"What the hell?" he mumbled to himself as he and his comrade neared the tracks. He barely held onto his reins as Treebark seemed to writhe in fear beneath him. Something about the tracks was seriously affecting his horse, and it was driving the poor animal out of its mind with fright. Normally, only predators ever did that, and humans weren't counted in this category, since Treebark and his fellow equines had been bred for wartime activity. Whatever had caused the tracks were making the veteran horse quiver like a paranoid foal.

Out of the side of his vision he could see that O'Neill was having similar trouble keeping his own stallion in line.

"Easy, Swifthoof, easy!" O'Neill was trying to reassure his grey stallion, but the animal was paying him no heed as it tried its best to go against his rider's orders to move towards the tracks. Looking at his superior officer, O'Neill's worry was clear to Willis. "What the heck's the matter with Swifthoof and Treebark, sarge? They've never been this spooked before!"

Willis shook his head in the absence of a good explanation. "No idea. Better take them a bit away from them and come back ourselves to take a look."

O'Neill seemed to agree with the idea and followed his sergeant away from the tracks, far enough that the horses seemed a little more at ease. There, they dismounted and, patting their horses reassuringly, made their way back to the tracks on foot, rifles in hand and primed for use.

As expected, Willis had no idea what had made the tracks, even upon closer inspection. They were nothing like any animal he'd seen make. To him, it looked like whatever animal had made these were a cross between a hoofed animal and a bird. The back of the print was circular, but the forefront was splint into three, thin, finger-like prints, with a hole about an inch further away from each indicating the presence of long, sharp claws. Whatever it was, it was vicious, Willis knew.

"I've never seen anything like this," he admitted to O'Neill when the private had asked his sergeant for an opinion. "Ever. Not in ten years of scouting and tracking."

"What do we do about it?" asked O'Neill then. It didn't help them much if they didn't know the animal that made the prints, after all. Still, the burning grass around the prints made Willis nervous.

"We should report this to HQ," said Willis as he picked up his rifle again. "Whatever made this could be of Riddle's creation. I mean, look at the bloody grass, for chrissake! It's bloody burning!"

O'Neill nodded, absently noticing that his sergeant seemed a lot more exciteable than usual. That meant he didn't like what he'd seen. "So we ride back to the others and have Jameson pop back to HQ again?" he asked.

Willis shook his head. "No. Another trip won't leave him in any condition to do scouting when we reach the path the Colonel showed us. We radio back."

O'Neill's eyebrows shot up. "The enemy could intercept the transmission," he reminded his superior. It was true. That was why the communicator spells were invented, since even the Death Eaters couldn't tap into the spell-lines. Radio waves, however, could be intercepted via magic or technology, making it a very insecure method of communication, however fast it was.

"We haven't a damn choice," replied Willis as he led O'Neill back to the horses. "We need them to know fast, and there isn't a communication line set up to report to HQ quick enough. Radio's what it's got to be."

O'Neill didn't protest at his sergeant's final decision, but it was obvious he wasn't all that excited about it.

The duo quickly mounted up on their respective horses and rode back to where Miles and Porter were supposed to be waiting for them along with Jameson's horse. Instead, they found Jameson with them, looking a little winded at the amount of magic he'd used to quickly Apparate to the HQ and back.

"That was quick," commented Willis as he approached them. Jameson nodded wearily.

"The Brigadier ordered a squad of dragons to check it out. They reported a trail, but nothing on their sensors. It's likely they've turned back and are avoiding us," explained the wizard soldier.

That didn't make sense to the sergeant, however. Such stealthy creatures would have easily been able to elude pursuit, and there was no reason for them to backtrack. "Did the Brigadier say anything else?" asked Willis.

Jameson shook his head. "He just agreed with Colonel Bones' suggested scouting spot and ordered for us to go ahead and not worry about the contacts."

Willis frowned in personal disagreement, but chose not to speak up. After all, despite his personal objections, the Brigadier hadn't been promoted for nothing. The man was a good soldier with a sound head on his shoulders, not one of those bumbling armchair generals. If they couldn't trust the man who'd crushed the enemy column in Harrisburg's central island, who could they trust? Moreover, the man was a close confidante of the Iron Duke; if this was a problem, he was sure the Iron Duke would have told the Brigadier.

Willis sighed. Maybe he was just overreacting. Motioning to the four soldiers under his command, he waited until they were all saddled up before gently kicking Treebark in the sides, prompting the proud horse to move forward. They had a destination to reach, after all.

Back at the forest, Susan's hunt for the alleged contacts heard by Hilliard wasn't doing so well. The redheaded Colonel was, after about two days of searching (which was more than she had planned to give this detour), she was beginning to think they were being played with.

The hunt had started well enough. Once they had reached the spot Hilliard had seen, she and her two assigned soldiers (including Hilliard herself) had found matching tracks that were unusual enough to have piqued their interest. They were circular at the back and almost bird-like at the forefront, and judging by the holes in the ground about an inch in front of the tip of the bird-like finger impressions, she was willing to bet whatever it was had big, sharp claws. Her professional instincts also told her it was probably four-legged, given the depths of the prints and the almost universal equidistance from each other. More eerily was the fact that the grass around it seemed to have burned to ash.

"This doesn't make sense!" she growled to herself as she, Hilliard, and O'Hara quickly made their way through the denser parts of the forest on foot. They had to leave their horses behind about two hours ago due to the dense flora.

"This is most unusual," admitted O'Hara laconically. "The creatures seem to have taken great pains in circumventing any possible trackers."

Susan hadn't been aware that she'd spoken her thoughts out loud, but nonetheless deigned O'Hara with an agreeing nod as they tirelessly pushed through the dense bush.

Hilliard, who had been the cause of what was quickly looking to be a wild goose chase, was red in the face with embarrassment, even as she trailed behind her two squad-mates. "I'm sorry this has taken so long," she told her comrades.

She was rewarded with a frown from Susan. "We're not prancing around aimlessly, Hilliard. Whatever this creature, or creatures for that matter, are, we need to find out. They've apparently been tracking the column for a while now."

"What about the order from HQ?" asked O'Hara, smoothly entering the conversation. "The Brigadier said that the sergeant found something similar up north, but were ordered to move ahead regardless."

Susan couldn't help the frosty look on her face as Neville was mentioned. "The Brigadier," the word was spoken so coldly that Hilliard shivered, "is underestimating the importance of this. Without realizing it, he's confirmed the sighting of two more such creatures north of us, and with these tracks, we've established that at least two more exist. We need to find out what they are, and what they want with the column."

"Is it not possible they are merely creations of the Death Eaters?" asked O'Hara. "Biologically engineered predators for their amusement?"

Susan nodded, even as she pushed aside a branch in her way. "I thought about that," she admitted. "It doesn't add up, though. If the predators look anything like what I'm thinking based on those tracks, they would have used them against us in battle. They haven't, so I'm fairly certain they aren't responsible for their existence."

"What about Riddle?" asked Hilliard, following O'Hara train of thought.

Susan was a little more reticent in nodding this time. "Again, I thought about it, and on the surface it makes sense. However, if he does have such predators, why not launch them onto the column proper? Why all this circumvention? It's not like they could communicate with humans in our language."

Susan froze in her tracks at that moment. Couldn't they? She'd seen plenty of things in her time that would not have made sense to a normal person's point of view; centaurs, goblins, house elves, mermen…all of these creatures were non-human, but all possessed the power of understandable speech and thought rationally. What if these creatures did too?

Beside her, she could see that O'Hara had reached a similar conclusion, if his serious-looking frown was any indication. Hilliard, however, didn't seem to catch on, as she looked at both O'Hara and Susan in confusion.

"What?" asked Hilliard, confused.

"We…may have a problem," spoke O'Hara, his voice slow and careful. Susan wanted to roll her eyes at just how much of an understatement that was. Problem didn't come close to just how big an issue this was. If the four-legged creatures were intelligent and capable of human speech, then they were all in big trouble. This led her to her second revelation.

"We're being played," she concluded out loud, having pieced together what she knew.

O'Hara seemed confused for a moment before thinking things through and nodding. Hilliard alone seemed lost.

"What are you talking about, sir?" she asked.

Susan slammed back a fist into a nearby trunk, teeth gritted in embarrassed anger. "We thought they were animals relying on instinct to avoid trackers, but what if they could think?" she posed rhetorically, since O'Hara had apparently understood her initial conclusion. "We've been following a dead end. The real tracks probably separated from these fake ones where you heard the bushes rustling, Hilliard."

Hilliard still looked confused. "But we searched the area! There wasn't anything but these tracks on the ground!"

O'Hara had a look of sudden understanding, even as Susan raised a hand to cover her eyes in frustrated revelation. "They're using the trees," she said through clenched teeth. O'Hara nodded in agreement. "We thought they were exclusively land-dwellers, but they're using the bloody trees!"

"This is a most unusual predator," noted O'Hara, suddenly looking very concerned. "It is displaying levels of intelligence either at or above human intellectual potential."

"But if that's true…" started Hilliard, looking much more worried than she had seconds ago, "…then shouldn't we tell sergeant Willis and the others? They could come back and help us!"

O'Hara glanced at Susan thoughtfully. "Could you Apparate to the meeting point, Colonel?" he asked curiously. Susan shook her head.

"I can't remember the details of the place well enough to Apparate safely. I'd likely splinch myself, and that'd make the whole thing pointless."

O'Hara nodded. "Then we need to let at least HQ know about this. We've been scouted out. It's likely the element of surprise is lost to us now."

Susan nodded. "I agree. Hilliard, we're heading back!" she informed her second subordinate, who nodded firmly. Checking her watch and glancing up at the sky for the sun's position, Susan grimaced. "They're likely to have made it past the forest by now and onto the plains. We'll really need to hurry up if we're going to catch up to them."

O'Hara and Hilliard both agreed tacitly with her judgment and set off after her when the redheaded Colonel rushed back onto their tracks, quickly leading the way back to where they'd left their horses. They were making good time, this time around, as they weren't looking for additional tracks or any signs of weird animals. So by the time they found their horses, only forty minutes had passed since they'd followed the wrong trail, and then ten minutes since they had decided to come back.

"What the fuck?"

To find that their horses had been butchered and lay dead and decomposing on the ground.

Susan looked horrified at what she was seeing, and O'Hara seemed deadly serious. Behind them, Hilliard could be heard vomiting into a nearby bush, so revolted she had been by the sight of their horses lying torn apart on the ground. It was like a predator had jumped them and fed on them until satiated, then left the remains. Overall, it was not a pretty sight, and it took Susan's entire willpower not to heave at the remains.

"They seem to have guessed our next move, sir," noted O'Hara.

Susan swore. This put a major crimp in their plans. With HQ having moved along with the column, it would take them days on foot to reach them, and even then only if they ran nonstop.

"This is insane!" Susan wanted to yell. There was simply no way she was going to accept that anyone could have played them this well and have four legs. Whatever creature had done this was obviously not natural, and had exceeded itself in derailing the scouting force of this wing of the Imperial offensive.

"The road through the forest is a few minutes from here," noted O'Hara, trying to find a solution to their problem. "If we can get back on route, that would be one less concern in our predicament."

Meanwhile, Hilliard had lost her footing, disoriented from the retching as she still was, and stumbled into a few bushes. There, she let loose a shriek the likes neither O'Hara or Susan had ever heard before, causing the two war veterans to snap their heads towards her direction.

"Hilliard?!" called out Susan in alarm. O'Hara was much less vocal about his surprise, instead choosing to run straight towards his comrade. One he'd pushed past the bushes she'd stumbled through, Susan heard him swearing so vulgarly that it made her blush slightly. "O'Hara?! What the hell's going on?"

"Colonel, you need to see this," was all O'Hara would say.

Very worried right now, especially given the stony tone in O'Hara's words, Susan quickly walked over and peered over O'Hara's shoulder as he held the bushes apart.

At his feet was Hilliard, who had her hands over her mouth and seemed to be sobbing, judging from the sounds she was making and the trembling of her shoulders. Looking up from the shattered soldier, she could see why.

Two Imperial soldiers were lying against a nearby tree, their uniforms shredded apart and bodies wholly incomplete. It was quite clear they were dead, and that whatever had done the deed had allowed itself to feast on the soldiers. Unfortunately, that meant she couldn't tell who they were.

"Okay, this has just gone from bad, to so much more worse," summed up Susan effectively.