Chapter Twenty Seven
They spent 3 days traveling east before they found anything. It was as they crested the top of a large hill that they finally found the remains of a camp.
Lydia gasped as they caught sight of it, "There must've been thousands of them."
Gilan nodded his agreement, overlooking the area.
It was obvious that no one had tried to cover anything up, but with a group this large, it would've been an impossible task.
Horse droppings, campfires, marks where tents had been set up, hundreds of thousands of footprints, Gilan took in it all.
"Let's go." he said quickly, starting down the hill. Lydia followed without any protests.
As they got closer, Gilan began seeing more. Scraps of fabric, broken arrows, used supplies. He had no trouble painting a picture of the camp in his mind.
"At least 20,000." he muttered, "All Temujai, no one from the captured countries. Erak was right, they were going to try to find another way into Skandia."
"But Toscana's the next target." Lydia whispered in disbelief.
"That's what we thought."
She knelt down, examining everything on her own. Gilan watched her critically. After a moment, she spoke up, "They've been gone for about two weeks."
He nodded approvingly, "That's right. Do you notice anything else?"
She looked around again, "They were…retreating?"
"They were?" he asked her with a raised eyebrow.
She pressed her lips into a thin line, examining the ground a bit closer. After a few minutes she nodded more certainly, "Yes. All these marks are going back the way they came."
"That's not the same thing as retreating." Gilan pointed out, "You're right, they began backtracking, but there is no evidence of a battle, so they can't be retreating."
Lydia grumbled, but Gilan laid a hand on her shoulder, "Don't be upset. It's a small distinction, but now you know for the future. Learn from it, that's the important part."
"Ok." she sighed, accepting the critique, "But why would they do that? Why come all the way here and then turn around?"
"That's what I'm wondering." Gilan mused, "They never got to the lake, so they don't know that there's a way into Skandia from there. And why bring such a large force this far only to turn right around? That's not like their usual battle plan."
"Could they have been called back?" Lydia suggested, "Told to bring troops somewhere else?"
"It's possible, but if they got a messenger then we'll never be able to pick his tracks out from all of the others." Gilan frowned, "But a better question is, where are they now?"
"Are you thinking about following them?" she asked. She'd spent a lot of time with the young Ranger in the last few months and knew he would hate to go back to Hallasholm without all the answers.
"We'd catch up easily. A force that large is going to move slowly compared to one or two people. Plus these tracks are so obvious that a baby could follow them." he almost sounded insulted at that, looking down at the ground in disgust.
"Then let's go." she shrugged.
But Gilan was already shaking his head, "It's not that easy. I told Hal that we would be gone two weeks at the most. The Temujai have a two week headstart on us, at least. We'd never catch up in time to also make it back to the Heron."
"But we can't go back without knowing what else has happened here." she insisted.
Gilan was silent for a long moment, thinking over the options. Finally he sighed and turned to her with a neutral expression, "Only one of us could follow them. The other could go back and update the Herons."
"Is that really our best plan?" Lydia asked doubtfully.
"Maybe it's just a gut feeling, but something else is going on here. I don't trust them just randomly turning around like this. I want to follow them, find out as much as I can, but we can't leave the crew wondering."
"You can't seriously be thinking of following them on your own, it's too dangerous!" she argued.
"Everything is dangerous during a war, we have to take risks. As it is, it might be more dangerous not knowing where they're headed." Gilan explained.
"And if they meet up with a larger force? What if you get caught in Temujai territory?" she countered.
Gilan shrugged, "That's a risk I'm willing to take."
"What if we go tell the Herons and then come back and follow them? We'd lose some time, but we can make it up!"
He shook his head again, "We can't risk losing the trail. A storm could come through and wipe all of this away."
"It hasn't for two weeks."
"No," he said firmly, "Don't expect the weather to follow your plans, it's too unpredictable. Always assume that if something can go wrong, it will. Besides, we got lucky here. Winter is coming and I'm not going to waste time as this place gets blanketed in snow. This far north, it's liable to hit early."
Lydia grumbled, but found that she had no other arguments. Gilan put a hand on her shoulder, forcing her to look up at the tall Ranger.
"Look, I know you're unhappy I'm sending you back, but I'm counting on you," he said gently. When she looked at him confused, he continued, "You aren't wrong. Following them is one of the most dangerous things to do right now. I could be caught or killed. That's why you have to make it back to the Heron and Erak. Having half of the information is better than having none at all. I'll catch up if I can."
"And if you can't?"
"Then I swear to never reveal anything to the Temujai."
It was a testament to how serious the situation was that neither of them could discount that possibility.
Finally, Lydia grumbled, "I want it on record that I'm thoroughly against this plan."
"Noted."
"And if you die then I will bring you back and then kill you again."
"Wouldn't expect anything less."
"How long do you think you'll be gone?"
"I don't know." he admitted with a small shrug, "They've been gone a couple weeks, so it'll take me a while just to catch up to them."
"Ok, well, then try not to die old man."
Gilan scoffed, "Old man? What, am I Thorn now?"
She smirked, "You're almost twice my age, that makes you old. Thorn happens to be ancient."
He snorted, "Tell me how he reacts to that, will you?
"Oh trust me, he knows."
They laughed before she turned around. Nodding a quick goodbye, they parted ways.
Gilan sighed to himself as he began following the tracks. He was in for a long trip.
It took far longer than he would've liked to catch up to the invading force. At one point he almost lost them, a rainstorm in the middle of the night washing away the tracks. Gilan refused to give up though, following his intuition and continuing east for two days before he caught sight of more tracks.
Knowing that he was close by, Gilan picked up his pace, eager to catch sight of them. After another day, he saw their campfires, the smoke rising into the sky. The Ranger knew that they were nearing the edge of Skandia's borders, but so few people lived this far out, which was probably why no one had reported the massive force of Riders.
Still, Gilan was as careful as possible, just in case they had sent behind sweepers or scouts.
He had caught up to them completely by the next day, hiding in the shadows as best he could until he was practically invisible.
Looking over the massive camp, Gilan saw that his first assumption wasn't far off. There were at least 20,000 people, but it looked like just over half of them were soldiers. The rest were servants, tending to the horses and supplies, cooking food, cleaning after the soldiers. Gilan saw plenty of them crafting arrows, storing them in wagons as they traveled.
In the center of the camp, Gilan could just make out a larger, more ornate tent. The leader of the current group.
The Ranger watched with a frown as multiple people went in and out of the tent. He was too far away to see any details.
He was crouched in a tree on the edge of the camp, a few feet away from a sentry posted for the night. Gilan knew that people rarely tended to look upwards, especially when they'd had weeks of nothing happening to them. Right now, Gilan was wedged firmly in a fork between two branches and as long as he didn't move, knew that he couldn't be seen.
Occasionally the sentries would bark out something in their own language, but Gilan couldn't understand it. He knew the Temujai spoke the Common Tongue, but apparently none were choosing to use it now.
He kept his grumbling to himself and settled in for the night. Even if he couldn't understand them, he could follow them for a few days and try to figure out where they were going. It wasn't the first time he had spent the night in a tree, he thought grimly, remembering a punishment Halt had given him for a prank he pulled at his first Gathering. He should've known better.
Never mess with a Ranger's coffee.
Cassandra sat down with a sigh, rubbing her elbow. She'd twisted it wrong during her saber practice and was already sore from it.
"Everything ok?" her father asked as he came into the room, noticing her discomfort. He had been furious when he first learned that she had been training with the saber in secret, but had slowly come around to the idea, especially after Pauline had debated it with him thoroughly and pointed out that his overprotectiveness wouldn't help save Cassandra if she was ever cornered by an enemy.
Since then he had tried to be as supportive as he could, even though he still wasn't happy at the situation.
"Yeah, just a rough practice." she said.
He smirked, patting her head as he walked to his own seat, "It'll get easier. My first practices when I was young were tough too."
"Yeah, I know." she muttered, "But I'm glad to be done for the day. Ready to eat?"
He nodded, leaning back in his seat as they waited for their food. The two of them tried to have dinner together as often as they could, usually in their private dining hall. Sadly, the dinners were becoming few and far between as they each became busier by the day. The war hadn't reached Araluen yet, but that didn't mean they were sitting by and doing nothing.
Last that Cassandra had heard, all of the extra soldiers that had been sent to Toscana had arrived, making a defense at the borders. The archers would be in Skandia soon, but there were plans to take Gallica back in the spring. She could only hope that those plans were successful.
She waited for the food to appear, lost in her own thoughts about the war. It was entirely possible that they would lose. No one had beaten the Temujai before.
A knock at the door brought them both back to the present. Before they could do anything, Crowley walked in, a grim look on his face.
"My apologies for the interruption, Your Majesties, but there's something that requires your attention."
Duncan waved away the formality. He'd known Crowley too long to care about things like that, especially in private, "What happened?"
His gaze flicked between the two of them nervously, "It's your tasters, sir. They've…they've died."
Cassandra gasped, jaw dropping in shock.
"Our food was poisoned?" Duncan asked in astonishment.
Crowley was shaking his head, "Your drinks, along with most of the stores of coffee and wine. Whoever did this didn't want to take any chances."
"That's horrible." Cassandra whispered.
The two men nodded in agreement.
"Send word to their families. Provide whatever compensation is needed and let them know we'll handle arranging the funerals if they wish." Duncan told Crowley, "Anything we can do to ease their pain."
"Of course."
"Who would do this?" Cassandra asked, both men turning to look at her, "The treaty has been signed for nearly two months. Killing us wouldn't change anything."
As the Royal Family of Araluen, she and her father received many death threats, but hardly any of them ever amounted to anything. Even fewer ended up hurting someone. This was the first time Cassandra had heard of someone actually dying, her heart clenching at the innocent lives lost.
"This doesn't necessarily have to do with the treaty." Crowley told her, "Although if it was, there is the chance that they could try to kill you just to destabilize it. No one would be able to break it off easily due to the marriage, but that doesn't mean that the next ruler of Araluen would support it as much as you two have."
"Could it be the Temujai?"
The Ranger shook his head again, "Assassinations aren't like them. It's not impossible, but my guess is that it was the same person who hired the Genovesans."
"We never found them." Duncan said, crossing his arms and looking skeptical, "You've been investigating for two months."
"Yes, but I've found out nothing." Crowley sighed, "With the assassins dead, our only lead is gone. I'm looking into the poisoning, but I don't have much hope that I'll find anything."
Cassandra narrowed her eyes at him. She'd grown up around the Ranger Commandant and had gotten pretty good at reading him, "What are you suggesting?"
He sighed again, obviously reluctant to tell them. "I don't think Selethen and Nellie were the targets at the rehearsal."
"But the bolts were aimed at them!" Cassandra exclaimed, "If they were killed, there would've been no treaty!"
"The bolts weren't aimed at them. The first two were to break the window and the second two were aimed at the wedding party."
"At Nellie and Selethen." she agreed.
"They weren't the only ones in the wedding party," he said pointedly, "And they didn't just have someone try to poison them."
"Crowley." Duncan said warningly, narrowing his eyes at the redhead, "What are you getting at?"
Crowley pressed his lips together tightly before answering, "I'll send word to Al Shabah to confirm, but if they haven't been attacked there, then I believe someone was, and still is, targeting the Princess."