Morning found them both sore and cold, curled against one another with the wolf pelt wrapped around their shoulders. Whatever palmful of herbs Eva had given him soothed Nath’s fever and left him clear-headed when the sun crested the mountains. He lay with his arms around Eva and wondered just how many mages there might be on the Teeth that he did not know about.

Nath had little head for politics — he preferred his books and fencing lessons, each orderly and known. The realm of the ephemeral, shifting alliances and divided loyalties, was something he left for Anryniel and Emmond to explain to him. A fourth son wasn’t much use to anyone unless he went where his king sent him and did exactly what his king told him.

Now that he was king, Nath had only himself to rely on. Snatching a Tooth had been the first strategy he’d thought of on his own. He was untried, untested, unregarded. No one outside of Ammar even knew his name. If mages had killed Anryniel barely ten years after signing a truce at the Devil’s Gate, Nath could not let the world think Ammar would stand idly by. One quick border skirmish to take back land his father lost seemed like the perfect plan to declare himself to the world — and to his enemies.

The mages shouldn’t have seen him coming. They were busy at the far side of their kingdom keeping the Emperor of Bocce at bay. When rumors of the Great Dome’s crack spread from the ports west of the Silver Sea, the empire wasted no time sending a legion to the mage’s border. Not since Nynomath’s bloody revolution had Bocce had an opportunity to settle old scores. Even after three hundred years, the Blessed Son still smarted over His ancestors’ assassination at the hands of the mages.

Here Nath felt himself sliding out of his depth into the places one couldn’t mark on a map or find in a book. He knew that if his deer-gnawed corpse turned up just a year after Anryniel died on his way to the Emperor's court, then it would be blamed on the mages. Yet if it hadn’t been mages who attacked him on the Teeth, who else could it have been?

Eva muttered something in her sleep. Nath watched her for signs of the full-body tremor. By now, he knew the shape of her nightmares, how they came on her just before waking. Gently, he shook her before one could seize her. She came awake muttering in her own language.

“Go to the Gate. He’s not at the Gate. No man, no man…”

Nath tried again to say her name the way that she’d taught him: “Mahva. Mava.”

Her sandy lashes fluttered over the rich brown eyes. “Ma-eva. If you can’t say it right, stay with ‘Eva,’ then.”

Nath smiled at the sound of the name he’d given to her coming from her own lips. It sounded simple and clean, without any politics attached to it. He let her feel his forehead again for fever, but stopped her before she could feel down along his ribs. His muscles ached from the fistfight, and a bruise on his jaw throbbed when he spoke.

“We should get moving — this creek feeds a stream my army crossed earlier this week. If we follow it, we may find them.”

“And then?” she asked.

Nath got to his feet and pulled her up beside him. “Help the injured. Bury the dead. Try to help the king out of these woods in one piece.”

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He hid his face from her, bending to pick up her wolf pelt. He shook it out and swept it over Eva’s shoulders. Even fully clothed, Nath couldn’t help but think of her in the water with moonlit drops falling from her hair. She looked up at him with that faint line between her brows. Nath realized that he could not guess what she thought of when she looked at him.

“Rub some mud onto your shirt,” Eva said.

Nath blinked. “What?”

She nodded her head toward his clothes. “The red makes you far too easy to see. They hunt your men and they hunt you. Don’t make it easy for them.”

Nath grimaced. Reluctantly, he smeared his tabard with handfuls of cold, wet dirt while Eva collected the mage’s scythe from the ground. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten more than a few deer mushrooms. Eva did not seem hungry. She tucked the crescent into her belt, and walked ahead of him along the creek bed. Nath kept one hand on his sword while he followed. He was happy to be on the move with blood to warm his limbs.

He looked for the place where his army had crossed the water. To disguise their movements and numbers, Gruffydd’s smaller force crossed higher up the stream. He worried he wouldn’t be able to tell where they had crossed from where his own group crossed. In the full light of day, Nath could find the peak of the Witch’s Tooth looming overhead — to his left, not his right. A white dusting of snow on its slope and the low gray cloud around its crown threatened snow.

We’ll need proper shelter tonight, Nath thought. Eva’s meager tent beside the pool wouldn’t last long under six inches of snow. He watched her pick her way over the stones by the stream and wondered what she had planned to do when winter set in. He would have to find someplace safe for her.

Walking along the stream, they found a place where the trees parted wide enough for three riders to pass abreast. Nath examined the ground. He found the place where the underbush folded down, only just recovering from the crush of horses and carts days before. Eva stepped back and let Nath take the lead as they picked up the trail. Caution blanketed their steps as they retraced the army’s path through the woods.

Nath listened for the sounds of horses and men, alert for any unfamiliar accents. The men Nath had brought with him came mainly from the south and east. The strangers Eva scattered with the bear had spoken in the thick rolling tones of the northern clans -- Tommasi, Earlardt, and Mayred.

No human sounds came to him, and the ground beneath their feet gave nothing away. Nath hiked on, nearly walking right by the glade where his army had made camp. A ray of sunshine filtering through the trees stopped him. It teased at a memory of choosing the place for a camp. The trees overhead looked familiar enough and the ground around them was the right size and evenness for pitching tents.

Yet when he studied the glade, he couldn’t find any trace of the camp. No scraps of canvas, no broken tent poles, not even ashes from their cookfires. Nath turned in a slow circle.

Eva followed his gaze. “Here?” she asked in a near-whisper.

Nath gave her a curt nod, then walked between the trees. He searched along what had been the perimeter, looking for marker stones, arrowheads, footprints. Anything. Nath came to stand in the exact spot where he’d stood when the attack started.

Not even a smear of blood marked the ground.

Eva called out to him from the center of the clearing. She stirred the ground with her foot, unearthing something. “Come and see this.”

Nath stepped out from the trees, suddenly anxious to be out in the open. A distant rumble of thunder from the white-capped Tooth fed the dread coiled around his heart. He stepped to Eva’s side and looked down at the ground beneath her feet. A heap of evergreen boughs on the ground hid a shallow pit. Eva knelt down and pushed the branches aside to reveal a shallow pit.

Inside they found a tangled mass of black stick figures, the splayed arms stretched like a man hammered to the rack.

“Winze dolls,” Nath said.