The night fell crisp and damp, with the return of the spring rains in full. It fell in lazy sheets pushed and pulled about by the breeze; one moment it fell straight down, pouring off my hat and coat, and the next it pelted me in the face, or vanished entirely as the eddying city winds blew it against the wall instead. Though it was miserable, I was grateful for the extra cover the rain would give us while we rode. It hadn’t entirely lost its misty character, and the gentle drifts obscured almost everything past a few tens of metres.

Munter blew water out of his nostrils, and I absently stroked the bay’s neck, trickling water down my sleeve. Kaczmarek chuckled at me. I clicked my tongue and tried to shake it out before it ran all the way to my elbow, although in this amount of rain it was only a question of how long it would take before we were all soaked to the skin.

We were approaching a small sally port now: myself, the jäger, and His Highness, with three horses and accompanied by a small group of soldiers under a major.

Kaczmarek and the prince were actually difficult to distinguish in the dark. Both had donned heavy oiled cloaks with deep hoods that reduced them to hunched shadows in the darkness, doubtless keeping them almost completely dry beneath. The low wind made it easier. I had forgone a cloak, on account of my usual nervous over-preparation: anything full enough to offer more defence against the rain than my coat would foul my sword arm if it came to a fight, and I was well used to being rained on anyway. I had a heavy cloak of my own tied behind Munter’s saddle, though, which I did look forward to having after we had run the worst of tonight’s journey.

“I’ll not miss doing everything by cover of night when all’s said and done,” I murmured to no-one in particular. Kaczmarek snorted.

“Agreed, gefreiter,” the prince answered softly. “This is weather for a roaring fire and a hot pudding, not horseriding.”

The jäger and I both chuckled quietly at that. There was no actual call to be quiet, here, not while we were still afoot on this side of the wall, but something about the night imposed it on us. The streets were barren, without even a drunkard in sight, and the city subdued. Even the lights of the streetlamps faded out in the distance, leaving only a feeling that the empty town extended forever -- until the wall loomed up out of the darkness. Even then its top couldn’t be seen. The rain fell in the eyes of anyone foolish enough to look directly upwards, so it ran along as an absolute barrier. “The world goes on forever on this side,” it seemed to say, “But there is no outside.”

I shivered and tugged my collar closer to my neck.

The forbidding silhouette of the wall was broken by a gatehouse, and I broke out of my contemplation to glance around and run over my mental checklists.

“Everything ready?” I asked, as the gatehouse door swung open, its light mingling with that of our lanterns.

“Yup.” Kaczmarek, unruffled.

“I should hope so, Schreiner.” His Highness, offsetting a little anxiety with a slightly forced joking tone.

We had spent some time this afternoon, before the rains set in, teaching the prince to shoot. His Highness turned out to be a perfect match for the dragonets. By which I meant I feared he would miss a barn door at five paces with an arquebus, but at least with the vicious metal cloud of a dragonet’s fire he would be able to clip part of the door at the same distance. The lad was, not to put too fine a point on it, weak. He couldn’t steady an arquebus well enough to be reliable, at least not while standing, and even the lighter firearm was difficult.

Chances are he’ll have put on a great deal more muscle by the time this is all over, I thought. Despite his shortcomings, he had remained determined to learn to fight for himself. Even now, one of the dragonets hung at the side of his new mount, and a smallsword at his belt -- in that weapon at least he had received schooling before. The sword was a noble weapon, where the gun was a graceless tool of murder fit only for the commons, I supposed. Very good one though.

“No need to worry, sir, we’ll be back on the road in no time,” I reassured him.

The horses’ shoes rang loudly in the confines of the gatehouse as we led them to the outer gate. Two of the major’s men lifted the bar and threw back the bolts, the grating and clacking sounds also echoing dramatically. I beat the water off my hat and resettled it as the door creaked open, letting the rain and wind back in.

“Well, then, shall we be off?” I asked, more to break up the ominous silence than out of any real value to the question. I ducked out into the night, His Highness and Kaczmarek close on my heels, and a moment later the door swung closed with a final thud. The clicks of the bolts followed, and the solid clunk of the bar being dropped in. This was it.

We mounted up and rode off into the rain. The water pooled on the saturated ground, hooves landing wetly on long grass bent over mud with dull splashes. I wasn’t worried about the noise. Unlike last night, the air wasn’t so clear that every disturbance would carry for hundreds of metres. So long as we didn’t do anything truly riotous, there should be no issue. We weren’t even riding as close to the Torreans.

We travelled in silence for long minutes, with nothing to say and no reason to say it. The rain fell quietly besides muffling noises, and I felt my impression from inside Kurnich again: inside the walls went on forever, and outside was only nothingness. Just knee-high grass barely visible in the faintest hint of moonlight through the clouds, and maybe an inkling of light in the distance at the camps and the walls. The emptiness was oppressive. I felt as tightly wound as a clockspring, knuckles clenched on the reins as we waited for the edge of the forest to emerge from the dark.

Instead, somewhere ahead and to our left a few faint hints of light appeared. Not points piercing through the shroud of darkness, but more as though a watercolour painter had taken yellow, watered it to almost nothing, and dabbed at the canvas of the night a few times. I strained my eyes to try to make out if they were growing closer, but could see nothing. I shook my head.

“Go right,” I whispered, turning Munter aside. We were riding in close order, jäger on my left and prince on my right, almost near enough to touch, and I was confident that even if they didn’t hear me exactly their horses would follow. I stared into the black, jaw clenched and knuckles white, mentally counting steps to try to measure how far out of our way we’d gone.

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The lights dimmed and were lost. I marked the number of steps and brought Munter about to the left again. “Left,” I whispered again, hoping we could regain our original path. Once we reached the partial cover of the treeline we could light lanterns -- or at least I hoped we could light lanterns; the damp was pernicious -- and confirm our way, but I did not want to spend hours casting about for the path. The longer we were about it the more likely it was that an inopportune patrol would stumble across us.

I was staring back to the side trying to be sure we had lost the lights when I was startled by a whisper from His Highness.

“Ahead of us.”

My head snapped back around and I had to resist the urge to complain aloud. Lights had popped up right nearby, somehow, though how far they were was hard to judge. At my side, His Highness had started to rein in his horse as well, but I shook my head -- then realising he couldn’t see it, whispered back.

“Keep going. No point stopping.”

I moved my hand across the saddle to grip the hilt of my scimitar. The lights seemed to be headed directly for us. They were getting close enough I could see the shapes of the lanterns. In fact, we were travelling almost in opposite directions. There was no time to move aside, either.

I made to draw the scimitar, but startled when Kaczmarek drew level and tapped my shoulder. “I’ll get us past,” she murmured.

I stared. I hadn’t the faintest idea how she intended to hide three riders from a patrol passing within metres, but it had to be better than my plan -- which was not to try overmuch to hide, but to strike first and overwhelm them quickly. Dangerous and noisy, especially if shots were fired. Even if her plan wasn’t better, I doubted it precluded mine.

We kept riding, and I all but leapt out of my saddle when the jäger began to sing. She raised a hand -- there was light enough straying from ahead that I could just make it out -- and I turned my eyes front again, but I began easing my scimitar free quietly.

Kaczmarek’s singing was nothing to write home about. She was a little out of tune, and her voice was scratchy, but it was high and carried clearly. I recognised the tune and the words after a moment: a Szekeryan funeral hymn, slow and mournful. With a start, I realised her game and hunched myself over, pulling my hat low.

We kept riding at a walk, unhurried, three riders in heavy obscuring clothes, one a woman singing a funeral dirge in a cracked voice. I prayed His Highness would catch on and play along.

The rain grew heavier as the Torreans approached, and for once I thanked the Heavens for it. It would only help sell our gambit. I kept my head low and eyes fixed forwards as we came close, only daring glances out of the corner of my eye. What I saw was almost enough to make me break with the charade to laugh, were I not also so terrified I had not loosened my jaw in minutes.

The Torrean sergeant was as white as a sheet, staring at us approaching, neither hurrying up nor slowing down. His men were no better, one holding shaking hands up in the sign of the Mountain. They had come to a complete halt, all thoughts of lookout fled and challenging us no doubt the furthest thing from their minds.

We passed, phantoms in the night, dark hooded riders on a stormy night with only a sliver of a moon hiding her face behind the clouds. The restless dead, banshees, or spirits passing by. Kaczmarek kept singing as we rode, until the lights faded away behind us in the distance.

“That was far too bleeding close,” I breathed when she stopped. “Good thinking, jäger. Your Highness as well, you kept your composure excellently, sir.”

“I didn’t think it’d work,” Kaczmarek admitted quietly. “The rest of the plan was that I’d shout and we’d run them down. Had my hand on my sabre the whole way.”

I suppressed a laugh. “That was my plan as well.”

The subsiding adrenaline rush meant I dearly wished to banter to break the tension, but I was still acutely aware of the fact that were were in enemy-controlled territory and we still couldn’t see far enough to be safe. The fact that we had just been surprised was evidence enough of that.

After enough time had passed that I had lost my gratitude at the increased deluge, the texture of the darkness ahead changed. Scraggly trees loomed up, silhouettes of reaching branches just barely visible against the clouded sky. The sound of the rain changed, too, from the almost silent hiss of small drops running over the grass to the steady plinking of fat drops falling from branches to drop into puddles below. I allowed myself a sigh of relief.

“I don’t suppose you can recognise where we are in this dark?” I asked Kaczmarek in a low voice.

“Nope, not a chance. I haven’t memorised every tree, gefreiter.” His Highness chuckled, and I shook my head ruefully.

“I didn’t think so, but I had to ask.”

It took a great deal longer than I would have liked and some help from Kazmarek to block out the rain and breeze with her cloak, but finally the lantern’s flame caught and held, flickering wanly before strengthening to a steady glow. Shutters covered three of the lantern’s four faces, so light shone out only toward the woods, although I was now inclined to think it was a needless precaution. We’d had evidence enough that it was all but impossible to see even lights at a distance in this, and it would take a rare kind of soldier to hike out this far in the rain to investigate a light they might have seen.

To nobody’s surprise, all the lantern illuminated was skeletal trees weeping drops of rain in the night. Kaczmarek stared for a while, head turning slowly from side to side while she tried to spot anything identifying. It all looked quite the same to me -- I was no expert in trees. Some were lighter coloured, some were darker. One or two were evergreens and stood out quite clearly for it, some were shorter and sturdier and some were whippy and slender, and that was as far as I could go in the dark. By day I could pick out a few, perhaps.

Nonetheless, the jäger apparently made out enough details to point right, southwards. “That way a bit, I think,” she said.

I was glad of the light, though it wasn’t much. Riding in the dark had been oppressive, unable to see anything of the people at my sides, and I was grateful for just being able to see where she was pointing.

“Is that it?” His Highness asked presently, pointing to a gap in the trees that looked like any other to me.

“Well spotted, sir,” Kaczmarek said. “It ought to be.”

Apparently my confusion was visible, because she elaborated. “You can see deeper in some of the branches have been cut, there and there. If it was just for timber they’d’ve taken the whole tree. It’s got to be to keep the path clear.”

She swung down from her horse, boots hitting the ground with a splash. She spluttered a bit as her cloak caught over the saddle, letting the rain lash against her front, but recovered quickly. I dismounted with a bit more grace, thanks to my more fitted coat, but unfortunately my breeches were already soaked through and the water had even begun seeping down into my boots, so I was very little better off. His Highness, learning from the jäger’s mistake, gathered his cloak about him before following suit.

Kaczmarek lifted the lantern, gazing into the forest. The ground was more puddles than not, the surfaces rippling with droplets and shattering the surface into myriad points of dancing light as the wavelets threw back the lantern light. Wet trunks and branches gleamed, but cast long shadows. In what seemed like no distance at all, the yellow light of the lantern had been swallowed up entirely by the forest, leaving only darkness. Even the crickets had been silenced by the rain, and the only sounds were the occasional rustling and clacking of bare branches, like a skeleton rummaging through its coat pockets for a few pfennige.

“Well, gentlemen,” she said cheerily, “Shall we?”