Probably unnecessary content warning: This chapter is more suspenseful than previous chapters and contains action violence that might be upsetting to some readers.

On evening of the 25th day, the group had been stopped for an hour or so, setting up camp. Here the road ran alongside a river at the bottom of a narrow canyon. The wagons had been parked perpendicular against the striated grey stone of the west canyon wall, leaving about fifty handspan between them. The flock of ten sheep had then been herded between them, and a semicircular pen was loosely constructed between the two wagons from chest-high posts and thick rope. Spot, the sheepdog, laid close beside the flock, ever vigilant. The two enormous [lowephants] were standing next to the river's edge. Their wide feet and narrow tails put down literal roots into the silty riverbank, and their green leafy ears and several additional leaf-shaped flaps along their backs spread wide to catch the last of the golden light of the setting sun.

The travelers worked on setting up camp: Igmi and Tecka traded off food prep, while their husbands set up the various sleeping arrangements—hammocks, tents, and bedrolls. The children were briefly allowed to supervise themselves provided they stayed where the adults could see them. The female [guard], Kilpa, would usually be rousing her replacements at this time so they could have a meal together and they would be fully awake by the time true night fell.

As it would happen, it was Tecka's evening to prepare the meal and Igmi's opportunity to have a moment to herself. And, as it would happen, neither Igmi nor Kilpa were doing what they usually would have been doing. Instead, the two women were talking in low angry tones around a bend in the canyon, where they believed they were out of earshot of the rest of the group. The two other guards still dozed in the wagons, refusing to emerge until required.

The ever-curious Lissa noticed the sounds of the women squabbling and sneakily approached. By this time, the direct light of the sun had left the narrow canyon, and the cool blue-purple shadows of dusk hid her small body as she crept closer. She caught snippets of the argument as the women's voices rose in volume.

"No, I said..." It was her aunt's voice. "...already gave..." The volume dipped down again.

Lissa could hear the tone of the [guard]'s curt reply, but none of the words.

"No. NO." Aunt Igmi insisted, her throat tight with anger. "...can't force..."

Lissa inched closer, curiosity pushing her forward. She crouched just on the other side of a large boulder, hugging tight to the striated stone.

She arrived just in time to hear Kilpa responding venomously, "You swore an oath. You swore an oath [Igmi Vulna Albehson], and you will keep it."

Suddenly, piercing howls rose up from farther south in the valley. Four distinct mournful notes hung in the gloaming air, echoing off the tall, grey-stone walls. For a moment those melodic, melancholy voices paused the whole world in an endless sadness. Lissa's young heart had never felt so heavy, and silent tears fell from her eyes.

Kilpa's voice barked out a strangled word that Lissa didn't know breaking her reverie. The woman charged around the boulder, Igmi on her heels, and dashed toward the camp. She shouted as she ran, "TO ARMS! TO ARMS!"

Igmi, eyebrows furrowed with mild panic, noticed Lissa as she rounded the boulder. She asked sharply, "What are you doing here, Lissa? Come here!"

The [spinner]'s strong hands lifted Lissa from the ground and clutched her tightly as she ran toward the camp. Lissa clung to her hurrying body, burying her face in her aunt's neck.

At the camp, two hastily-clad [guards] were stumbling from one wagon while the two fathers rushed Hayzen's tearful children into the other wagon. Hayzen, climbing with them into the wagon, pulled down the fold-out bed and sat the three boys down atop it.

"What... what are they?" the tremulous voice of a young boy asked.

Three sets of frightened eyes looked up at the two men. The anxious bleating of frightened sheep came from just outside the wagon's walls. Hayzen and Drust exchanged a brief look, and Hayzen nodded for Drust to answer, while he searched for an oil lamp in the camp supplies.

"I can't be completely sure because I haven't confirmed the threat, but they sound like [umbral wolves]. They're hope-eaters," Drust said, not sugarcoating it. "But, they cannot be where there is light," he said confidently. Gesturing to the oldest boy, Falton, to take the lit oil lamp that Hayzen returned with, he continued, "So, take this. You are going to hold that lamp tight, and don't let it burn out. Can you do that for me?" As he proffered the lamp to the child, Drust's bushy eyebrows rose seriously.

The 10-year-old Falton nodded wordlessly; he took the lamp like taking hold of a lifeline.

"Hayzen, you stay here with the children," Drust instructed. He turned to leave, not waiting for an answer.

"Wait! Where are you going?" Only Hayzen's incredulous voice followed Drust into the quickly fading twilight.

Lissa peeked up over her Aunt's shoulder as she ran. Portions of the evening's gloom to the south had taken on an inky black quality, and those dark inky shadows appeared to be slinking toward them. Lissa glimpsed a flash of orange in one particularly deep shadow and yelped, pointing over her aunt's shoulder.

"The shadows have eyes!" she wailed.

"Go!" Kilpa commanded. She slowed so that the burdened Igmi could pass her, and stayed close behind as they neared the camp.

The two [guards], now fully armed and armored, met them twenty paces from the campsite. Igmi dashed past them, fear-fueled pace not slowing until she entered the circle of firelight where Tecka had been preparing dinner. Her sister stood with Drust, who bore a slingshot in one hand and wore a thick leather glove on the other. Seeing Lissa in Igmi's arms, both of their tight expressions slackened in relief. Tecka held out her arms to take Lissa, and the little girl readily went to her mother's embrace.

No sooner had Tecka had taken hold of Lissa than the mournful howls began again, much closer now than before. The song held the lingering shock of every death notice, dredged up the bitter ache of love scorned. Every eye in the camp wept, even the sheep's and the dog's—every eye except the [lowephants]'s. The massive creatures, moving even more slowly than during the day, were languidly pulling up their roots; an almost imperceptible glow began to form under their bark.

As the echoing howls faded once again, Tecka turned on her heel, mousy brown hair spinning wildly, and hurriedly carried her toward the wagon with light shining from inside. Igmi, needing no further encouragement, followed closely behind her. Drust watched the three women enter the wagon; his dark brown eyes, red from fresh tears, filled with steely resolve.

He turned to the [guards] who were arraying themselves around the camp. One man stood on either side of the camp to the east and the west, and Kilpa stood between them. They were all hastily applying lamp oil to their blades, readying to set them alight.

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"There!" One of them men shouted, pointing toward the canyon's western wall. Two writhing inky shadows slunk along the same path that Igmi and Kilpa had taken. The seething black clouds were vaguely lupine, with eyes that glowed red-orange like an early moon. One was significantly larger than the other. They advanced slowly, prowling ever closer.

"Keep looking for the other two!" Kilpa ordered, holding her sword at the ready in gauntleted hands.

Drust crouched next to the cooking fire. With his gloved hand, he reached into the coals, quickly grasping one roughly the size of a walnut. He placed the coal into his sling, and reached for another. Skillfully, almost lazily, he working the sling up to speed. When the two [umbral wolves] they could see came within 25 paces of the camp, Drust let the red hot coal fly. It struck the larger of the creatures just between the eyes, passing through the substance of its smoke-like body, but not without burning away a portion of it. The shadow wolf snarled, baring fangs of white smoke.

Without pausing, Drust loaded the second coal into his sling, took aim, and struck the wolf in the same place. It seemed to shrink even as it threw back its head to howl. Instead of its [howl of despair], the [umbral wolf] made no sound at all. Instead, it seemed to breathe out its own body into a miasma above the camp. Smoke poured from its mouth, flowing out into a wide cloud, like fog settling just higher than the tops of the wagons. It smelled like burnt fur and alchemical experiments gone awry, causing the hair on Drust's arms and the back of his neck to stand straight up. As the first wolf turned to fog, the second wolf charged the western guard.

The three guards lit their swords as if on cue. The western guard attempted to block the wolf as it charged him, but it slipped under his sword and inside his guard. The flame on the blade seemed to consume the parts of the wolf it touched, but then ashen fangs sank into the weak place in the armor inside the man's elbow.

Time slowed for the man, looking down at the feral orange eyes and smokey muzzle attached to his elbow. He knew it should hurt, saw the stain of blood forming in the fabric of his armor padding, knew he should be doing *something*, but instead he recalled his mother's disappointed face. He had just told her he had enlisted in the [king]'s army. Her flat eyes turned to him as his mother spat the words, "He took your father; I guess he can 'ave you, too!" The words rang in his ears as the world narrowed into a long grey tunnel.

A blazing hot coal zipped across his elbow and passed through the [umbral wolf]. It released him, yelping and snarling. The acrid scent of the wolf, the pain of the bite, and the heat of the flaming sword in his hand came back into sharp focus. With a bellow, he swung his flaming broadsword parallel to the ground in a wide sweep. The wolf jumped back and darted to the side, seeking another opening.

The [lowephants], now fully uprooted, lumbered steadily closer to the camp. The furrows in their bark, their eyes, and especially the broad sun-catching leaves on their back were beginning to glow in earnest now, and the ground trembled with each step as they plodded closer.

Kilpa dashed forward to flank the smaller [umbral wolf] and swept her flaming sword down in a powerful overhand strike. The wolf was focused on its original target, and didn't react in time to dodge. The flames cleaved the seething shadow in half, and it let out one final short howl before dissipating. Not-quite-solid chunks of something fell to the ground on either side of her sword.

The wounded man nodded to her though his expression was hollow and distant. Kilpa took the opportunity to pull what appeared to be a small waterskin from beneath the bodice of her leathers. She pulled the stopper from it with her teeth and poured a thin, teal, vaporous liquid over the bloodied crease of his elbow. Though hidden by the fabric, he could feel the magic-laced potion knitting the holes in his body shut. "Thank you," he sighed, and she stoppered and returned the potion to its place.

"Focus, man. We're not out of this yet." She snapped.

The two looked up to see the third [guard] arriving at the sheep pen to engage the last two [umbral wolves] that had snuck around them. The man hastily cut the rope around the sheep pen with his sword, allowing them to flee. Drust, still slinging coals from beside the fire, called out commands to Spot to heard the sheep toward the river. The dutiful dog obeyed instantly, herding the sheep out of the pen and away from the immediate danger.

Kilpa and the first [guard] dashed toward their comrade who was barely holding his own against the two umbral wolves who had moved to either side of him. He backed up against the unoccupied wagon, preventing the wolves from coming at him from behind. As he attempted to strike at one, however, the other came in for an attack, forcing him to abort his swing to defend himself.

The thick miasma hovering over the camp, acrid and stifling, began to descend upon the camp like a fog bank pooling in the low places in a valley. Drust, right next to the bright light of the fire, was mercifully spared the strongest fumes of the [umbral wolf]'s fog form, but the heads of the three [guards] were soon surrounded by the wisps of inky darkness.

The man next to the wagon faltered, slowing, and Drust's sling wasn't able to defend him from both wolves at once. One of them sank its white-fanged muzzle into the back of the man's knee, and try as he might, Drust could not dislodge the creature. The man's pale blue eyes slowly turned ashen grey and lost focus as he dropped his sword and sank toward the ground.

Kilpa and the other guard only fared mildly better in that they had no wolves immediately attacking them. As soon as they breathed in the creeping smoke, their running pace slowed to a jog, then a walk. The man, having been affected by the wolves' despair once already, fell to his knees first. Kilpa continued to push forward for a few more steps, but also stumbled on unwilling limbs. Holding herself up by the hilt of her sword, the tip of which had plunged into the dirt, she let out a frustrated sob.

Drust watched helplessly as the guards fell. He didn't have the means to win battles like this anymore. He'd given it all up after... and then he'd chosen to settle down with a simple country [tailor], and this is how it would end? Once the guards were done, the wild creatures of the world would take the only family had left? A small part of him realized that the thoughts of despair were probably to blame on the miasma, but the majority of his mind swam in the deep well of sorrow he held within him, and began to go under.

Light, warm and radiant, drew Drust back to the present, to the chilly night air and the mist-muted sounds of snarling and bleating and something deeper, resonant and bright. A deep didgeridoo-like bellow rumbled through the earth, and summer sunlight poured out of the [lowephants] now not ten paces from Drust. Like ships hopelessly lost at sea finding the incandescent beacon of a harbor's lighthouse, all four of them—Drust, Kilpa, and the two men—turned toward the brilliance. Howls, sharp then fading, sounded from the three remaining [umbral wolves] as the golden sunlight literally burned their shadowy forms away. The light shone from the [lowephants] hulking bodies for a few moments more, then faded quite suddenly, leaving spots in everyone's vision as their eyes adjusted back to the relatively dim firelight. The huge creatures looked a bit wilted, but they turned and lumbered more slowly than normal back to the river.

Kilpa was the first to recover, and she rushed over to her wounded friend. He was hanging on, but barely. Out came the healing potion in its leather skin, which she applied liberally to his knee, and then poured into his mouth. As she tended to him, Drust recovered himself and went to check on his flock.

Spot, weary and shaking, limped toward him. The dutiful animal had been bitten in multiple places and thick blood still oozed from his flank. Drust counted the sheep and noted with gratitude that Spot had managed to keep all 10 of them alive.

"Good dog. Good boy," Drust said as he patted the dog's head affectionately and gently picked up the heavy animal. Spot whined quietly. The sheep, stunned, would be fine alone with the returning [lowephants] for the few minutes it would take to tend him. He carried Spot toward where Kilpa still knelt over the other [guard].

"Glad we're all okay. It was dicey there for a moment. D'ya have enough of that [health vapor] for my pup?" He asked Kilpa.

She raised her eyebrows in momentary surprise that a [shepherd] knew the proper name for the concoction. Then she noticed the sorry state of the dog, nodded, and held the vaporskin out to him.

"Much obliged," he said. He carefully set Spot down on his feet and took the uncapped leather container from Kilpa. "This'll have you feelin' right as rain in but a moment, boy."

Drust applied the airy concoction with deft, experienced hands. He first tended to the seeping wound, then the other less serious bites, and then he poured a small pool into his hand for Spot to drink. The dog shivered, but remained quiet and still, trusting his human; his long tail began to wag tiredly as he lapped up the proffered vapor. As it worked, the wounds closed and fur regrew, restoring the dog to full—if exhausted—health. Drust patted Spot's head as the tired dog licked at his face. He would be just fine after a full night's sleep.

Seeing that all the injuries had been tended to, Kilpa sounded the all clear by whistling a warbling birdcall. The back door of the wagon opened, and seven figures backlit figured piled out. A teary Tecka ran toward Drust, embracing him tightly and breathing in his windy scent. Lissa followed quickly behind, wrapping her arms about her parents' legs and pressing her face against her father's thigh. Even Spot, tired as he was, wormed his way into the hug between their knees, happy that his human flock was safe.

They stayed like that for a while even as they could hear the others beginning to move about the camp, checking on the remains of dinner and tending to other small chores. It was enough to be to together and to be safe.