Eoan spread his arms and pulled the vine-lace outward.
Green ran where he willed it. Tendril by tendril, knot by knot. The sap stung his palms where the bark had split them earlier, but he ignored it.
"Cover the seam," a voice said from the shade.
Eoan glanced toward the line of trees. He could see the Ibinea captain properly. He was not using his cloak. For someone who could control shadow, it was odd how precisely he could direct light.
K'sal leaned in, guiding the light and moving it like it was a stick meant to be driven.
"There," K'sal said softly. "Cover this part."
Eoan nodded and laid another runner of vine over the packed earth roof. The excavation had been cut into a low rise, a hollowed belly with a mouth disguised by brush. This was the shelter of the troop he had been assigned to; they were there for reconnaissance and fortification.
He pressed his hand flat and felt the soil's heat bleed into his skin. He fed it a thread of green, just enough for the vines to bite and hold.
Behind him, Brennoc muttered, "He says 'seam' like we're building his house."
Eoan snorted.
Brennoc's breath came sharp. He was older than Eoan, not by much, but he acted like it meant a world of difference. They both had been declared adults as soon as their fifteenth name day had come. It wasn't that long ago.
"You'd rather the Impernon see us?" Eoan said finally, keeping his eyes on the vine.
Brennoc spat into the leaf-mould. "I'd rather we weren't here."
None of them would rather be here.
A few paces downslope, Varqun moved between the trees and watched like hunters. They could tell an animal where to step. A deer, glass-eyed and docile, picked its way away from camp as if it had chosen to leave. Two rabbits followed behind it like offerings. Their magic had limits—how many they could urge, how far they could control, and how long they could do it.
The Varqun didn't look at Eoan and just continued their task.
A body shifted closer to Eoan and Brennoc.
"You," K'sal said.
Eoan stopped the vine mid-weave. It hung for a breath.
K'sal's gaze went to Brennoc. "Not you."
Brennoc's jaw tightened.
K'sal looked back at Eoan. "How long to finish?"
Eoan swallowed. He hated speaking to the Ibinea; their manner of speaking. It was just too direct.
"Before full dark," he said. "If the soil holds."
K'sal's eyes narrowed slightly.
"The soil will hold," K'sal said. "Make it hold. Use your magic. Tighten the soil."
"Do not go over. Just enough to hide."
Eoan nodded once. "Yes."
Brennoc couldn't help himself. "You keep telling us what not to do. Maybe tell us what we're doing it for."
A few heads turned. A Varqun native paused with his hand on a deer's flank. Even the deer's ears flicked.
K'sal's an intense gaze slid to Brennoc.
"You're building a roof," K'sal said. "Over men who would like somewhere to come back to. I am the band-leader, by merit. You should listen. I am more powerful than you. You should do as you are told."
Brennoc's cheeks colored. "That's not—"
K'sal stepped closer and glowered. The light seemed to dim around him without any fire being put out.
"The day your chief gave you to us, an understanding should have been met. Man to man, as the moonlight shines. Honor your oath."
Brennoc stared at the ground and stilled.
K'sal's attention returned to Eoan. "Continue."
Eoan restarted the work. The vine crept. It found crevices in packed earth and anchored. It made the roof look like old growth had always been there.
They had marched four weeks to get here—over marsh and wet ground, across the Maiden's River, past Dead Tree that marked the border between the Coalition and the Impernon.
The mountain pass was supposed to be blocked. At the other end of the tunnel there were Impernon encampments protecting their mines. The Impernon should not have known the passes, but they still had soldiers. There were secret tunnels whose ends were only known to the Ibinea; these mountains had once been part of their ancestral lands.
The Ibinea led them in without torches. No one else could see. Eoan kept a hand on the man ahead of him and listened for the scrape of boots on stone. When they neared the far mouth—Impernon side—he braced for it: shouted warning, metal drawn, an arrow or a spell out of the dark.
But nothing ever came out of the end. There was no battle fought. There was no skirmish for control when they arrived on the outside.
The tunnel mouth was hidden, but the camp outside wasn't. Fire pits laid out neat. Trampled lanes between tents. A watch path worn into the grass. Crates stacked under oilcloth, not broken. Nothing burned. Nothing scattered.
And still—too quiet. Too few men. There were no wagons, no ore on the ground, no smoke from the mine. Just an encampment kept on a thin breath.
When they arrived at the foot of the mountain there were signs of patrols, and nothing more. When the Varqun warned of an incoming party they hid.
There were almost no mages in those patrols. They were mostly nispark—men who carried no mana in their veins. Eoan burned with apprehension. Some burned with rage, but they were forbidden from attacking.
"No marks of battle," said K'sal. "If they notice us we concede our mountain pass."
So they held, unseen.
It was odd. There had been no significant setback. With an encampment here and a mine, the Impernons should have had many troops stationed. They only left men to tend the camp, not man the fort.
But the Impernon did not leave gates unwatched without reason.
He'd said it once to Brennoc.
"Does it feel wrong to you?"
Brennoc had snorted. "Everything feels wrong."
After they walked further down the mountain pass, four men wearing Impernon clothes waited, guarding a wagon that bore no colors or crests.
K'sal gestured the band to stay down. He moved toward them, condensing his magic, his cloak slowly engulfing his skin and then disappearing into the darkness.
When he resurfaced he was near the men. They seemed mildly startled at K'sal's appearance, but a fight did not occur.
"Those seem to be Impernon," Eoan said to Brennoc.
Brennoc nodded in acknowledgement but focused on the men.
After a while they seemed to be agreeing on something. The four rode on their horses and disappeared into the night.
"Those were our help," K'sal said, eyes narrowed. "They have provided us safe passage and some supplies we may need for our journey."
"We shall leave east toward the Forest of Enmity in the morning. For now we set up camp. No fires," K'sal continued.
They arrived at the outer ring of the Forest of Enmity early morning. Beast Rage would take the felbeasts at night in the forest, so they set up camp early, so that when they arrived they could still prepare their camps around the wards that staved the felbeasts off. Yes, the Varqun could handle it, they could command the beasts, but the Beast Rage would sap more mana from them than it would regularly. It was best that during the march they conserved as much magic as needed, to save for when it was needed for battles.
"We set up camp around the pillars. Yes?" K'sal said to them.
"The Varqun will search the terrain and hunt. Pray to your gods that Daeva are not around," K'sal breathed, cautious.
The Daeva were not men, if they could even be called as such. They were creatures who could not be reasoned with. They just killed. Unlike Impernon, who could be negotiated with for profit or gain, with material or land, the Daeva saw their kind as something to be wiped out from the face of the world. Yes, the Impernon hated them, but their greed gave way before their hate. The Daeva didn't talk; once they saw you they would look at you like a rat that bore pestilence. Wielding their blades, their whips, their bows, and their dark armor and boots, they would kill even younglings that had just been born.
Eoan shuddered involuntarily.
"We know their habits. We know that this time of year they do not come to the forest. But they do come here on occasions we do not expect. Stay on guard. The Imperials do not come here at all. We set our forward camp here," K'sal continued.
"Varqun will scout. Provide support. Yes?"
He nodded toward the warded edge. "Retreat goes into the forest first."
"This is where we fall back to. We keep it fed and hidden. We leave men here to hold the wards."
Everyone nodded. Everyone worked.
They left the forest a week later.
They traveled by night and rested in the day under brush and low boughs. They did not make smoke. They did not speak loudly. Every time the Varqun stopped and made their beasts listen and see, everyone stopped with them.
After the fourth dawn they reached a ridge.
When Eoan crawled to the lip and pushed aside a fern, he could see it.
At first it was only line and color. Grey on grey. Then his eyes found the shape: walls that cut the land like a held blade. Towers spaced with purpose. A road running to the gate like a vein.
Walls walked the earth as an insult to the Earth Mother. Caerbrin stood tall. Mounds of rock formed with precise hands, forming buildings. Smoke floated toward the sky as the hum of the feet of three hundred thousand people shook the city. Caerbrin was stone, fire, water that obeyed men, and air that smelled foul. It was made with hands uncaring. They sat behind walls and waited for winter. They did not live with the forest. They bore their mark and stained the Earth Mother.
Caerbrin, the heart of the dagger aimed at the Coalition of the Unmoored.
They set up camp.
Far.
Half a day's walk, maybe more if you moved slow and kept to cover. Far enough that a man on the wall would not pick them out. Close enough that you could feel it sitting there, heavy and patient.
Brennoc crept up beside him. He stared a long time without speaking.
"That's it," Brennoc said finally.
Eoan nodded.
Below the ridge the Varqun were already working. A bird lifted, circled once, then slipped away over the slope. When it didn't return, they marked a place with small stones.
K'sal came up behind them, quiet in the way the Ibin moved. He looked out once, then looked away.
"No more closer," he said. "Not yet. Any more and we risk our skins."
Brennoc's mouth tightened. "We can barely see the gate from here."
K'sal replied, "We are here to stay unseen. Not watch from."
He pointed down the ridge with two fingers.
"Camp there. Low. Covered."
The Varqun started driving the animals away from the chosen hollow. A deer wandered off as if it had remembered an appointment elsewhere. Birds lifted and circled and did not come back. The felbeasts did not come this far out, not in daylight, but the Varqun still worked like the land could bite.
Eoan slid back from the ridge and followed the others down.
They began digging before the sun climbed fully. The soil here was different from the forest edge. Drier. More stones. It resisted the blade. Eoan put his hands into it anyway. He could feel the heat of it, the old stored warmth from yesterday.
Brennoc worked beside him, spade and short knife, cutting roots that were not supposed to be cut.
"You can make this easier," Brennoc muttered.
Eoan kept his eyes on the dirt. "If I push too hard, it shows."
Brennoc snorted. "Everything shows."
Eoan didn't answer. He pushed green into the soil in thin threads—not growth, not fruit, just binding. He made the cut earth hold shape. He made the roof take weight without sagging. Enough that when they threw brush over it later, it would not settle and betray them.
The camp had a rhythm now.
Varqun ranged and returned. One always stayed near the hollow, hand on the wards they'd brought from the grove—stone slivers and carved posts that could be set fast and fed with mana. The Coppirs worked the ground and the cover. The Ibin watched the sightlines and corrected everything that looked like it might catch light wrong.
By midday the first shelter-mouth was finished. A low dark opening under thorn, hidden from above, hidden from the ridge unless you knew the exact angle.
K'sal came to inspect it. He did not praise. He only pointed.
"More cover," he said. "The seam. There."
Eoan nodded and pushed another weave of vine-lace through the brush, letting it catch and hold. It was not pretty but it looked like the land had always grown that way. That was enough.
A Varqun man returned with a rabbit slung over his shoulder and a look on his face that meant he had seen something.
"Two riders," he said to K'sal. "On the road. They didn't come this far. They turned back."
K'sal's eyes narrowed slightly. "Time?"
"An hour ago."
K'sal looked toward the ridge again.
"Good," he said. "They are not looking."
Brennoc bristled. "Or they don't need to."
K'sal's gaze slid to him. "If they were looking, you would not be speaking."
Brennoc shut his mouth.
Eoan felt his pulse in his fingers. He kept weaving.
He tried to measure Caerbrin with his eyes. He could not.
Eoan thought of the thinly manned mine-camp. The tidy fire pits. The watch path worn into grass. The way everything had been held on a thin breath.
At dusk K'sal gathered them without raising his voice.
"From here," he said, "we do nothing loud. No fires. No wandering. No gifts used for comfort."
He looked at the Coppirs when he said it.
"You do not force fruit unless ordered. The land will be needed."
Then he looked at the Varqun.
"You range. You count. You bring word."
Finally, the ridge.
"We watch Caerbrin. We learn their habits. We learn when they open their gates and when it closes them."
Eoan looked once more at the far walls, darkening into silhouette as the sun fell.
Half a day's walk. It was far enough to pretend that they were safe but near enough to touch. Maybe, just maybe in the coming days the Unmoored could shake the heart of the knife.