The garrison's message arrived just after midnight, carried by a rider who'd pushed his horse hard enough that the animal was still trembling when Ethan brought the report to the war room, waking the rest of us from what little rest we'd actually managed.
"Millbrook's empty," Ethan said, spreading the report across the table, his voice carrying the particular flatness of someone still processing bad news himself. "The garrison moved in for a routine check at dusk, per standing orders to monitor from a distance. No sign of forced entry, no sign of struggle. The mill's simply abandoned. Everyone gone — the twenty people, whatever supplies they'd gathered, all of it, sometime in the last two days."
"They knew we were watching," Darius said grimly.
