The River Mule was a fat, grimy barge that smelled of wet hemp, old fish, and human misery. Its "private cargo" consisted of Arrion, Kestrel, and six other figures who wore silence like a second skin: a pair of haggard deserters, a fur-trader with a shifty gaze, a nervous clerk carrying documents he shouldn't have, and two individuals so wrapped in cloaks and quiet they could have been anything. Briar was stabled in a makeshift pen amidships, a giant of muscle and midnight among swaybacked pack mules.
For two days, they slipped up the Sorrowflow. The river lived up to its name. The banks were steep, choked with weeping willows whose branches trailed in the sluggish, grey water. An unsettling quiet hung over the landscape, broken only by the lap of water and the occasional, mournful cry of a waterbird. Kestrel was a ghost, barely speaking, her eyes constantly cataloguing the barge, the crew, the other passengers. Arrion spent his time maintaining his weapons and wrestling with the pulse of the Verdant King's thorn against his chest. It beat in a slow, steady rhythm of contained fury.
On the morning of the third day, the peace shattered.
A horn blast echoed from around a bend in the river. A sleek, low river-galley powered by a dozen oars shot into view, blocking the channel. It flew the azure and silver pennant of the Oakhaven Trade Guard, but its sailors wore the sharper, more militaristic kit of the regional garrison—men seconded to customs duty. This wasn't a routine toll collection.
"By order of the Viscount! All traffic halt for inspection!" a bull-throated sergeant shouted across the water. "Contraband sweep! Manifests and passenger rolls, now!"
The captain of the River Mule cursed fluently. "Bloody timing. They never come this far up for a 'sweep.'"
A cold certainty settled in Arrion's gut. This wasn't random. Someone was looking. Ralke's reach, or perhaps the factor still hunting Kestrel's children, had strings in the garrison. His Mudlark's Pass might work on a bored quartermaster, but not on a sergeant with specific orders.
Kestrel materialized at his side. "They're not checking cargo. They're checking faces," she whispered, her voice taut. "Two men at the boarding plank are holding a slate. Taking names."
Arrion saw it. The "inspection" was a pretext. They were searching for someone. A giant with a distinctive sword, perhaps. Or a sharp-faced girl with a history of liberating mine-fodder.
"They find us here, we're caged," Kestrel said, her eyes already scanning the riverbank. The left side was a steep, muddy cliff. The right was a morass of reeds and half-submerged trees—the edge of a vast, mosquito-infested fen.
"Can you swim?" Arrion asked quietly, his hand going to the straps securing his bow and Nightshade.
"In this?" She glanced at the opaque, greasy water. "I'd rather not. But I can disappear."
The Trade Guard's galley was pulling alongside, grappling hooks arcing through the air to clang against the Mule's rail. The sergeant and four armed guards began crossing.
"Now," Arrion said.
He moved not towards the guards, but to Briar. In one smooth motion, he cut the rope penning the warhorse. A sharp slap on the rump. "Go, brother! To shore! Run!" Briar, trained for battle, needed no further encouragement. With a mighty snort, he shouldered past a terrified mule and launched himself in a tremendous, arcing leap over the Mule's low gunwale. He hit the water with a colossal splash and began swimming powerfully for the reed-choked right bank.
The spectacle caused instant chaos. Guards shouted. The mules panicked. In that moment of distraction, Arrion grabbed Kestrel by the arm. "The bank! Follow Briar!"
They didn't jump. They vaulted the rail, hitting the cold, shocking water side-by-side. Arrion surfaced, shrugging off the weight of the water, and began a powerful stroke after Briar's churning wake. Kestrel, true to her word, didn't so much swim as slither, cutting through the water with an eel-like, efficient motion.
"Overboard! Fugitives!" The sergeant's roar cut through the din. "After them! They're the ones!"
A crossbow bolt thwipped into the water a foot from Arrion's head. Then another. The guards were firing from the unstable deck of the galley. But the real threat emerged as the galley quickly deployed a small, fast rowboat. Four guards piled in, their oars biting into the water with military precision. They would be on the fugitives long before they reached the dubious safety of the fens.
Arrion and Kestrel hauled themselves, gasping and dripping, onto a spongy mat of roots and decaying vegetation. Briar was already there, shaking his great black coat, spraying water everywhere. The fen stretched before them—a misty, trackless maze of standing water, hummocks of grass, and skeletal, drowned trees.
"No cover," Kestrel panted, pulling her wet hair from her face. "They'll run us down in the boat."
Arrion turned, water streaming from his armor. He saw the rowboat closing fast, forty yards out and gaining. He saw the gleam of spear tips, the determined set of the guards' faces. These weren't corrupt lackeys; they were soldiers following orders. He couldn't slaughter them. But he couldn't be taken.
He reached for his bow, the purple wood slick in his hands. He nocked an arrow, not of iron, but of plain oak—a warning shot. He drew, the tusk-enhanced limbs groaning with power, and loosed.
The arrow didn't fly at the men. It flew over the rowboat and struck the fen's murky water twenty yards beyond them with a deep SPLOOSH. The impact was monstrous, like a small boulder had been dropped, throwing up a geyser of brown water and mud.
The rowboat rocked violently. The oarsmen faltered, staring at the erupting water.
Arrion nocked another. "The next one lands in your boat!" His voice, amplified by the damp air and his own Adept's command, boomed across the water like thunder. "Tell your sergeant you lost us in the fen! Turn back!"
For a heartbeat, he thought they might call his bluff. The sergeant on the galley was bellowing, urging them on. Then the lead guard in the rowboat, a veteran with sense, looked from the still-settling plume of the first shot to the giant on the bank with the impossibly powerful bow. He saw the sword hilt over the giant's shoulder, the grim set of his jaw.
"Back!" the guard barked. "Back to the galley! Man's got a ballista, not a bow! We'll lose the boat if he hits it!"
Grudgingly, the oarsmen reversed stroke. The rowboat began to pull away.
But the sergeant on the galley was not done. As the rowboat retreated, he cupped his hands. "You're marked, Haelend! The hills have eyes! You won't reach the Marches!"
The use of his name was a bucket of ice water down Arrion's spine. This was Ralke's doing. Officially, through channels. They were not just fugitives; they were named quarry.
As the galley and the River Mule slowly disengaged and continued upriver, leaving them stranded, Arrion turned to the vast, sucking emptiness of the fen. The easy river passage was gone. They were wet, hunted, and on foot in one of the most treacherous landscapes in the empire, with Briar as their only advantage.
Kestrel wrung out her cloak, her sharp face pale but set. "Well," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm as literal water dripped from her chin. "The 'quiet passage' was fun while it lasted. Welcome to the hard way." She nodded into the gloomy mist. "The fens eventually give way to the foothills. It'll add a week. Maybe two. And everything in there," she gestured at the stagnant pools and shifting ground, "wants to eat us."
Arrion looked at the thorn, still pulsing warmly. Time was a luxury they no longer had. He slung his bow and checked Nightshade's secure fastening. "Then we'd better not let it. Lead on, Kestrel."
With a final glance at the receding ships, the giant, the thief, and the warhorse turned their backs on the river and vanished into the hungry green-grey mouth of the fen, the sergeant's warning echoing behind them: The hills have eyes.