She had not made it far.
Commander Evereth was already waiting on the road ahead of her, and her squad was with him, which meant someone had moved very quickly and very quietly to get them there before she did. Brina pulled her horse up short and said nothing for a moment, working through the geometry of it in her head and not finding a satisfying answer.
"And where exactly do you think you are going, sir Feldwyn?" Evereth's voice carried the particular calm of someone who is not surprised and is not angry, which was somehow worse than if he had been both. "You heard Commander Deen clearly enough. I was standing right there." He looked at her horse, then back at her. "And you were going alone. Bold, I will give you that. But stupid covers the rest of it."
"Commander." Brina kept her voice level. "I meant no disrespect to sir Deen. But there are people in that village who may still be alive and we are marching away from them."
"So your solution was to ride there by yourself." It was not a question. "That way if it goes wrong, only you answer for it. Nobody else gets blamed. Is that what you are thinking?" He tilted his head slightly. "I had heard you were sharp, Feldwyn. Turns out you are considerably less sharp than advertised. We can do this one of two ways. You turn around and come back to camp willingly, or I bring you back another way. Your choice and I would like it quickly."
Brina looked at the road behind him. Then she made her decision, which was the same decision it had been when she saddled the horse, and she kicked forward.
What happened next took about half a second.
She and the horse were suddenly moving backward through the air and she had no immediate explanation for it. She grabbed the reins on instinct and then she was on the ground and the horse was standing a few feet away looking unbothered and Evereth had not visibly moved from where he was standing.
Then her squad was beside her, and she had not heard them move either.
"Did you really think you were leaving without us?" It was Sophia, and her voice had an edge in it that Brina was not used to hearing directed at her. "Without a single word?"
Brina opened her mouth.
"No," Elena said, cutting her off cleanly. "You do not get to explain this one yet. You were going to ride into that village alone and either come back or not come back and we would have found out about it after the fact. That is what you were going to do."
"I thought of you," Brina said. "That is exactly why I went alone. If I am punished for this it should only be me."
"That," Jen said, "is one of the most selfish things I have ever heard you say."
Brina blinked.
"We are your team." Jen's voice was not loud but it had weight in it. "We function because we trust each other. Every single direction, not just the ones that are convenient. If you go somewhere we go with you, and if you are punished we stand beside you for it. That is what this is. The moment you decided to protect us from your own choices you stopped treating us like your team and started treating us like something to be managed. Do not do that, we don't like that." She paused. "And your brother. Have you thought about what we would say to him? Have you actually thought that through? And what we would say to him if you…"
Brina had not thought that through.
She was still processing it when Mira, who had been quiet through all of it, simply said, "This girl. Haa. She really is Brina till the very end." A short exhale that was almost a laugh but wasn't quite. Then something shifted in her expression and she turned to the others. "You know what to do."
They moved toward Evereth.
What followed was also brief. Considerably more brief than any of them had anticipated.
The Evereth who Brina faced at the training ground and the Evereth who was currently standing in the road with his full attention engaged were not the same person occupying the same body, it turned out. The two at the front went down before Brina had finished drawing breath to say something. The two at the back went down in the few seconds after that. She counted approximately ten seconds from start to finish.
She was already moving toward him when she lost track of where he was, and then she was on the ground and she had no memory of the intervening moment and the road was very close to her face.
"Look at what you have done," Evereth said from somewhere above her, not unkind, not gloating, just stating a fact. "You have made your entire team accessories to your disobedience. Every single one of them. Are you satisfied?"
Brina tried to push herself up.
She did not quite make it.
The next thing she was genuinely aware of was motion. The creak of a cart, the rhythm of wheels on a road, the sky above her moving steadily in one direction. Her wrists were bound in front of her with rope, competently tied, not cruel but not symbolic either. She turned her head. Her squad was beside her, similarly bound, in various states of consciousness. Elena caught her eye and held it for a moment without saying anything.
They were heading back toward Helwind. The camp grounds was already behind them and getting further behind them with every turn of the wheels.
Brina looked up at the sky and said nothing.
Whatever was waiting for them at the other end of this road was waiting regardless of whether she spent the journey preparing for it or not, so she closed her eyes and tried to think of something useful.
She mostly thought about the village.