“Hello,” she says, louder. “My name is Kaylein of Clan Montag. Royal guard of Tamarel. Cousin to Berinon of Clan Montag, captain of the royal guard and bodyguard to Queen Mariela.”
I’m surprised by the last sentence. She has said her clan takes great pride in Berinon, who went from blacksmith’s apprentice to a noble’s guard to personal guard of the queen herself. Yet this is more than pride. It is protection. People outside the kingdom know who Berinon is—because of both his position and his deep friendship with my parents. He is a man of importance. Attacking his cousin would be worse than striking at an unknown palace guard.
As Kaylein strides through the camp, her voice rings out. When no one answers, her face hardens.
“You are on Tamarel land,” she says. “While our country welcomes all visitors, we do have the right to ask the purpose of anyone crossing our border. Please show yourselves immediately.”
No answer, and as she stalks to a tent, I know what she’s going to find even before she yanks open the flap.
Nothing.
The tent is empty.
The camp is empty.
CHAPTER TEN
Kaylein has gone to get the others, and I stand in the middle of the empty camp, listening to the wind. The unfastened flap on one tent flutters in the breeze. I walk to it and peer in.
There are two packs inside. One is open, one cinched tight. I discover that another tent contains three packs, the third holds none.
Wilmot walks over as I’m backing out from the second tent.
“Could they be hunting?” I ask.
He shakes his head. That fire is almost out, and I’d already speculated it has been that way since morning. What I hadn’t considered was why. Not why the fire was out, but why the camp was still here long after the night’s fire had been extinguished.
Wilmot called this an expedition. While people do travel into the forest to hunt, that is extremely rare this deep in the Dunnian Woods. People are here for one reason—they’re moving through in one direction or the other. These people butchered a goat because they needed the food to continue moving. If they felt safe stopping to hunt, they’d have done that instead.
Something happened here.
That’s what we’re all thinking as we stand in that empty camp, listening to the tents flapping in the breeze. Empty tents. Forgotten fire. Abandoned packs.
There’s the half-butchered goat, too.
“Is there any reason they’d start cutting it up last night and leave the rest for morning?” I ask.
Wilmot shakes his head. “It isn’t like chopping wood, where they might tire and decide to finish later. A half-butchered goat will attract unwanted attention.”
Scavengers. Predators. Even monsters.
Is that what happened here? As I stand at the edge of camp, I imagine night falling. It’s time for bed, but someone is still working on the goat. Everyone else is…in their tents? No. It’s dark but not late, and they’ve built a huge fire. The tents are too small for anything more than sleep, so they’re sitting around the fire talking. And then…
In my mind, a huge shape swoops down from the sky. A gryphon. The vision only lasts a moment before I dismiss it. The clearing isn’t big enough for a gryphon to land without knocking down the tents.
Wyverns aren’t big enough to carry off people. Harpies can, obviously. Is that what happened?
I look around. Three tents. Four packs, one tent without any. I’m going to guess that means six or seven people. It took four harpies to lift Dain. At least twenty-four harpies would have been needed to carry off six people.
The bigger problem here is the lack of damage. When people are attacked—presumably civilians, mostly unarmed—they’re going to run for shelter. Or run to their packs to grab a weapon. I can’t imagine at least six people being attacked and leaving behind a camp so tidy it looks as if they’ve just stepped away to wash.
“Rowan?” Wilmot calls, yanking me from my thoughts.
He motions me to where the others stand in a knot, talking. I’m still on the edge of camp, with Jacko sniffing around my feet and Malric lying beside me. I walk over to the others.
“As the royal monster hunter, you are the leader of our expedition,” Wilmot says. “Tell us what you think happened here.”
“No pressure,” Alianor mutters.
Wilmot turns an even look on her. “Rowan is learning how to lead…and accept constructive criticism without embarrassment. Rowan?”
I take a deep breath. Then I tell them what I’ve worked out.
“I was just going to start looking closer,” I say when I’m done. “Searching for clues that aren’t obvious. Footprints or blood or signs of a struggle.”
“And Malric?” Wilmot says.
I frown at the warg, seated beside me.
“Malric is your companion,” Wilmot says. “Like all companions, he has skills you lack. One of them would be useful here.”
“Oh!” I say. “His nose. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You can do that in a moment. For now, your theory seems sound. I agree it’s highly unlikely that this many people were carried off by monsters of any kind, leaving a camp so tidy. So what could force people from their camp without leaving the mess of an attack?”
I mentally run through lists of monsters.
“Two legs,” Wilmot prompts.
A monster on two legs? There’s nothing…
“You think people did this,” I say.
Once I consider it, that answer seems so obvious that my cheeks heat. As the royal monster hunter, I naturally saw this scene in terms of monsters. Yet however intelligent monsters might be, they cannot do the one thing that stops humans from fighting back: issue threats. What we’re seeing here is a group of people who seem
