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And yet it was ridiculously fun. By the time Marrow came to a halt and huffed at them in warning, they were all laughing softly, the terrors of the mist banished. Up ahead, the mists were thinning and honest moonlight filtering through. Marrow sat down on her haunches and growled at them. Keraal, wiping tears out of his eyes, choked, “Yes, mother! As you say, mother!”

Chetiin chuckled. Marrow actually looked bewildered.

Dagii drew a deep breath, steadying himself. “Move to the side,” he said, gesturing. “If the elves come this way frequently, they may have sentries posted.”

They followed him, each of them struggling to suppress the lingering humor of the song that had seen them through the mists. Ekhaas gulped lungfuls of air, pride warming her belly. Dagii caught her eye and gave her a thin smile that was as rewarding as gold.

As they emerged from the mists, she could feel the wrongness of the Mournland that Marrow, through Chetiin, had tried to describe. The air felt too thin, the moonlight too harsh. The stars didn’t twinkle but instead seemed hard as ice. There was a smell in the air that reminded her of a lightning strike or certain powders burned in an alchemist’s furnace. Even the land had changed—somehow they stood just below the rocky brow of a steep slope, though she was certain that they hadn’t climbed anything more than a gentle grade. Looking back along the brow, she could see a gap, probably the start of a way down the other side and likely the way that the elves had gone.

The boulders lining the brow of the slope made climbing easy, but Chetiin still reached the top before any of them. Staying low to avoid presenting a betraying silhouette, he stuck his head up over the edge, froze for an instant, then ducked back down, his eyes very wide. With one hand, he waved them all forward. With the other, he gestured for absolute silence.

Dagii reached the edge next. Ekhaas watched his ears stand before falling back flat against his head. Then she was at the edge, too, and peering between two boulders down into another wide valley—

—at a camp that stretched from one side of the valley to the other. Tents made a small town. Horses picketed together at the center of the camp made a herd that could have raised a noise like thunder if they’d been running. Next to the picketed horses stood a pavilion flying a long swallow-tailed banner with a pattern of stars. There was activity at the pavilion. The survivors of the attack on Tii’ator were likely reporting their defeat. Ekhaas tried to guess at how many elves moved beneath the harsh moonlight and how many more might be asleep in those tents. Far more than the four or five warbands Tariic had anticipated in his rousing speech in Khaar Mbar’ost.

Dagii touched Ekhaas’s hand and motioned for her to go back. All of them slipped carefully to the ground and joined Marrow back at the edge of the mists.

“Maabet!” cursed Keraal. “That’s a full Valaes Tairn warclan. They’re hiding an entire warclan in the Mournland! How did they get them all through the mist?”

“I don’t know,” Dagii said tightly, “but they must have some trick. How many do you think there are?”

“Three hundred,” said Keraal at the same moment as Ekhaas and Chetiin said, “Four hundred.”

Dagii nodded. “We’ll assume the worst. Four hundred Valaes Tairn warriors. Based on our experience tonight, enough to crush our troops without lathering their horses.”

“What do we do?” asked Ekhaas.

“We laugh our way back through the mists,” Dagii told her in tones that brooked no laughter whatsoever. “We return to Tii’ator, dispatch all of our messenger falcons in the hope that at least one makes it to Khaar Mbar’ost, then we run back to the main army, make a stand outside Zarrthec, and hope we can slow them down.”

Keraal grunted agreement. Chetiin nodded. Ekhaas looked at all three of them. “Slow them down? If they get through us, they won’t have far to go to reach Zarrthec.”

Dagii bared his teeth. “They’re not interested in Zarrthec, Ekhaas. They didn’t bring that many warriors