The guard Cadd brought had been standing on the rear cart when the attackers withdrew. He climbed onto it again, steadying himself against the covered load, and pointed between two trees above the road.
“The hurt one went that way. They got his arm round one man's neck and pulled him up. The other stayed below them until they were clear.”
Rowan stood beside the wheel. From there, the slope seemed closed by branches. He put his notebook away and climbed up beside the guard. A narrow opening appeared between the trunks, no wider than a person's shoulders.
“How far could you see them?”
“To the light behind that fir. After that, nothing.”
The guard showed him a pale strip along the higher ground, screened from anyone on the road.
“Were they carrying anything?” Rowan asked.
“His knife. Someone went back for it before they took him up.”
“Anything from the cart?”
“Not that I saw.”
The guard's name was Venn. He had a small cut across one knuckle and had bound it himself with a strip from his shirt. He put the hand behind him when Rowan looked at it.
“I can hold a weapon.”
“I was going to ask if you'd shown Belda.”
“She's seen it.”
Rowan climbed down. Cadd waited beside the wheel. Together, they went as far as the road's inner edge, where loose earth had been pressed beneath several pairs of boots. Rowan could see the opening Venn had indicated now that he knew where it was. The cart gave the best view of it. From the shelter entrance, it vanished behind the bank.
“I'll go up with him,” Rowan said. “Only as far as you can keep us in sight.”
Cadd studied the slope. “From the cart.”
“Yes. If we can't see you, we stop. Keep the upper watch where it is.”
“I wasn't going to send it after you.”
Rowan glanced at him. There was no smile on the guard's face, but Cadd stepped onto the cart and took Venn's place.
They began where the second stump had stood. The old foot passage left the road there, rising behind the exposed roots before coming down again. Beyond it, brush hid a strip of higher earth. Venn held the stems aside while Rowan looked at the ground.
A boot had scraped a root bare. Above it, another mark crossed the slope instead of climbing straight up. Rowan followed that reach with his eyes. It led toward the opening between the trees.
Venn stepped over the root and stopped beneath the fir. Rowan followed, keeping Cadd in sight below. The opening was broader than it had appeared from the cart; someone could wait here without showing more than a sleeve to the road.
From there, they could see both the cart and the upper watch. The shelter lay behind the covered loads. A traveler sat outside it, the fresh dressing on his forearm white against his coat.
“He was the one they cut,” Venn said. “They'd have got him worse if he hadn't put that up.”
He indicated an overturned crate beside the road. The traveler had lifted it between himself and a knife. One side had split along the boards.
Rowan looked back to the higher ground. “Did the man with the knife say anything?”
“Stand away. Open it. Mostly that.” Venn crouched beside a branch bent low across the path. “One of them kept saying they knew what was in the load. He didn't look at the other carts.”
The covered cart carried part of the officer's arrangements for the island. Cadd had shown Rowan the packing marks while they chose the food to send south. There were good cloths among the cases, sealed bottles and smaller goods that could be carried by hand. Nothing that would make someone master of the Wild Straights, but enough to be worth stealing.
“Which one said it?”
“The man who stayed below while they took the other up. Taller than me. Dark hair. He had a scarf pulled over his mouth until he shouted.”
Rowan waited while Venn disentangled the branch from his sleeve.
“He said something about paying for our own landings. I couldn't hear it all. Cadd might have. There was someone shouting behind me.”
“From the camp?”
“Yes. Asking for help with him.” Venn glanced toward the traveler with the dressed arm. “I wasn't listening for a speech.”
Rowan nodded. He would ask Cadd what he had heard before offering him Venn’s words.
They moved along the strip beneath the fir. It was narrow but not difficult, with stone showing through the earth on the upper side. A person familiar with it could leave the road quickly and disappear without going far. Rowan kept looking back toward the cart. Cadd stood beside the load, watching them.
At the next tree, Venn stopped.
“There's cloth.”
A brown fold showed beneath the roots of a fallen stem. Rowan moved closer along the lower side. The stem lay well away from the two felled trees beside the road. Its bark had softened into the ground. Under it, someone had pushed a bundle wrapped in sacking. A corner of the wrapping showed on the lower side, facing the road.
Rowan could still see Cadd. He raised one hand to show they were stopping, then crouched without touching the bundle. The wrapping had been tucked under itself. One end of a cord lay outside, pale against the damp leaves.
Venn looked along the slope. “Want me above it?”
“Stay where you can see the road. Don't stand over me.”
There was no reason to believe the bundle was harmless because someone had left it. Rowan examined the cord and the ground around it, then eased the wrapping aside with a fallen twig. Nothing beneath it moved. He opened the fold enough to see a piece of hard bread, a little cloth bag and the end of a tightly rolled blanket. The bread had been wrapped separately. Farther beneath the blanket lay a short-handled hatchet.
Venn came closer when Rowan straightened.
“Is that what they used?”
“It could cut a tree. I don't know whether it cut these.”
The edge had been covered with leather and tied. Rowan lifted it by the handle without loosening the binding. The wood was smooth from use. There was a split near the end that had been wound round with cord; the repair kept the handle usable without making it pleasant to grip.
A second blanket lay beneath the first, with a darkened strip of cloth pushed between them. Rowan left it in place.
There were provisions for people waiting on the slope, and a tool someone would not want to abandon. The bundle's placement gave them shelter from the road without taking them beyond a few dozen paces of it.
Venn touched the empty space beside the wrapping. A flattened patch continued uphill beneath the stem.
“More here?”
“Something has been here.”
Rowan looked along the roots. There was room for another bundle, or for someone to kneel while tying this one.
He set the hatchet back and marked the bundle beneath the old stem in his notebook. Venn was watching the higher trees.
“We'll bring Cadd up to see it,” he said. “After we're down.”
“He won't like leaving it.”
“We can take it away once he knows where it was. He saw the people who used this approach.”
Venn was watching the trees above the bundle. His head turned a little, then became still.
Rowan put the notebook inside his coat.
A pale movement showed between two trunks higher on the slope. It was gone before he could see whether it belonged to a person. A branch eased back beneath it, slow enough that the movement had not been the wind alone.
Venn's hand had gone to his weapon.
“Back,” Rowan said quietly.
The guard looked at the bundle, then at him. Rowan had already turned enough to see Cadd. He raised his hand and pointed uphill.
Cadd moved from the center of the cart to its inner edge. The upper watch called once.
Rowan stepped down along the strip they had used. Venn followed with his face turned toward the higher trees. Neither ran. At the fir, Rowan waited while the guard passed the root, then came after him onto the foot passage.
The upper watch was still looking toward the slope when they reached the road. The remaining Cresting warden stood beside the shelter, with the traveler from outside now behind him.
Cadd climbed down.
“How many?”
“One movement,” Rowan said. “We didn't see a face. Above the bundle.”
“What bundle?”
Rowan described it while Cadd took them behind the covered cart. From there, the slope could not see their hands or the people in the shelter. Venn stood at the opening between the loads, watching the strip they had just left.
“Could be one of ours gone up to relieve himself,” Cadd said. He looked toward the upper watch, then called the question. The guard there shook his head. No one had left the camp on that side.
“They didn't follow you?”
“Not where we could see.”
Cadd glanced at the hatchet's position in Rowan's rough drawing. “I'd rather that was here.”
“So would I. Not enough to send someone straight back up for it.”
For a moment the guard looked as though he might argue. The upper watch called that the trees remained still. Cadd took the drawing and held it against the cart's side.
“Can I see the bundle from here?”
“Only the lower corner of the wrapping. The stem hides what's inside. You can see where we stopped.”
“And they could see all of this.” His finger moved from the fir to the shelter's open face.
Rowan looked over the load. The route that had let them slip away also brought a person onto the camp's uphill side. The canvas had been set to keep rain off the injured, not to keep their bedding out of sight from above.
“We can move the entrance,” he said.
“The whole roof?”
“No. Close that side. Bring them out between the carts.”
Cadd called to the Cresting warden. The two of them walked the remaining space before asking Belda. She came out, heard where Rowan had seen the movement, and looked at the opening they meant to use.
“I need room to get beside him,” she said. “And light.”
The nearest cart stood too close to the wall. Cadd brought two people to take the shafts while Rowan cradled the load in a low silver working. With its weight held steady, they rolled the cart far enough to give Belda room. Rowan let the moonlight go once Venn had wedged the wheel.
With the cart screening the higher slope, they turned the canvas opening toward the wall. Phia kept the travelers and their bedding clear while Belda made room beside the injured man’s head.
The head-wounded man woke when they moved his bed. He tried to sit, confused by the hands around him. Belda put her palm against his shoulder and told him where he was. She repeated it while Rowan helped bring the folded bedding through the new entrance.
Outside, Cadd's watch did not move. Rowan could hear their short calls passing between the road ends. It took less than half an hour to turn the shelter, but the open sky above the bank made the work feel longer.
When they finished, the man had settled again. Phia came out with the empty water vessel.
“Did you find them?”
“No. Food and a hatchet. Someone may still be above it.”
She looked toward the closed uphill side of the roof. “Enough for this, then.”
Rowan took the vessel. Before he could turn toward the stream, Phia raised her hand. Water came over the lower bank in a clear reach and settled into it, then filled the smaller jug beside his boot. She closed her fingers, and the last bright drops slipped beneath the rim. Venn watched the trees while Rowan carried both inside.
Cadd waited until they were beneath the roof before looking uphill again. He called the remaining Cresting warden over. The man knew the road above the fallen trees and could tell them where people might leave it, but he had not walked the strip beyond the fir.
“We can watch its opening,” he said. “Not every tree.”
“That's what I want,” Rowan replied. “No one goes up to fetch the tool. If someone comes down, we call them from cover. They don't reach the shelter before we've spoken.”
The warden looked at Cadd, who nodded.
Rowan asked the guard about the words Venn had heard during the retreat. Cadd remembered the threat of more men clearly. There had been something shouted before it, but he had been moving his people back toward the carts.
“Could have been landings,” he said. “Could have been something else. He had a mouth full of cloth until he pulled it down.”
Rowan recorded Cadd’s and Venn’s words separately. The earlier report was traveling with Bren; this sheet would wait until someone could carry it without leaving care or protection short.
Late in the afternoon, Venn saw the wrapping move beneath the old stem.
He did not call until he was sure. Rowan came to the cart, staying below its covered edge, and looked where the guard pointed. A hand drew the brown fold inward. The blanket's rolled end disappeared after it. They could see no more of the person than that.
Cadd's hand tightened on the cart board. “He's taking it.”
Rowan watched the fir's opening. No one emerged.
“Let him,” he said.
“The hatchet too.”
“We don't know who is above him.”
Cadd turned toward him, then looked back to the shelter. Belda was bringing the newly dressed traveler a bowl. One of the man's hands shook when he reached for it; she held the bowl until he had put it down safely.
The brown fold vanished beneath the roots. Venn shifted enough to keep the upper opening in view, but Rowan put a hand against his arm before he climbed any higher.
“From here.”
The guard stayed.
They waited until the strip behind the fir became difficult to see. No one came onto the road.
Cadd brought the watches closer for the dark. From the new entrance, Rowan could see the road between the carts and a guard beside the wall. He could no longer see the patch beneath the fir.
The head-wounded traveler asked whether the others had reached home. Belda told him they were still on the road. He considered that for a while, then asked if anyone had taken his bag.
Phia found it beneath his bedding. He put his hand through the strap and went back to sleep.
Rowan sat outside the entrance. He had a clear drawing of where the bundle had been, and no hatchet to lay beside it. Above him, the trees carried on into ground he knew only by the shape of the range. He kept the folded account ready inside his coat and took the first watch at the cart.