Cold autumn air lapped at his skin as he stepped from the ship. His hands shook–half from cold, half from the itching anticipation about what was to come. His legs wobbled beneath him like a sailor fresh from sea.

Hain blinked against the darkness as his eyes adjusted. His breath was chrome smoke in the moonlight. He turned in place, taking in their new surroundings. The moon shone full over the horizon, burnishing the dips and swells of distant farmland in silver. Beyond the farms, soft lights shimmered from a dozen places high from the ground.

Sierra.

The tremor in his hands worsened at the sight, and he slung the rifle over one shoulder to keep them busy.

"Do you want me to look inside for a blanket?" Lilith asked as the ship's entrance shut behind her.

"I'm fine," he said, feeling anything but. "I just need to move. Get my blood pumping."

Lilith's mouth turned up in a half-smile. "If only you had your pack. I'm sure you had a blanket stuffed in there somewhere."

Hain forced out a tiny, bland laugh that felt more than a bit obligatory.

"How long until daybreak?"

"A few hours," she said. "Those riders will be back to the haven by now."

"What's the plan once we reach Sierra?"

"Steal inside the haven. Find Sam and Aedan."

"You think Sam's inside as well?"

"Like I said, that group I tracked didn't have a single Vrai with them, so they must have been from Sierra," she said. "If Sam's around, then he's in the haven."

Unless he's dead on that battlefield, Hain thought, but left the fear unsaid.

"What about anyone we run into once we're inside the haven?" He brought his hands to his mouth and blew warm air into them. "What are we going to do about them?"

She hefted her rifle with one hand. "That's why we have these." She put her other hand on the dagger at her hip. "And these."

Hain rested a hand on his own dagger. "I don't know how useful I'm going to be in a fight."

"You just hold your own." She gestured at his rifle. "You remember how to work that?"

He let out an uneasy breath and unslung the weapon. "Point the small end at the thing you want to be dead."

"And don't forget to pull that," she said, pointing at the trigger. "Or else you might as well be holding a stick."

The rifle rattled in his trembling hands. "I don't know if I can do this."

"The treaty is broken, Hain. The Dyad know Echo soldiers to their haven." She kept her eyes pinned to him as she stabbed a finger toward the lights of Sierra. "What do you think they'll do to Sam and Aedan now that we're at war?"

Hain didn't need to answer. He and Lilith both knew what would happen.

"I retract my earlier answer." Hain's chin trembled as he nodded. "I think I can do it."

"Don't just think." Lilith's voice was stone. "Do. Our friends need us, and no one else is coming to help."

With that Lilith spun from him, and began their march toward the haven. Hain hesitated, hated himself for it, and then followed after.

~~~

A breeze blew in from the farmland wrapping the haven, heaving the stink of manure and tilled earth into their faces. Gauzy clouds rode the wind and shrouded the moon until the land turned black as the sea at midnight. Windows glinted on farmstead cottages as they passed. Glass shone like dead eyes in the dreamy moonlight while their thatched roofs rose from the darkness like spiny monsters born from briny depths.

Mud sucked at Hain's boots, and sweat coated his back as he chased Lilith toward the tight fist of the haven's walls. Open farmland gave way to clapboard hamlets, and his eyes tricked him with silhouettes of watching faces as they passed within a stone's throw of the dwellings.

The haven's walls loomed ahead some hundred yards, but Hain's attention was snagged by the song warbling from a nearby shanty–the kind of singing that invariably followed a night's hard drinking.

Hain cocked his head to try and pick words from the slurred tune when he plowed into Lilith's back.

He cried out as he fought to keep himself upright, but managed only to hit the mud with his back rather than his face.

"Damn it, Lilith," he hissed. The muck sucked at him as he tried to rise, fighting to keep his rifle from getting wet. "What did you do that for?"

Lilith was silent. Motionless. But Hain, too focused on digging a clot of mud from the back of his armor, barely noticed. It wasn't until the throaty growl of a dog met his ears that he froze as well.

Then it was on them. A snarling bark rent the air. The dog lunged for Lilith. Snapping jaws found empty air as Lilith twisted away. Hain tried to bring his rifle to bear on the rippling shadow, but Lilith was too quick. Her dagger hissed against against its sheath. Metal flashed. Hain heard the coarse sound of steel grinding past bone. The dog yipped once, then fell into the mud with a slurping plop.

The violence ended as quick as it had begun, the sound of Hain's gulping breaths the only testament to it ever having existed at all. He stared down at where he thought the dog had fallen, but the sodden ground and veiled moon seemed to cast a shrouding spell over the corpse.

Lilith spoke from the darkness. "You still with me?"

Hain blinked, thinking for a moment that the ground had spoken, until Lilith laid a hand on his shoulder. He looked up, and found her face inches from his own.

"Sorry," he said, dragging a tongue that felt like leather over his lips. "What did you say?"

She studied his face, her icy blue eyes turned white as a Foew's in the scant moonlight.

"I asked if you were alright."

"Fine," he said, though he didn't believe the words. "Completely fine."

"Good," she said, tugging him along at her side. "Then let's go."

Again, he followed, his heart ramming against his ribs to the rhythm of his pounding feet as he ran full bore after her.

It wasn't until they reached the wall that he realized the drunken singing behind them had gone silent.