After a brief introduction to the rest council, Ivy had her daughter lead me back to what was evidently my room for the day. On the way back, I pointed out that I felt perfectly fine, if only maybe a little slow. Instead of arguing, she had me come outside onto a balcony where I discovered this structure was suspended a good fifty feet off the forest floor, nestled around several large trees. I’m not too proud to admit I promptly locked up and had to be almost dragged back inside.

  While I wrestled with my apparent sudden onset agoraphobia, Róis related the explanation she’d been given, that I’d react to unfamiliar situations unpredictably until I’d properly recovered from their Patron’s ministrations. When I asked why, Róis merely shrugged.

  Once we were back to my room, Róis brushed off the first question I had about my situation by pointing out I’d be more clearheaded tomorrow and that Ivy and Rowan, both far more knowledgeable, would be available then. She did answer one question before leaving to have a meal prepared for me, so I at least knew the gear I’d left tarped at the bottom of the hill was being retrieved today. The rest of my gear in the keep would have to wait until I was well enough.

  I wasn’t terribly thrilled about that, but I’d had enough strange instances of my body not quite doing what I wanted since I woke up that I knew to not push things terribly far. I wasn’t a prisoner, per se, but I wasn’t entirely being treated as a guest, either.

  It didn’t take me terribly long to come up with a few possible explanations, most hinging on Ivy and the rest of the Council treating my existence as a secret and anything to do with me as close-hold. Provided I was anywhere close on the explanation, they were laying the groundwork for my stay while I recovered. The fact they’d returned everything I’d been wearing when they recovered me, including my weapons, quieted the darker part of my mind.

  Right as sleep finally took me, a series of quiet thoughts occurred to me: they’d returned the knife and the tomahawk, but they couldn’t possibly know what the pistol was. I shouldn’t let my guard down until they let down theirs.

  ***

  I woke to find Rowan sitting on the edge of my bed staring at me. “Can I help you?”

  She held out a small ceramic bottle that I cautiously accepted. “You snore. That liniment will help.”

  “Thanks?” When she didn’t move, I pushed off the woven blanket someone had laid on me and sat up.

  Her eyes met mine. “You have a lot of scars.”

  Wasn’t much use denying that, especially since she’d been eyeballing my chest as I sat up. “I do.”

  “Soldier?”

  “I am.”

  “Good.” She stood and walked over to the door. “Get up. By your standards, we have a tough march ahead of us.” While I strapped on my holster and the sheathes, she commented, “You’re tall for a human.”

  I’m not normally a smart-ass with people I don’t know, but I couldn’t really help repeating a line I’d heard many times from a guy in my squad back in the Rangers. “Everything is bigger in Texas, Ma’am.”

  She eyeballed me skeptically. “So long as that doesn’t include your ego, I suppose that is acceptable.”

  Discretion being the better part of valor, I changed topics. “If we’re going back to my camp, we’re going to need a few more people unless you’re planning on multiple trips.”

  She merely nodded and jerked her head toward the door before walking out. I grabbed my backpack and rifle before following. A minute later, we crossed to a different structure in the canopy, one with a winding staircase suspended by ropes that descended to the forest floor. The sentry at the top eyed me warily but said nothing.

  “Wait for me here. Talk to no one.”

  Once she was out of sight, I pulled my watch out of the cargo pocket I’d stashed it in at camp and put it on. I’d always liked the pathfinder series Casio made, and the ability to track multiple time zones was one of the reasons why. I made a best guess and set the watch to what I hoped was reasonably close to local time.

  A few minutes later, Rowan and another harvester, both ghillied up, walked over. Rowan motioned. I followed.

  I waited until we were a short distance away from the village to ask, “Did I offend you somehow?”

  “Offend?” Rowan asked, sounding amused. “No. Humans are just easy to kill.”

  And with that comment, I understood her. She was almost certainly going through the motions for an op Ivy had tossed in her lap without being given an opportunity to provide input. Not only had my arrival fucked up whatever schedule she had, she saw me as weak, ineffective. The way the Harvesters carried themselves reminded me a bit of the Rangers back home. It’d probably taken most of her military bearing to not snort at the idea I could be trained as a Harvester.

  Inconvenient as this was, now that I understood, I could respect her to an extent. She was terse, yes, but not necessarily going out of her way to be an ass. I’d seen people in leadership react much worse to similar surprises in the Rangers. I just needed to prove myself without being a dick about it, just as any Regiment newbie had to.

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  Estimating distances through rough terrain was never my strength, especially when we stopped every other minute to circle around fallen trees or navigate root-strewn broken slope, but when we emerged next to what I’d thought was the orchard north of the keep, I guessed it’d taken us thirty minutes to clear a mile, two at most.

  Rowan paused a few paces into the open and glanced back at me. “You kept up. Without complaining, even.”

  Oh please. It’d take a lot more than that to kick my ass. “I suppose I should be out of breath and about ready to pass out then? The pace wasn’t that bad.”

  “Not that bad,” I barely heard the other Harvester mutter under her breath incredulously.

  Yeah, trying to smoke me out. No different than DIs with empty rucks running troops with eighty pounds in theirs. Now, do I smoke them out instead or just roll with it? What’s good for the goose, amiright?

  “What? We’re taking a break already?” I pointedly asked and swapped to a double time pace that put me out front. I didn’t quite catch what Rowan’s companion whispered behind me, but I doubted it was complimentary.

  I skirted the orderly trees, taking note they bore a variety of unripe familiar fruits, but several rows looked like nut trees. When I hit the ramp, I powered through and only came up short where I’d left my rope. A half dozen leather-clad elves jumped to their feet the moment I came into view.

  Several tense moments followed where the air filled with the sound of steel clearing sheaths and me, with my hands up, insisting I was friendly. They didn’t seem terribly convinced.

  Hearing footsteps behind me, I glanced back. “Took you long enough.”

  Rowan’s eyes twinkled. “Scared of the militia?”

  I spared a glance at the militia types, mostly to judge distance, and flashed a slightly less than friendly smile. “From this distance? Please.”

  Her humor hardened into something stern, yet curious. “Oh?”

  “Only an idiot completely gives away their advantage, Rowan. Is it safe to assume they’re here to help with bringing my gear back?”

  She smirked. “Provided it’s up there at all. I still don’t believe the wardens just let you stroll in and set up camp.”

  “The wardens? I didn’t see anything up there when I spent the night.”

  That caught her attention. She looked confused for a split second and her eyes went up to the keep overhead. “You saw nothing? Nothing at all?”

  “No? Well, the cat was there when I woke up. Speaking of, where is he?”

  Rowan frowned at me. “Our Patron’s messengers go where they please. If you’re meant to meet again, you shall.”

  “Fair enough.” I walked over to the rope and gave it a slight tug as I looked at the top.

  “Is he really going up there?” one of the militia behind me asked quietly.

  After I planted a foot on the rock face and started up, another answered, “Looks like it.”

  “Everyone back up,” I heard Rowan say rather loudly. “Wouldn’t want you to get showered with gore.”

  When I reached the top I had a hell of an idea pop into my head, one certainly brought into existence by my inner E-4, but I knew now was not the time. As fun as ducking out of sight and screaming might’ve been, you only do that sort of thing to folks in your unit when everyone knows everyone. Or you’re a dumbass E-4.

  Naturally, when I turned to enter the keep I did so with a sense of satisfaction that I’d grown beyond such things. That lasted for precisely as long as it took my subconscious to identify the armored figure just outside of handshake range before me as a threat. Roughly my height, clad in segmented plate and chain, the thing made absolutely zero noise. It also had absolutely zero visible flesh, which is not to say it was entirely covered. No, where skin should have been was just deep, light-eating shadow.

  Several things happened in rapid succession. First, my conscious mind went blank. Second, my pistol materialized in my hands, and I put two full metal jacketed rounds into its chest followed instinctively by another centered right in the shadowed open face of its helmet. An instant later, just as my trigger finger began tightening for another round of hearts and minds adjustment, my brain registered the bullet splash on the wall behind my target. What? I missed? Not at this distance.

  I started to step back to control distance, only for the part of my subconscious responsible for preventing silly mistakes to remind me that only open air waited in that direction. Hitting the end of its immediately available responses, my lizard brain elected to punt and hand things back to my conscious mind, which was still scrambling to figure out what the hell was going on.

  The thing’s head tilted to one side ever so slightly and scanned left and right as if it heard something curious, as if I wasn’t here and hadn’t just attempted a kinetic lobotomy.

  “Ho, human! Are you still with us?”

  Rowan’s voice tugged some sort of mental override and I sidled off around the warden, just in time for the figure to silently step forward and look down from the rock’s edge. Several militia members below gasped.

  “Well, guess not. I suppose that’s today’s entertainment, boys.”

  I recognized the faux disappointment in Rowan’s voice, if only because I’d been in her position before. Few people can be more sardonic than an NCO when the easily foreseen moment of failure arrives, especially when they warned people beforehand.

  I cleared my throat as I inched farther from the specter and then leaned over the edge a safe distance away. “Still here, Captain.”

  The only sound for the next five seconds came from the wind as the assembled troupe glanced between me and what I presumed was one of Rowan’s wardens.

  “How in the Green Goddess’s name are you still alive, hu—” Rowan coughed. “Samuel? It’s literally right there next to you.”

  I grinned sheepishly at her and glanced over my shoulder momentarily. “I’m quite aware where it is. Did you know this place is full of these things? Like, most of them look human, but I’m pretty sure I saw a few that looked like elves. Anyway, I’ll be back with my stuff in a minute.”

  After policing up my brass, I made my way to the keep proper and quickly wished I’d been exaggerating. Most of the wardens looked similar to the first one I’d run into, a mix of chain and plate armor. The swordsmen variants seemed to be patrolling the courtyard while the ones with polearms stood where I would’ve been tempted to place stationary guards. The fact a few of the spearmen seemed to be standing at the edge of the areas where the rock was slightly darker made me suspect they guarded structures that had been made entirely of wood. I pegged the wardens atop the walls as archers fairly quickly, if only because they wore lighter armor and what few scabbards I could see were fairly short. A handful of the archers seemed of slighter build and wore dark cloaks that hid their armor.

  I paused where the stairs turned halfway up the keep wall and glanced about one last time to firm up my warden population estimate before continuing upward. There I found a gaggle of swordsmen standing about on the landing outside the doorway. Hoping this wasn’t the sort of forewarning you’d get in a video game about the next room being a boss battle, I weaved through them and through the door, only to step into a situation that made me wish I’d been a bit less nonchalant about the silent interlopers.