The realization that there was another force on their battlefield had Eirian returning to camp in a foul mood. "Could it be a rogue element? A party of bandits, maybe? I helped take down a large one on the Still Water once. They had nearly fifty members by the time we brought them down."
Wayland, Vitali, and Tanning shared a wide-eyed look, who knew where the hell Wen Chunhan was, and Tanning offered, "It would be surprising that a group that size went unnoticed by the villages, let alone the tribes."
Eirian scowled. Foolishly, she'd forgotten about the tribes in that respect. The tribes hated the Camelia encroaching on their space; it would make sense they'd hate someone else doing it to them. "It doesn't make sense that it was another tribe."
Vitali, Wayland, and Tanning nodded in agreement.
"And they didn't kill and burn themselves," Eirian growled. "I've never heard of an emmolation practice among the tribes?"
"There isn't one," Wayland responded immediately. "There are tribes in the Wasteland that have a practice like that. When someone dies, someone else burns themselves to go with them into the afterlife, so they won't be alone."
Vitali asked the question they were all thinking. "What happens if no one wants to go with them?"
Wayland's grimace said everything. "Someone always burns. My parents traveled the Wasteland extensively when they were young, and they saw a young woman forcibly burned to join some old man, and it always stuck with them."
Eirian's lip curled in disgust. "Lovely." She said with all the sarcasm she could muster. "I'm sure their journey to the afterlife was pleasant."
"I'd make him miserable," Vitali muttered, and Eirian wholeheartedly agreed.
"Unfortunately, this doesn't help us figure out who's burning the camps. Unless some random tribe from the Wasteland journeyed three thousand miles and no one noticed." Wayland sighed.
Eirian sprawled in her chair in the command tent, staring up at the patterned ceiling as she tried to relax and think through everything that had happened. The sun was already starting to set, and the day patrols would be returning soon, and the night patrols headed out. Word had already spread through the camp about the tribal camps, and the guards had doubled without any order needed. Soldiers were a superstitious lot, and it was already turning into a ghost story of wispy bandits that faded in and out of the wheat when the moon was out.
Eirian wasn't sure where some of the leaps had come from, but it was an excellent example of how fables and myths developed, and Eirian had always enjoyed reading those.
The burned camp stayed in her mind the rest of the evening, distracting her from everything else. She had dinner with her sub-commanders. Wen Chunhan finally showed up, looking perfectly put together except for a decorative smear of ash across his forehead. He seemed appropriately shocked to hear about the burned camps, but that concern faded quickly and was easily overwhelmed by his anger that someone was trying to frame the Camelia for it.
Eirian sent a letter to Chenzhou about the issue and received one from him detailing identical events in the north. They'd both written to Mingzhe to see if it was happening in the south, but it would take a day or two before they got a response.
But even as she went to bed, Eirian couldn't get the image of piles of ash among the wheat stalks out of her mind.
Impulsively, she went to the stables instead of her bed. Fleet Goddess had a roomy stall to herself and perked up when Eirian entered. It only took minutes to get her saddled, and Eirian rode out as the moon rose in the sky. The guards had hesitated when she passed them, but none of them were willing to stop her.
The prairie at night was an eerie thing. Shafts of moonlight broke through the clouds, and the wheat stalks glowed under the strongest of it. It was silent, the animals abed and those that did come out at night, silent. There wasn't even a wind tonight, except the one Eirian experienced from Fleet Goddess's back as she raced across the prairie.
The image of the burned camp was still at the forefront of Eirian's mind; something about it wouldn't leave her. Something she couldn't put her finger on, but left a gnawing pit of worry in her stomach.
It only took two hours for Fleet Goddess to cover the ground between the Crimson Army's camp and the burned tribal camp, and Eirian pulled her to a stop as the remains came into view. The clouds had cleared, illuminating the area, and Eirian could see everything in stark detail in the moonlight.
She urged Fleet Goddess forward slowly. Something about what she was looking at was wrong, but Eirian couldn't identify what. She drew Ardain, whose song was slow and low, and her blade gleamed in the moonlight.
Fleet Goddess tensed as they got closer, coming to a stop on her own only a few hundred yards from the fire line. Eirian waited, still, and finally, a whisper of movement among the burned tents revealed what had put both their instincts on alert.
Someone was moving among the burned remains.
There was a chance it was someone from the Crimson Army, but if it was, they were there without permission. It could have been someone from another tribe investigating what happened. Or one of the perpetrators returning to check their work.
Eirian dismounted and crouched low, moving through the wheat as quickly and quietly as she could. The figure moved among the tents as she crept closer and, as she approached the edge of the camp, stepped fully into view for the first time.
It was a human, tall and broad and mostly likely male, but not one whose blood was from Song and Snow or the borderlands. Probably not even Sorrow, since he was bigger than even her dead uncle Jacques, who'd been the tallest of their family.
This figure still had inches on him, and Eirian estimated she'd only come up to his chest. He wore a long dark cloak, but the hood was down, and she could see their hair was dark, darker even than Chenzhou's, which resembled the midnight sky.
Her hand flexed around Ardain's hilt as she stepped out of the wheat. "Stop where you stand."
The figure froze, just for a second, before turning to her, and Eirian's breath caught when she saw his eyes.
A brilliant, icy blue that she recognized from her dreams. They were set in a human face now. Male, with a strong jaw and brow, and a vicious smile.
It was Death, she realized, taken human form.
~ tbc