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The night along the two forest borders tasted like iron cooled too fast. Dew beaded on the edges of spearheads and ran down the lacquered plates of armor in slow threads that disappeared against black chitin.
Thousands of bodies at rest breathed in a rhythm that made the ridge feel like a single chest drawing in forest air and letting it go again. Orders crawled through the ranks in whispers and fingers. There was no shouted command. There did not need to be. The camp had been built to move without voices.
Before dawn the four thousand chosen to march peeled away from the great body of the army like slivers from a seasoned log. Each left in its own direction. Each wore a different shape.
Skall's thousand went by the marsh road where the border river lost its argument with the land and flattened into swales, reeds, and underfoot water that did not shine even when the light found it.
