"And the traces in the camp? Were they fresh? Had it just been abandoned, or had it been empty for a long time?" Ian pressed.
"It was abandoned not long before our men arrived," Wilder confirmed. "The bonfires were still smoking when our horsemen rode in."
"That doesn't seem right. According to you, after the patrol from Taman Village sent word, you immediately dispatched a team to check, but they only found an empty camp. Even if the enemy had a spy in your ranks, it would be impossible to evacuate so quickly and in such an orderly fashion, would it not?"
"My apologies," Ser Wilder said with an awkward smile. "'Immediately' was perhaps an overstatement. It was an overview of the event. In truth, after we received the news, it took us some time before we could send the cavalry out."
"How much time?" Ian's tone was sharp, demanding. "I need accurate information."
"An hour," Wilder answered, feeling an inexplicable sense that he was a subordinate reporting to his commander. "Yes, that's about right. One hour."
"That is still too short," Ian said, shaking his head. "Your spy would need to receive the order, report the news, and then the Ghosts would have to pack up everything and vanish before your cavalry even arrived."
"A raven," Ser Wilder explained. "We held a council of war to discuss the matter. It was Ser Simon who believed the enemy used a raven to pass the message."
"A raven?" Ian understood at once. If the spy and the Ghosts were communicating via raven, then the timeline made perfect sense. And if the Ghosts of Whitewalls were truly hunting for Blackfyre treasure, it wasn't surprising they would have literate men capable of managing ravens in their service.
"And you haven't found another of their camps since?" Ian continued his questioning.
"No," Ser Wilder admitted. "We conducted a thorough search of the entire area, but we never found another trace of them."
"Wait. A *thorough* search?" Ian scoffed. "You have five hundred men, and you dare say you conducted a thorough search of such a vast territory?" An area that spanned thousands of square kilometers...
"Well, it wasn't just our men, of course," Wilder clarified. "The patrolmen and hunters from more than twenty nearby villages provided their aid. Many of those villages are on lands belonging to members of our alliance. My own, for instance—Ryger, Wolfsden, and Hogg Hall—as well as Taman and Jodeye, which belong to House Darry."
"The Darrys still hold lands here?" Ian asked, a flicker of genuine surprise on his face.
"A few villages, yes. At their peak, House Darry held nearly sixty villages from the east bank of the Gods Eye to the south bank of the Trident. Now, only four remain."
*They're lucky not to have been stripped of everything,* Ian thought with a touch of dark humor. *Only a king as tolerant as Robert Baratheon would allow that.*
"With the help of the local patrols and hunters," Ser Wilder continued, "we searched all the most likely hiding places in the region. But in the end, we found nothing."
Ian fell silent. He felt a knot in his gut, a certainty that there was a major flaw in their story, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.
"Alright, let's set that topic aside for now," Ian sighed softly. "Let's continue. Tell me about this new stronghold you've discovered."
"It's in an abandoned fishing village on the south bank of the Trident's mouth, six leagues north of here—about twenty-nine kilometers."
"An abandoned fishing village? Why was it abandoned?"
"It was a small village, built around a natural harbor. During Robert's Rebellion," Wilder paused, his expression grim, "it was sacked by an unknown army. Almost no one survived."
"After the war, the great lords of this area—House Ryger, House Darry, and the Moutons of Maidenpool—all lost much of their power for siding with the Targaryens. The entire Crossroads region fell into a depression. That fishing village was just one of more than forty settlements in this area that were abandoned after the war."
"A sad story," Ian commented, though his face remained impassive. "Go on. What have you discovered?"
"We suspect," Ser Wilder said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "that the Ghosts of Whitewalls have found the Blackfyre Treasure and are in the process of moving it there."
Even though Ian had already deduced they had found a key clue, the bluntness of the statement still stunned him.
This elusive band of 'Ghosts,' who had never left so much as a single trace behind, had not only been located but were caught in the act of moving their prize?
"On what basis do you draw this conclusion?" Ian asked, his skepticism clear.
"It began," Ser Wilder started, pausing to gather his thoughts, "when we realized the Ghosts of Whitewalls had ceased all their raiding activities for the past two weeks."
"They just sacked the salt mine in Harroway's Town three days ago!" Ser Willy, who had been silent until now, blurted out, interrupting Wilder.
For a moment, Ian couldn't contain himself. A short, sharp laugh escaped his lips. *Yes! The Ghosts of Whitewalls did it! Blame them for everything!*
"What are you laughing at?" Wilder looked at Ian, puzzled.
*I was thinking of happy things,* Ian thought. "It's nothing," he said, composing himself. "It's just that he refuted you the moment you finished speaking. I found it amusing."
*So you are just a young man, after all,* Wilder thought, inexplicably relieved. "The salt mine in Harroway's Town was indeed attacked three days ago," he conceded. "I heard many died."
"But according to the mine's foreman, he had temporarily lent the mine to a traveling merchant. We believe this was a personal conflict between that merchant and some rival. It should have nothing to do with the Ghosts. It is just… the Ghosts have done so much evil in these parts for so long, everyone likes to blame them for anything that goes wrong."
"Alright," Ian said, his face a perfect mask of neutrality. "Let's assume the attack on the salt mine had nothing to do with the Ghosts of Whitewalls." *Of course it didn't. That was the work of the Ghosts of Lannister,* he added silently. "What then?"
"The Ghosts of Whitewalls seem to have vanished into thin air," Wilder said. "Which has made us very worried. We fear they have found the treasure and are preparing to evacuate the region entirely."
"So why couldn't they have simply given up after realizing they couldn't find it?" Ian countered.
"That is a possibility, of course," Wilder explained patiently. "But in any case, their sudden disappearance is not a good thing for us."
*A dangerous bandit group that has plagued you for months finally disappears, and you don't consider that a good thing?* Ian thought with immense sarcasm. *What a good and competent lord you are.*
"So," Wilder concluded, "we dispersed our men to try and find their whereabouts."