The camp was larger than Valen had expected.
It filled the whole valley floor: a sprawl of tents and timber huts, cookfires and workshops, with a palisade wall only half built, standing gap-toothed against the sky.
People moved between the buildings with the purposeful walk of those who had somewhere to be. Children ran through the lanes, and somewhere far off a hammer rang against an anvil, steady as a heartbeat.
Valen felt the absence of trees like a weight pressing on his chest.
The whole camp had been raised on cleared ground, and at its edges the old stumps still showed, weathered and grey, like the stubs of teeth.
The hillside they had crossed that morning had been a scar. This was the place the wound had been made for.
They cut it all down, he thought. Every root, every seed.
Tessa walked at his shoulder with her ears pressed flat against her skull. She said nothing, and after a while he realized she was walking a half step closer to him than she normally would.
