[This post is from Marin’s point of view.]
I sucked in a breath, breaking into a jog for the last few dozen yards to the wall. “What have we got?” I shouted up toward Seamus, slowing again only as I approached the ladder up to the top of the wall.
“Unnatural mist and shadow,” he called back. “Got a bad feeling.”
That makes two of us. I took two breaths. “Can you see anything in the mist?”
“Nothing clear.”
I climbed the ladder quickly, Matt half a step behind. Seamus made eye contact with me as I came up over the edge, moving toward him where he perched a few feet down from the gates. His gaze flicked away for a moment, lighting on the warhammer slung across Matt’s back, then returned to me, a bit more troubled than it had been a moment before.
I said nothing as I turned to survey the ground that lay before the gates, still clear, though a mist gathered at the far end of the field, beyond where the road had been, where its remnants still stood. It was just as Seamus had said—nothing discernable moving in that mist, in those shadows.
A chill crept down my spine just the same, like a rivulet of ice running down from the nape of my neck all the way to the small of my back.
“There’s something out there,” I said quietly.
“No doubt,” Seamus said, still watching me. “It’s the who and the what and the numbers they bring.”
“Magic,” Matt murmured by my side, his gaze focused on the mist the same as mine. “They’ve called a mist to hide themselves.”
“Do you know who it is?”
He shook his head slowly in response to my question. “No. But give me a minute and I’ll figure it out. I can just barely sense—” He fell silent for a moment, leaning against the top of the wall. “There’s something familiar. I just need another moment.”
Drums echoed softly in the distance. I swallowed bile.
“I don’t know if we have it.”
