We stayed in the valley.
Not by plan — by the particular logic of exhaustion meeting circumstance, the afternoon light already angling low by the time we'd debriefed and assessed and determined that riding back to the territory and then returning in forty-eight hours made less tactical sense than holding the position we had.
Kael sent Edran back with a message for Vael. Instructions for the next forty-eight hours — the four contacts in the operational chain, what to monitor, what to report, what to hold. Edran left without argument, which was simply how Edran operated.
The rest of us stayed.
The valley had room — barely, for six people, but the small stone structure had more interior space than it suggested from outside and the garden offered enough cleared ground for bedrolls. Mara mo
