Amara lifted her hands and called to Cirrus, willing the fury to bend light in the space between her palms. The air there blurred for a moment, and then came into sharper focus, magnifying her view of the area ahead of them.

There were three men moving through the swamps. They were dressed in garim-hide cloaks, trousers, and boots, and the mottled hides of the swamp lizards blended in perfectly with all the green and grey and brown around them. In fact, Amara never would have seen them at all except for-

She willed Cirrus to draw her view even closer to the three men, and she focused on the one in the lead. Around his throat was the gleam of a polished, metallic collar. With her fury's help, she was even able to make out the word engraved on the steel: Immortalis.

"Immortals," she whispered. "They're Immortals, Bernard."

He said nothing, but she saw his eyes flicker with concern. The enslaved warriors had been driven beyond madness by the furycrafted collars that controlled them. Kalarus's Immortals had been responsible for the deaths of dozens of Citizens on the Night of the Red Stars. They were virtual juggernauts, entirely insensible to pain, completely focused upon serving their master, Kalarus. Amara had seen Immortals simply ignore swords thrust through their throats, limbs severed from their bodies, accepting hideous wounds more than willingly in order to strike down the targets their master had sent them to eliminate.

"Crows," Bernard murmured.

A moment later, Amara saw something else, through the haze of humidity, beyond the patrolling Immortals.

"Bernard," she whispered. "I can see the mountains."

He took a deep breath. She felt his hand move to her and rest for a moment on the small of her back. "How far?"

"Ten miles?" she guessed. "Twelve?"

He nodded. "Close."

"The patrol is passing us," she said. "We can push through today if we hurry."

She had already begun to move forward when Bernard's hand slid around to press against her stomach and hold her back. "Wait," he said quietly.

"For what?" she asked.

"If Kalarus has his Immortals here," he said, "then they're looking for us, specifically. He wouldn't send them out unless he thought it was that important."

"Agreed," Amara said.

"Those three are the sentinels we do see," Bernard said. "But I'm more worried about the ones we don't."

Amara frowned. "What do we do, then?"

"We watch them," he said. "We wait. We'll see how regular their patrols are and look for a way to slip through between them."

"Wait?" Amara said. She looked at the vague, vast forms of the mountains in the distance. "We're so close."

"We can't get sloppy now," Bernard said, his voice solid, certain. "We wait."

"I thought you were worried about someone catching up to us from behind."

"I am," he said, nodding. "But the men coming behind us have to search miles and miles of swamp, sweeping along in one big, slow line. The Immortals have a much smaller area to watch."

"What happens if they catch up to us while we're waiting?"

"Pretty much the same thing that happens if we rush out there and bump into a gang of Immortals standing sentry in a hidden blind," Bernard said.

"That's not terribly encouraging," Amara said.

"I can't take you anywhere." He gestured around them, pausing to brush a swimming serpent, nudging it gently aside. "No matter how nice it is, you always seem to think it could be just a little bit better."

Amara's stomach twitched in tiny jerks, and her quiet breaths of laughter stirred the water beneath her nose and mouth.

"Plenty of trees," Bernard said. "A beautiful view." He slapped at himself as one of the stinging flies that filled the swamp struck at his ear. "Friendly neighbors."

"You know me, Bernard. I'm just one of those women who needs someone to do everything for her."

His eyes wrinkled at the corners, and he started snorting quiet laughter, too. "Crows, yes. That's you."

"I have a suggestion," murmured Gaius. "If you're both quite finished amusing one another."

Bernard gave Amara a sidelong look and his hand moved under the surface of the muddy water.

She clutched at his wrist and tried to glare at him as her cheeks turned scarlet. "Pardon, sire, of course."

Bernard grinned and turned his attention forward once more.

Gaius coughed a few times. "I would suggest that you wait until near sunset, Countess, and then fly an aerial reconnaissance. It's generally easier to spot hidden sentry posts from above."

"What if they have Knights Aeris about?" Bernard asked.

"We've not heard any windstreams of late," Gaius replied. "Besides. Even if there are enemy Knights Aeris, the Countess is more than capable of handling herself. And in the meanwhile, we can observe enemy movements before drawing any closer."

Amara glanced at Bernard, who frowned pensively for a moment, then nodded. "They already know we're about. It might be worth the risk to know more about what's immediately ahead." He grimaced down at the water. "Going to be a little damp while we wait, though."

"We'll take turns on the stretcher," Gaius said. "I won't need both legs to support my weight in the water."

"No," Amara said. "That isn't going to happen, sire."

Gaius blinked. "Excuse me? Countess, I believe that I am perfect-" He broke off, coughing again, struggling to smother the sound with his hands. The sound became ugly for just a moment, and then he got himself under control again. "You may," he breathed, "have a point."

They settled in to wait.

During the course of the day, patrols swept by every two to three hours, on varying paths. The last patrol passed to within twenty yards of them, but Bernard had raised a woodcrafting around them, and once more, they remained unseen.

Finally, the shadows began to stretch, and Amara murmured, "I'd best draw back a little way. I don't want to chance them hearing my takeoff."

Bernard nodded once and kissed her cheek. "Be careful. Good luck."

Amara paced silently back through the swamps and found a point of higher ground which she could use to become airborne. She grimaced at all the mud on her and did her best to get the heaviest bits off before she called out to Cirrus. It was a bit of an effort, given the way the mud hampered her ability to will her fury to action, but she took off on the quietest windstream she could manage and ascended several thousand feet, to the edge of her ability to see what was below her in detail.

For a single glorious moment she paused to take a deep breath, her face turned up to the sun, and gently urged Cirrus to dry her clothing. She'd been wearing wet things for so long, she'd almost forgotten what anything else felt like. The air smelled fresh and clean, this high up, and more importantly, it was entirely free of the constant stench of rotting vegetable matter. For that matter, she couldn't remember the last time she had gone so long without flying, and it felt glorious to be in the air again.

She let out a guilty little sigh and turned her mind back to business. Bernard and the First Lord were still down in the muck. It hardly seemed fair for her to waste time reveling in being away from it when they were waiting for her to help them get out themselves. She willed Cirrus to magnify her vision and approached the swamp's edge out of the concealment offered by the setting sun.

At first, she worried that the haze might lower visibility too much to make the overflight practical, but she soon proved able to see the swamp below clearly enough. It did not take her long to spot the three outposts in the general vicinity of their approach.

Two were built up into trees at the very edge of the swamp, and a third was dug out of a mound at the base of a dead tree, overlooking the swamp's edges, shrouded by brush and grown over with vines. That last looked large enough to shelter perhaps a dozen men-and all three posts had dogs tethered nearby.