The orders reached the border garrison shortly before dawn, and by midday Captain Vlad had roughly forty armed men on the road. He would have preferred fewer. A smaller force moved faster, attracted less attention, and did not make every farmer they passed assume a war had begun. Unfortunately, the report contained the phrase possible foreign incursion, which had transformed an ordinary investigation into a matter requiring royal attention.
The attack had taken place in western Lotostra, close enough to the roads leading toward Astoria that nobody could confidently identify where the assailants had come from. The only survivor to reach an Imperial patrol had been dehydrated, burned across one arm, and barely coherent. He remembered dark-skinned men wearing loose clothing, carrying curved blades and, in some cases, bows.
