Most of the canopy still had its leaves, but the light beneath it had changed. Summer's deep green shadow was gone, and what remained was thinner and yellowed, shifting whenever the branches moved and never fully stopping in any way.
The ground beneath the Nüden camp matched the season. Wet leaves layered over clay, soft enough to keep a clear footprint but firm enough that a man would not sink.
Sound behaved differently here than it did on the open steppe. Wind pushed the branches together in a constant low grinding sound, and beneath that came stretches of silence when the birds stopped singing entirely.
Siban had learned those silences meant something.
The camp sat in a shallow depression between two old oaks. No fire had burned since before first light.
