Ser Malcolm Shadowfield, the Knight of Shadows, was worried. He looked around at his little band—Cobb the sellsword polishing his helmet, Hoban the drover tending to the cart horses, Kaili the tinker working on the cart’s back axle, and the three passengers—Dob, the soft-spoken traveler, Simeon Rivers, the tradesman whose cart was causing the troubles, and the silent, grave Septon Book. They couldn’t stay here long, on the edge of the wood. Not with the outlaw reavers as bold as the stories had it.

Ser Malcolm’s little band had been in Saltpans a’trading not two days before the Hound had reaved it to the ground, and it was only Zoe’s instincts that had caused them to leave early. He wished she would return from scouting—what would he do without her? The Dornish archer had joined his company as a sellsword on the march to join the Yong Wolf’s host before the Whispering Wood, and had swiftly become Ser Malcolm’s right hand. When they’d fled the Twins after the Red Wedding, it’d been Zoe who kept them alive for weeks, and had found them their first jobs as merchant guards when the news of the Ironmen’s capture of Winterfell and Moat Cailin made it clear the war was over, unless they wanted to slink back to Riverrun to be useless mouths—then surrendered with the rest when the castle fell. It had been she who stood by him when they were cornered by bandits, and who had felled two of them when Ser Malcolm had convinced Cobb to change sides. And when he’d returned home to find castle and lands burnt by the Mountain, it had been she who comforted him.

A rustling of leaves announced Zoe’s return. She approached Ser Malcolm and smiled. “Serra’s just a bit ahead,” she said, “a’waiting. Soon’s the cart’s movable, we can catch up to her.”

“Good,” nodded the Knight of Shadows. “I don’t like the look of this for a night’s camp. Best get farther from the Trident.”

“How are the passengers?” Zoe asked.

Ser Malcolm shrugged. “Quiet, ‘cepting the ‘rammed Septon. Nattering on about the Seven and the good they