When the preparations were finished and the farewells were brief, Nathan and Hanzo left the shinobi village together and let the road swallow them.
They rode on horseback, keeping a steady and unremarkable pace along the sandy path that wound through the trees and eventually opened into the broader stretches of countryside beyond. No escort flanked them, no formation traveled at their backs. To any eye watching from the roadside they were simply two travelers moving through the morning with no particular urgency. Other shinobis had departed separately, taking different routes and different timings, bleeding into the landscape the way only shinobis knew how to do. If things went the way they were supposed to, none of them would be connected to one another until it was far too late for that information to matter.
