The messenger birds arrived on the fourth morning.
They were Blood Hawk Messenger Crows, deep black with red beaks and red-tipped wings and tails, and they found their recipients the way they always did, by the blood registered to them, locked into their heads from the vials kept back in Helwind's vaults. Each knight in the order had been assigned a few of them for exactly this kind of situation, when distance and speed mattered more than anything else. Command usually sent three at once when the receiver's condition was unknown, which said something about how seriously they were taking this.
All three had landed. All three carried the same message.
Deen read it aloud to the assembled commanders. "The lord orders a full retreat. Bring the survivors back to Helwind. He is in discussions with a neighboring lord regarding additional beast hunters. We are to stand down until further instruction."
The camp absorbed this quietly. Brina heard it and kept her face still.
She approached Deen afterward, when the others had dispersed to begin breaking down the camp.
"Commander. I want to request permission to send a small party to the village before we march. Just to see if anyone survived. If there are people still alive in there we could bring them back with us."
Deen looked at her the way he looked at things he had already decided about. "Feldwyn I like your enthusiasm for saving others. But I cannot authorize that. We do not know what condition that village is in or how many of those creatures are still in the area. I am not sending people into that blind."
"But master…"
"That is enough." His voice did not rise but it did not need to. "You will follow the order and you will march with us. If you are considering anything else I want you to understand very clearly that I will have you court martialed. Am I understood?"
Brina clenched her fist at her side. "Yes sir."
She saluted and walked away.
Deen watched her go and then turned to find Commander Evereth. "Keep an eye on Feldwyn. Close eye. Do not let her do something that gets her killed."
Evereth accepted the order without comment and went to begin informing the civilians that they were moving.
Brina was not where she was supposed to be.
She had her horse saddled and her weapons on before the camp had fully registered what was happening. It was not that she had not heard Deen's order. She had heard every word of it. She simply was who she was, and who she was could not leave without knowing, and no amount of correct reasoning from someone she respected was going to change that particular truth about herself.
She rode toward Bareborough Peaks alone, into the quiet of the morning road, and did not look back at the camp behind her.