But Hifadhi ignored that as he sat back and sighed. “Pere Shin’s grandson.”
“Pere Shin’s grandson, yes.”
Hifadhi slowly shook his head. “That I lived to see this day . . . His grandson, going over the wall . . .” And he closed his eyes.
Gleace waited patiently, having seen him do this before.
Hifadhi’s eyes opened a few moments later. “Keep up the surveillance patrols for now. We don’t need anyone closer until it’s revealed that an intimate presence is required. I’m still not entirely sure about this one, but time will tell.” He smiled in amazement. “Walked into the forest . . . and stayed there!”
---
Two men sat in the dark office of an unlit building.
Nicko Mal stared at his companion, daring him to speak.
The second man looked back with a slightly amused expression.
Mal drummed his fingers on the armrest.
The second man took a risk. “It’s only because you said he always surprises you that I felt safe in speculating that Shin would succeed.”
“They didn’t even make it into the village because of him!” Mal fumed. That had been the true splinter in his foot that sent him into the tirade at the garrison. That, and the fact that Perrin wasn’t even injured in the forest beyond a few scratches. He took a deep breath to compose himself. “Shin was, however, a bit slow to respond initially. You must admit that.”
“Conceded.” His partner smiled.
“Perhaps it had something to do with him being a newlywed and living away from the fort. Unfortunate timing, I suppose,” Mal sniggered. “Perhaps this will remind him that duty comes before the wife! But there was that ten minutes. Ten minutes. Why didn’t they get into the village during that time?!”
“A new tactic,” the second man explained. “Eliminate the patrolling soldiers first. In Grasses there were several on patrol that nearly captured some of our men. We didn’t want that to happen again.”
Mal grunted. “But only two soldiers were injured in Edge. What about the rest?”
The middle-aged man fidgeted. “The patrols weren’t on a regular rotation. Up until last week, they were. It seems that only recently Shin varied the rotation times so that the patrols were unpredictable.”
Mal formed a fist. “Wiles was in charge of the patrols, was he not?”
“Apparently not even he was aware of the captain’s changes. The night of the attack, Shin himself briefed the sergeant on duty as how to stagger the patrols. As if he was concerned something like this could happen.”
“Did he somehow know we were coming?” Mal squinted.
The second man shrugged. “I think he was just being a thoughtful commander, anticipating the need. Perhaps he can think like a Guarder. No one knows whose ancestors were among the Guarders, after all. He seems to be one of those you predicted at the beginning would attempt to fight this on his own.”
Mal grumbled to himself.
“What I find intriguing,” his partner continued, “was his deliberate disobedience to the rules of engagement. Preliminary conclusion to our question: He wasn’t too comfortable, and marriage has made him an aggressive wolf to protect his mate.”
That brought Mal out of his sullenness. “Oh indeed,” he bristled. “Absolute disregard for anything he’d been trained to do! Pursuing into the woods like that—very brash! Very reckless! We must not lose containment!”
The second man suppressed a smile at Mal’s agitation. “I wished I could have seen Relf’s reaction to his son’s report. I’m assuming General Cush included the admonition that no officers or soldiers return to the forest?”
“He did! Read the response myself. I’m sure the captain will receive the message and he best heed it. We can’t have him changing the conventions of warfare and unraveling our work just because he has an impulse!”
Mal sighed, took another deep breath, then said steadily, “The fort in Trades is completed, and just in time to put extra soldiers around that gold mine. No one in the far south has had any encounters with Guarders, and the letter skimmers are spending too much time reading complaints from Trades, so we need to lighten their load and alleviate the pain of the complainers. The commander in Trades is a single man with no long-term interests in women. We’ll question his readiness for a time.”
The second man smirked at Mal’s shift in focus. But he had several strategies to turn it back again. First, bring up Perrin Shin.
Privately, the second man was conducting his own study: How quickly can one unhinge Nicko Mal?
“Perhaps if there had been some soldier deaths in Edge, or if the action was closer to Perrin’s home—”