Despite my suffering, I rose to a kneeling position and started to sort through my alchemist courier bag. I couldn’t remember exactly which items were in my saddlebags, now lost with my horse, and what I had carried on my person. With a grumble, I sorted through my remaining supplies. Pinching my forehead, I remembered that I had repacked my gear before we left with the awkward and bulkier equipment on the horse.

No tent, no sleeping pad, no blanket, and I only had one of my large healing potions with me. With a grin, I pulled out the stylized loop of metal I had been looking for. Made of wrought iron, the black metal looped into multiple swirls of metal in a strange interlacing pattern. In the center of the overlapping loops, shaped roughly into a palm-sized coin, was a small crudely cut quartz crystal.

“Snowy? Where is my belt?” I asked while distractedly looking through my pack.

Snowy handed me my belt that was lying near the fire. Close by was a couple sticks driven into the ground that my trousers, shirt, and small clothes hung from to dry. I hadn’t noticed them at first with the pain distracting me.

“Thanks for cleaning my clothes. The horse has the rest of them, so that’s all I’ve got,” I said as I pulled my hidden knife from the back of my belt buckle.

At the appearance of the blade, Snowy raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything and instead just watched as I flipped the loosely formed metal coin.

Nicking myself on the upper arm, I dabbed a drop of blood on the coin.

Flipping the blade around, I held them both out to Snowy.

“It’s a look away charm. It only needs a drop of blood, then you can bury it near the campfire. It should last the night and into the morning. It will hide the camp out to about twenty feet. We both need the sleep,” I said to Snowy’s obvious reluctance.

I pushed the knife and charm towards Snowy when she frowned, but my mention of sleep broke through her displeasure. Taking the two, she moved back towards the fire.

“Very well, but I will pay you back for the charm when we reach the castle.”

I shrugged, not being against reimbursement, but not caring, particularly, either way. I had purchased a few small and relatively cheap charms for emergencies just like these. It didn’t matter if it was used to protect me or the both of us together. It was a small price to pay, only a couple of gold coins, to be sure of our comfort and safety during the night. I was in no shape to fight and would have to rely on Snowy alone. It was better to just avoid any danger.

The charm worked by forcing anyone that hadn’t marked it with their blood to avoid the area. It would cloud their perceptions and distract them as they approached. Unfortunately, a side effect of the charm was that the two of us would leave a trail for the next couple of days to anyone or anything with magical senses. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than being eaten in our sleep by something attracted to the blood. With the charm and the corpses, if something came snooping around, it would leave with bandit meat instead of our own.

Snowy nicked her arm in the same place I had, then dabbed a drop onto the metal. Nothing happened at the application of blood, but I smiled at her confidently when she gave me a look. Shrugging, she dug a small hole using a bit of firewood, then buried the metal. The moment the coin was covered, a very thin fog boiled out and surrounded the camp in an unnaturally precise circle.

When Snowy shot me a look of concern, I said, “No one else can see the fog. If we are in it, they won’t notice us unless they are a trained mentalist or a mage who is using a specific spell.”

Tightening the straps on my courier bag, I stuffed it behind my head and laid down to sleep. It would be a long day tomorrow, and it would be even worse if I was both sore and tired. I watched Snowy fiddle with the fire for a bit before she threw the blanket from her horse over herself and fell asleep near the fire.

The next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake by Snowy. Kneeling by my side, with her sword in hand, she stared into the darkness. Releasing my shoulder, she raised her finger to her lip in a sign of silence, her gaze never leaving the dark. Slowly and silently, I rolled over to follow her gaze. In the gloom, I watched an indistinct creature as it tore a leg away from the horse as quickly as I would tear a limb from a cooked fowl. The noise was like that of ripping leather, then came the crunch as it chewed through the meat and bone. Worse though was the sniffling and chomping the beast made as it consumed the meal. It was too dark and too far away to make out clearly what it was, but there was enough light to show that it was big, strong, and beyond us.

I suddenly felt well satisfied in the decision to use the charm, and thankful I had left it in my alchemist pouch. For an hour, both of us sat in silence and listened to the beast consume the corpses. Once the creature had eaten its fill, it slowly lumbered through the forest away from the road. Stomping passed, the beast snorted and sniffed the air as it tore apart tree limbs and crushed the brush.

Then the night was silent. Both of us waited, prepared to fight to the last even as we knew we wouldn’t win against such a beast. When the usual sounds of nighttime summer insects returned, we wiped our sweat-covered faces and returned to our beds. It was only then that I realized that Snowy was wearing her armor and prepared to fight, and I was still naked and only armed with my knife. The two of us would have made an odd pair fighting a beast in the dark, one fully prepared and the other bruised and disrobed.

Ignoring the blush on Snowy’s face, I pulled on my now dry clothes. They were still marked with blood and stained, but it was better than being naked. At worst, I wanted the option to flee into the forest while clothed. With a few grimaces from the pain of my bruises, I tucked myself back into my blankets and tried to sleep. Occasionally I could see Snowy tossing and turning as she tried to ignore thoughts of the beast returning, just as I was.

Dawn came far too early for my liking, but to my satisfaction, the magical fog still surrounded our campsite. The proprietor of the magic shop had been unclear about how long it would last. He claimed that it would definitely last the night, but he mentioned that dawn, dusk, midnight, and noon when reached, would each strike a blow against the magical effect. He promised that it would last through two such magically significant periods, and had already done so. Once for midnight, and again for dawn. As we gathered our things in preparation to leave, I mentioned to her the limits of the charm.

“Useful, why is it not used in long engagements or war?” she asked.

“I don’t understand it fully, but I was told it was like a beacon to a mage if they tried to scry the land. It could even be used as a target for tactical spells,” I said as I was kicking the dirt over the last smolders of the fire.

Before we could leave camp, we heard the approach of horses at a trot. Combing down my hair, I was planning how I could talk a merchant or courier into selling a few supplies when the riders entered the meadow. At first, the sight put a smile on my face. The riders were decked in the Baron’s colors. I was preparing to step from the fog and call out to them as they approached when I noticed that these men were unfamiliar. I certainly didn’t know every guard of the Baron’s, but none of the twenty or so men were familiar to me. I had talked with most of the guards, I had treated more than one of them for things that they should have known to avoid. In some cases, I knew more about those men than the other men they served with. Diagnosis of Comfort Boils unfortunately required an examination to rule out a half a dozen other conditions that would necessitate differing compounds.

These were not the Baron’s men.

As I watched, this became ever more clear. None of the riders spoke. The lead man signaled his troops to search the clearing using hand gestures only. When I approached Snowy, I quietly asked if she knew who these men were, and she only shook her head while watching them scour the meadow. The first thing they checked was the corpse of the horse, or at least what was left of the poor beast. The creature in the night had consumed everything of substance and left only a bloody patch of mud behind. Whatever had consumed the corpses had eaten even the bones.

The leader, a large dark-haired man with sharp features, dismounted and approached a pair which held up a hoof, the only thing left identifiable. Others moved around the campgrounds, inspecting the brush. The entrance and exit paths of our midnight intruder were quickly found. Shortly after that, the resting place of the bandits was found. The leader then signaled for the area to be searched. As the group of men began to fan out, Snowy tensed up and slowly drew her sword as to muffle the sound. Holding her arm, I could feel the woman’s muscles flex and tense under my hand, but she lowered her weapon.

Slowly, three of the men scouted around the meadow, two checked down the destroyed trail the beast used to enter and leave the field. The third was slowly circling the meadow, searching. As he approached the fog, his path shifted, and he moved around the edge of the magical effect. It was odd to watch the man searching, his eyes would track left and right on the ground as well as into the trees, only for him to move far around our camp.

Eventually, the group mounted and continued down the trail toward the Baron’s hunting manor. The men were well-armed, with steel swords and hardened leather armor, and well trained. At no time did they call out or do more than speak in low voices near each other. It was only when the soldier was searching near our camp that I could see that his tunic while having the Baron’s colors, were not marked with his heraldric. The design on the tunic was just sets of colored cloth stitched haphazardly to the tunic to suggest the correct shape and design.

When the riders passed, Snowy sheathed her sword, then we both grabbed our packs. When Snowy moved to the fire pit to get the charm, I waved her away and gestured that we should just go. It wasn’t until we had been walking along the road for half an hour, watching for travelers and anxious to jump into the woods at any moment, that she asked me why.

Giving her a grim look, I said, “It’s a single charge enchantment, and the metal isn’t worth much. Until they find our campsite, they won’t know what happened to us. Let’s hope the charm lasts even longer than it’s supposed to. We need the head start.”