"Cornelius has stopped," Jess noted some time later. "There is a clearing ahead." And indeed, shafts of moonlight as bright to their light-starved eyes as the first rays of the morning sun pierced the forest's edge, more than one Squire hurrying his pace to enter the clearing even as Jess abruptly pulled to a halt, raising her hand, more than one angry hiss and mutter making it clear that her abrupt stop was less than welcome.

“Bloody hells, Calenbry, if you're not going to lead, get out of the way,” Mortant snapped.

"Are you truly that stupid?" Rowan's husky voice was sharp with disdain. "Think, Mortant. We seek to spring our foe's traps. Not slip right into them. You don't think we'd be immediate targets if we broke forest cover without scoping out the clearing ahead?"

Eloquin's dry voice stilled them all. “Rowan is correct. Neal, Jess, Malek, scout the perimeter and report back when done, or if men come our way.”

“Yes sir,” Neal said. “Jess? Malek?”

And soon enough Jess found herself on foot once, more, crouched hardly at all, knowing with utter assurance that, lest she willed it, no one in the clearing ahead would see her and her companions as they slipped from pockets of darkest shadow to underbrush laden deadfalls, well able to see the massive fortress of rough-cut logs torn into the middle of this sacred forest, many still bleeding sap. A dark, brooding monstrosity of slaughtered ancient wood that Jess absolutely detested.

"By the gods, that is an impressive looking fort!" Malek said with breathless awe. "It is as big as the king's palace!"

Neal frowned. “Northern lord or no, there is no way the king can overlook such a fragrant breach of disarmament protocols all nobles swore to in return for fair treatment and independent Council, centuries ago.”

Jess could just see Malek's nod. “You're right, Neal. For all that any noble may own as glorious a palace as he can afford, not even a duke is allowed more than a single contingent of men-at-arms, though the wisest train their serfs and freemen to be competent pikemen, should the king declare war once more.”

“Exactly, Malek. And that's not palace, that's a fort with wooden walls as thick and stout as any castle. It is a slap in the face of the king! It does not matter how much we need the largest trees for our ships, the king cannot let this stand.”

“No, he cannot,” Jess snarled. “It is a grotesque pustule writhing in the heart of this woodland. There is nothing beautiful about it at all. It must fall!”

“Focus on the mission at hand, Jess. And lower your voice. We do not want to risk alerting everyone.”

Jess swallowed and stilled her wrath, for all that Neal gave only the softest of reprimands.

Malek shrugged. “It hardly matters, Neal. They have posted no guards. The periphery is all but abandoned!”

And Jess nodded, for her friend spoke the truth. The field before the fort was cleared even of stumps. Jess frowned, for the sight was actually quite strange. And what reason for it? This was obviously the heart of a lumbering operation, whatever else it involved, and no need for a field clear and pristine, in the middle of their arboreal butchery. Doing her best to hold back her ire, her eyes flickered upon the sloping mounds of torn earth and piled stumps on either side of the grand road of packed dirt that led from the heart of the clearing to the road they traveled even now. No doubt as steady a source of lumber as one could want, logs being sent downriver to shipwrights to the south, once they were successfully carted out of the deepwood.

Neal frowned, but couldn't help nodding. “You're right, Malek. There's not a soul out here, and the gates to their wooden palisade they've left wide open.” He grimaced. “And that makes as much sense as spit. The Velheim agent did come this way, yes, Jess? So our foe should be alerted. Even if this is but a massive lumbering operation, and not a den of slavers at all, it is criminal nonetheless. They should at least shut their gates and slip away.”

Malek snorted. "More the fools they. Sloppy on so many levels. If it is lumber and not flesh that these fools peddle, the king will give the lord no more than a slap on the wrist the moment he pens a formal apology. Our fleets need this hardwood bad, all accords aside, and Erovering is the only nation that has half its surface covered still by ancient woodlands, with trees that soar hundreds of feet in the air."

“And so it will stay.” Jess heard the words, hard as ice, even as the trees rustled with the urgency of a gale force wind, for all that the air was suddenly hot and still. “The trees will stand tall, virgin forests spared the filthy touch of iron saw. For so long as Erovering would stand, the groves must never fall.”

Neal shivered, gaze strangely haunted, staring up at Jess. She blinked, only then realizing Neal had stumbled, Malek also gazing at Jess quite oddly.

"Are you all right, shieldsister?"

Jess swallowed not knowing what to say.

Neal gave an odd shake of his head, regaining his feet once more. "Let's focus on the task at hand, Jess. All right? We need to investigate further. This placed looks all but abandoned, and we're too savvy to let our hopes and fears this evening morph into seeing ghosts and spectres where there are none. If, despite all rumor, innuendo, and desperate confessions, this is naught but an illicit lumber operation, and not some dark consortium of flesh peddlers with ties to bandits and Velheim crossbowmen..."

Jess trembled, suddenly sick. “Then I killed a young nobleman pleading for his life even as I snapped his neck, a boy who thought he could love me... for no good reason.”

“Jess.” Neal's voice had grown soft, and Malek's arms fierce as he held a suddenly sobbing Jess close, shamed beyond words at the horror she had committed, taking away the beloved son of some family who even now no doubt missed him fiercely.

All because they had blackened their daggers, fearing flesh peddling and darkest conspiracy, and couldn't risk a soul knowing what they were up to, as what they were doing was itself utterly illegal.

She who had once wanted so badly to be the noblest of knights.

To be a hero.

Two men seduced, three men dead by her hand, and the night was not even over.

The bloody night had just begun.

For that's when Jess sensed it.

The trap that would take all their lives, did she not dry her tears and look... truly look at the puzzle before her.

“Do you see it, mistress?”

Soft words whispered into her ear, Twilight's eyes blazing like stars in truth.

Jess shuddered.

Neal's eyes gazing at Jess's own so poignantly, hand raised almost to stroke her brow, for all that Malek held her still. “Jess... what we do... we do for Erovering. We do for king and country. There is no shame, Jess. There is no shame.”

Jess held up her hand, frowning. “Do you guys sense that?”

Malek frowned. “What?”

Jess bit her lip. “Something's wrong. Something's hidden.”

Neal's brows furrowed. “What do you mean, Jess?”

Jess rubbed here eyes, squinting against the odd discrepancy. So subtly placed she hardly sensed it, yet the cries of dying logs, still green with sap, stacked precariously on top of one another and bound with a brooding slipknot did not match the quiet stillness of strangely voiceless stumps and dirt stacked so carelessly in great heaps along the entranceway to the ground proper.

“Do you understand, mistress?”

And with a sickening shudder, Jess did.

“Two score crossbowmen. Two score! Twenty to either side of the road. And those are not simple pull lever bows, but arbalests with bodkin-headed bolts, capable of slipping right through most mail hauberks. They won't get more than one shot, but even so, even so...”

Neal paled. “By all the gods. Forty of those. If you're right, Jess, if you're sure, though I see not a one, that's forty rolls of the dice, dots for any of us hit on the neck or piercing shoulder pauldrons and thighs, for all that our heads and torsos are covered by the finest steel that smiths can forge.”

Jess grimly nodded. Save rumors of the king's own elite guard, extremely few smiths had been able to forge anything close to full, overlapping plate armor. Most suits turned out brittle, the plates doomed to crack if not shatter with the first blow of lance, poleaxe, or war hammer. A Squire's breastplate and helm were masterworks of construction made by smiths who had been forging such according to exacting diagrams for many decades. Yet even those smiths consigned themselves strictly to helms and reinforced multilayered breastplates, and only half their masterworks passed the final tests. Those items, along with specially boiled rawhide plates over mail and padded gambeson to protect the limbs, meant that Squires and Aspirants were among the best armored of any of the king's elite troops.

Though a poleaxe would result in shattered bones if hitting full force, and a lance could well burst through anything save perhaps their breastplates, every lesser weapon was easily countered. But not armor piercing quarrels fired from forty arbalests in a surprise attack.

“Come, brothers, best we head back and explain all to Eloquin.”

Her armsmaster did not look pleased, gazing at Jess with ice blue eyes that left her frozen on the spot. "You claim forty crossbowmen lay in ambush, a score on hardpacked banks to each side of the entrance, each with a trap of logs, and that we'd smash ourselves into hard-packed earth and spikes if we dared charge past."

Jess swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir. The ground slopes down at an angle, like a ramp leading into a pit... you would crash into the wall of it and be sitting ducks as our foes rolled tons of smoothed logs onto your bodies, shooting full of quarrels anyone who managed to survive that horror.”

Eloquin paled at that. “Explain, Calenbry. All I see is a field, clear as moonlight, and not a soul to be seen.

Jess swallowed and spoke what she knew would be shouted down as blasphemous delusion by the elementalist wizards who taught at their college, so certain they understood the fundaments of magic.

“Illusion, sir. The pit, the logs, the men waiting in ambush... all protected by illusion.”

Quiet whispers flowed through the assembled Squires. Jess felt increasingly uncomfortable as cynical stares turned her way.

"I'm sorry, Jess. I know you have your knack with wood, nature's compensation for your warped gifts making you a failed mage, but not even failed mages can bend reality, or change basic arcane principle. What you suggest is impossible. Illusions, Faeries, magic rings and flying carpets, these are the things of faerie tales,” Lucas solemnly declared.

Neal frowned. "I've never read any accounts of illusionists in battle, Jess. Only in fables and stories, centuries old, are such things even suggested."

Rowan's hand slipped free of her gauntlet to gently squeeze Jess's own. "We've had a wild night, shieldsister, filled with revelry, danger, and a bit of tragedy as well. To say nothing of riding at a fierce pace after plenty of good wine, when by rights we should have been asleep, you and I, in that warm bed we left behind, hours ago. Is it possible that what you think you sense might just resolve itself differently after a good night's rest?"

Jess squeezed back, shyness long since burned away, boldly kissing Rowan's soft lips. "If we charge head on, we are dead. It is that simple."

Eloquin frowned. “You suspect illusion. It matters not that such has not been reported before. For such could mean it is either delusion, or such a deadly threat that those who fall to its wiles leave not even a single survivor to reveal evidence of that most deadly magic. If you are certain, Jess, we lose nothing by taking careful measure, and refusing to play into their trap.”

Malek frowned. “Is there a way we can break the illusion?”

Jess shrugged, turning to her familiar, who slowly shook his head. "You sensed it, carefully woven strands of the arcane subtly spun making it far harder to spot than most spells. But you are not quite ready, Jess. Your blood does not yet boil with sufficient potency and fury."

And that was all he would say on that.

“Then how do we spring the trap?”

“You can sense it, my queen. That's enough. It is a casting, not a construct, which means...”

“That when the wizard is dead, the spell is ruptured.”

Twilight nodded. "Or, you can simply lead the way, and run them through."