Morning found the camp already moving before Vhar finished lacing his boots. Somewhere past the drying racks, someone was arguing good-naturedly over who'd let the fire go down overnight, and the smell of something cooking cut through the cold air sharper than the smoke did.
CLINK-CLINK!
A cookpot lid rattled on its hook while someone fed the fire.
Tavik met them at the boundary rope with a rolled hide map and a pack slung across one shoulder, Ossa a step behind him, scent-slits already parted to read the wind coming off the ridge.
"We follow the dry cut east, then turn north where the ground falls toward the old riverbed." Tavik unrolled the map against his forearm and traced the bend with one finger. "That is where we lost the last three loads." His jaw tightened. "A second crew has been using this ground and has stopped hiding it."
"You've walked it since," Nyra said.
"Once. Alone. I didn't like what I found enough to walk it twice without more eyes." Tavik rolled the map again and tied it. "Now I've got the eyes."
They left the camp behind the way the light was still climbing, the ground rising in broken shelves toward the dry cut Tavik had marked. Scrub thinned as the trail climbed, rock replacing soil underfoot, shelves that shifted under Tavik and held still under Vhar. The woodsmoke thinned with every stride. Ossa moved ahead of the group at an angle, head low, testing the air in short pulls rather than one long draw.
"She's not just walking," Nyra said, watching her.
"Reading everything between here and the ridge before we reach it," Tavik said. "Ground this contested, you don't want to be surprised by what already knows you're coming."
The first sign waited half a kilometer past the dry cut: a supply crate on its side, one corner stove in, its lid pried rather than opened. Tavik crouched over it without touching the broken wood first, running two fingers along the splintered edge.
"Pried, not cut." He turned the lid over and traced the crack with one thumb. "A crew that knows the container cuts the lid where the seal will give. These pry marks show a rushed crew, or one that did not care about the ruined crate."
"Which is worse for you?" Vhar asked.
Tavik didn't answer right away. He set the lid down first, careful with it despite everything already wrong with it. "Pried is worse." His jaw worked once. "A man working alone still has something to lose if he's caught. This crew doesn't."
Nyra knelt at the crate's emptied base and ran a finger through the disturbed dirt. She found no spilled compound or discarded packing. "The thieves cleared the crate so we cannot identify the missing containers from the debris."
"Third crate this season, emptied the same way." Tavik's jaw tightened. "They're not grabbing whatever's closest. They know which containers are worth the trouble."
Past the crate the trail crossed a line of snares strung low through the brush. Three of six cords hung severed, cut clean through the anchor point rather than torn free.
Tavik's hand closed around the nearest cut end and did not move for a moment. "This was not trade stock." His voice tightened. "The thieves cut the snares that fed this camp. They took somebody's next meal."
Vhar reset the one cord still whole, seating the anchor stake the way Tavik had shown him on the first, and it held.
Nyra crouched where the cutter would have needed to stand to reach the highest cord. The bark held one mark at each cord and no extra cuts. "One cut each. Nobody rushed."
"That's the part that should scare you more than the anger does," she added, watching Tavik's hand still closed around the severed cord. "Whoever cut these took their time doing it."
They followed the trail another stretch before Ossa stopped hard, one hand raised.
"The animals have cleared out." She dropped low and worked the air close to the dirt until nobody spoke over her. "I cannot smell burrows or droppings near this trail." She lifted her head, scent-slits still working. "Nothing has denned within eighty meters, and this ground should hold them."
Tavik's anger disappeared from his voice. "Prey leaves when too many unfamiliar boots cross its feeding ground. The animals notice the tracks, smoke, and cut brush before we do. They leave before they find out who made them."
Vhar looked at the empty burrows and cut snares. "You have been reading the thefts in animal tracks. You did not have enough people to follow them."
"Prey signs don't lie." Tavik touched a broken stem, snapped rather than grazed, and let his hand fall away from it. "Every mark on this ground is real. Finding out who left it is the part the ground can't do for us."
Ossa found the last of it thirty meters further on: a supply cache, half-buried, its covering brush replaced with more care than the theft itself had shown. Empty.
"Nobody finds this by accident." She did not look up. "The thief knew where to dig."
Tavik went very still over the disturbed earth, stiller than the crate or the snares had left him. His voice, when it came, had dropped low. "That location was band-only. Only six of us have ever walked it."
"Either one of you was followed," Nyra said, flat and precise, "or one of the six told somebody where to look."
Tavik didn't answer right away. When he finally spoke, his jaw was tight enough to change the shape of his voice. "I've already got a name in my head. I don't want it to be the right one."
They were still crouched over the empty cache when Ossa's head came up, scent-slits snapping shut.
"Four people are on the north face of the ridge. Maybe five." She did not point. "They are watching us."
Vhar was already tracking the same line with his eyes, an irregular break in the ridge's silhouette that hadn't been there a breath ago. Figures, still and deliberate, spaced along the high ground with the kind of patience that meant they'd been there before anyone noticed.
"They're not closing," Nyra said, hand steady on Thronebreak's haft without drawing it further.
"They do not need to close." Tavik did not look away from the ridge. "They already know we found the cache. That is their message."
Vhar measured the slope to the base of the ridge and the time it would take him to reach it. Four people stood in view; a fifth might be in the rock shadow. They held unfamiliar high ground with no approach the group had scouted. The cache, Tavik, Ossa, and Nyra were not worth charging into an ambush.
The watchers held for three long breaths, then withdrew below the ridgeline without a sound. They left no loose stone or bent scrub behind them. The crew had prepared that ridge as carefully as it had found the cache.
"They wanted to be seen," Vhar said. "Long enough to prove it. Gone before it cost them anything."
Tavik's voice went flat and careful. "Opportunists hide. Those people wanted us to see them, and they are not worried about our answer."
Nyra crouched beside the empty cache again and counted the broken wood and disturbed earth. "We have three missing loads, three cut snares, a cache an outsider found, and four watchers on the ridge."
"We still have no name for the crew," Vhar said.
Tavik stood and rolled the map into his pack. "We do not have a name yet. The tracks, cut snares, and empty cache point to a crew camp nearby. We follow those signs and find it."
"Today?" Nyra asked.
"We go tomorrow after sleep and a scouting plan." Tavik looked back toward camp, then at the ridge. "Tonight we tell Ossa's people about the snares, cache, and watchers. I decide who hears about the band-only cache."
Ossa hadn't moved from the cache, still staring at the disturbed earth like it might still tell her something new. "They knew exactly where to dig," she said again, quieter this time.
Tavik crossed to her and rested a hand briefly on her shoulder, nothing more than that. "You don't have to keep saying it for it to still be true."
The walk back took longer than the walk out, the light already leaning gold across the broken shelves by the time the camp's smoke came back into view, and none of them spoke until the boundary rope was in sight. Tavik carried the rolled map without unrolling it again, his pace steady but his attention still somewhere back on the ridge.
"You'll tell them everything?" Nyra asked.
"I'll tell them what's true. The cache, the snares, the watchers." Tavik shifted the pack on his shoulder. "The crew's numbers stay out of it until I have a count worth trusting. Guessing wrong scares people worse than waiting does."
"And the cache location," Vhar said. "Band-only."
"That part stays inside the band, for now. If someone talked, I'd rather find out quietly than watch them decide to run before I ask." Tavik's jaw worked once. "I've known most of these people my whole life, worked beside half of them since I was younger than Ossa. I don't want to be right about this."
Ossa fell into step beside him without being asked, close enough that her shoulder nearly brushed his arm. Neither of them said anything else the rest of the way down, and by the time the camp's fire came fully into view, the last of the gold light had gone from the ridge behind them entirely.