The pack animal tethered near the lean-to woke Vhar first.
Ossa's people kept no hounds. The animal had gone rigid in the dark, ears flat and silent. Vhar was already sitting up when Nyra's hand found his shoulder.
"A person's at the crates," she said.
The fire had burned down to a bed of orange coals, and past its light the basin disappeared into darkness. Vhar counted the sleeping shapes near the nearest tent out of habit rather than doubt: four, all still, none of them near the crates where Nyra had seen movement.
They crossed the camp without lantern light, boots finding the packed earth by memory rather than sight. Somewhere behind them a sleeper stirred and settled again, undisturbed, and Vhar was grateful for it without slowing down to feel grateful. Tavik fell in beside them at the boundary rope, a short blade already drawn, his breathing controlled in a way that told Vhar he'd been awake before either of them.
"Four shapes," Tavik said. "Maybe five. Working fast."
The lean-to's covering had been cut away rather than untied, and two figures were already passing crates hand to hand toward the tree line while a third crouched over the same stacked inventory Ossa's people had sorted two nights before. A fourth stood watch with a short spear, angled toward the camp rather than the trees.
Vhar crossed the last distance without slowing.
The watchman saw him first and drove the spear forward instead of calling a warning. The mistake cost him the half-second he needed to retreat instead.
WHOOSH!
Vhar closed the gap before the spearhead finished its arc, caught the haft below the blade, and drove the man backward into the crate stack hard enough to fold his spine over the corner of it.
CRACK!
The man didn't move again. Vhar didn't wait to confirm it.
The crouching figure abandoned the crate and came up with a hatchet already swinging, aimed at Vhar's neck with the kind of speed that meant real training under it. Vhar let the swing complete against nothing, stepping through the space where his throat had been, and drove his palm into the man's chest before the hatchet finished its arc back around.
THUD!
Ribs shattered first, then whatever sat behind them tore. The hatchet fell from a hand that no longer had the strength to hold it.
The two carrying crates dropped their loads and split, one lunging for Vhar with a short knife held low, the other breaking for the trees at a dead run. Vhar caught the knife-hand's wrist, turned it past the joint's limit, and drove him face-first into the ground with the last of his own momentum.
BOOM!
SNAP!
His skull caved where his face met the packed earth, and his neck sat at an angle no living neck holds. He didn't get up.
Three men lay dead before Tavik reached the crates. Vhar had killed men that quickly since the western gate. He still checked the tents for survivors, found the remaining threat, and moved anyone in its reach.
"The runner's mine," Nyra said, already moving.
She went past Vhar at a flat sprint, Thronebreak still sheathed at her hip. The fleeing man had a head start and longer legs, but he ran blind through unfamiliar scrub. Nyra knew the camp's outer ground. He cleared a fallen branch, and she hooked his ankle from behind. She rode him into the dirt with her forearm across his throat before he could twist free. His knee scraped raw against a root.
"Don't," she said, when his hand went for his belt. "You've seen what happens to the ones who keep fighting. I don't think you want to be the fifth."
The man's hand stopped moving.
Tavik reached the crate stack a few steps behind Vhar, checking the three dead men's faces without recognition in his own. He crouched over the one Vhar had driven into the crates, checking a belt already stripped of any mark that might name it. "The boots aren't band-made, and neither is the stitching on that coat." His thumb found the belt's cut edge where a buckle mark should have been. "Same as before. Filed clean."
Ossa arrived at a run, scent-slits already working the disturbed ground, and stopped hard at the sight of the broken spine draped over the crate corner. "They came back for the same haul."
"With four men and a lookout, in the dark, right after they knew we'd found the cache." Vhar looked at the three bodies rather than her. "Opportunists don't come back that fast, or that heavy."
Other members of the band had started gathering at a careful distance, drawn out of their tents by whatever had carried across the camp: not the fight itself, which had made almost no sound at all, but the after-quiet that followed it. An older woman pressed a hand to her mouth at the sight of the bodies and didn't lower it again. A younger man stood with a hatchet of his own half-raised, uncertain who it was for. Nobody crossed the boundary rope. They hadn't the last time either.
Nyra hauled her prisoner upright by the collar and marched him back into the firelight the camp had finally gotten burning. He was younger than the others, maybe Tavik's own age, with a split lip already swelling where the ground had met his face.
"Sit," Nyra said, and he sat.
"You're going to tell us who sent you back for this haul," Tavik said, crouching in front of him. His voice carried none of the patience he'd used reading sign all day: just a flat, tired demand from a man who'd been robbed twice in one week. "And where we find the rest of them."
The prisoner's jaw worked, but nothing came out of it.
"He's not going to answer that one straight," Nyra said, watching his eyes rather than his mouth. "Try the smaller question first."
Tavik's eyebrows rose, but he adjusted without arguing. "Who gave the order to hit this camp tonight."
"Nobody with a name I ever heard." The prisoner's throat worked before the rest came out. "Word came down we were taking the same haul again before anybody else could beat us to it. That's the whole of what I was told."
"And how many total, in the whole operation," Vhar said.
The prisoner's mouth closed again.
"He doesn't know that one," Nyra said. "Look at him. He answered the last question the moment he had it. He doesn't have this one to give."
"She's right," the prisoner said, and something in his shoulders came down when he said it, like the admission cost him less than staying silent had. "I don't know how many. We don't get told the whole count. Just our piece."
"Tell us your piece," Tavik said. "Where do you sleep when you're not out here robbing my people."
The prisoner's eyes found the dark beyond the firelight and stayed there for a long moment before he answered. "Old quarry cut. Two hours north, maybe less if you know the ridge trail." His voice dropped. "Whatever you're picturing after tonight, it's bigger than that."
"Bigger by how much," Vhar said.
"Enough that I wouldn't be sitting here telling you if I thought I could win by not talking." The prisoner's split lip had started bleeding again, and he didn't wipe it. "Thirty. Maybe more. I've never had a reason to count them all standing in one place."
Nyra looked at Vhar over the prisoner's bent head, and neither of them said anything for a moment.
"Thirty gives us a count," Vhar said finally. "Tonight's four were only the raiding group. Now we know where the rest sleep."
Tavik stood, wiping his hands on his coat though nothing on them needed cleaning. "A quarry cut two hours north means they've been operating that close to my own contracted ground since before any of this started, and none of us caught it."
"You caught it tonight," Vhar said. "That's earlier than never."
"We also know they use the ridge trail," Nyra said. She pointed north with two fingers. "Two people take the prisoner to the inner tent. Everyone else moves the crates off the open ground and keeps no fire above the tent walls. At dawn, Tavik shows us the trail."
Tavik nodded, already turning to give the orders. The band answered with movement instead of questions. Rope came down from the posts. Crates disappeared under canvas. Ossa took a lantern from an older woman and carried it toward the wounded pack animal, her hands steady now.
Ossa was still crouched near the broken spine, quiet in a way that made Tavik glance her way twice before she finally spoke. "This one's got a scar across his knuckles that isn't new. He's done this kind of work before tonight, somewhere else." She looked up at Tavik. "This isn't their first ground."
"The quarry won't be the last of it, unless we get there before they know we've found them," Vhar said.
"Not tonight," Tavik said, and for once nobody argued with him. "We're tired, it's dark, and we haven't seen the shape of thirty men yet. Tomorrow, we plan it properly." He looked down at the prisoner, still sitting where Nyra had put him. "And he stays tied where I can see him until we do."
The prisoner didn't look up from the fire. Behind him, past the boundary rope, the three dead men lay where they'd fallen, and somewhere north of the ridge a quarry full of men who didn't yet know they'd been found kept whatever hours men like that kept, waiting on a morning that was going to arrive whether they were ready for it or not.