"No... no... no... please—I—I'll—I—"

Radstac hadn't needed the preternatural clarity of the mansid to see the need riding this Felk wretch so earnestly. Yet she would be hard pressed to identify the specific telltales. This soldier certainly appeared functional. He wasn't one of those toothless horrors that lay under a blanket out of the light and gummed leaves, with no other purpose left in life. But something in his comportment, in his eyes that focused intensely on irrelevant objects, in the slow gliding shadow of his being... something gave it away.

Nonetheless, she might have been wrong. But she wasn't wrong. And here was the proof. Dangle a leaf before a creature who desires its effects more than air to breathe, and watch the response. How entertaining. And tritely predictable. Amateur.

This was one of the units assigned to transporting food and equipment. Supplies were Far Moved, quite an expedient method of keeping an army provisioned. Actually, with that advantage alone, the Felk were fairly godsdamned overwhelming. It was such a mammoth undertaking. Full conquest of the Isthmus. But if weapons and rations and probably even fresh troops could be instantaneously conveyed to the field, to any place the active army might be, then the Felk's mobility became an unchecked force.

The odd thing about that, however, was that this army had for the past three days been standing fast. No movement. It remained in a state of readiness, as if anticipating the order to mobilize, but no such word had come. Both Radstac and Deo had eavesdropped on and interacted fleetingly with these Felk soldiers, enough to garner the rumor that General Weisel, following the failed try on his life, had either gone into hiding within this camp or quit it altogether. Certainly the Felk war commander could have had himself Far Moved to wherever he liked. It would be the prudent action, at least until his would-be assassins were apprehended.