“Vancha March,” Seba smiled. “I wondered where the foul stench was coming from.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vancha scowled. “I bathed last spring, even though I didn’t need to.” He frowned. “Or was it the spring before?” With a laugh, he tossed a salute to Larten and Wester. “Stil hanging around with this old vulture?”

“Someone has to look after him,” Larten said.

“He’s too weak to carry his own coffin,” Wester added.

Larten and Wester hadn’t seen the filthy General since their first meeting in Vampire Mountain, so there was much to catch up on. But before they could ask questions, Seba pointed to his coffin and coughed purposefully. Groaning, they picked it up and followed behind at a respectable distance as their master strolled with Vancha and the pair discussed business that was not for the ears of the young.

In time they turned a bend and Larten caught sight of a tent. He might have dismissed it as the camp of a human officer, but Seba and Vancha were heading for it, so he adjusted the coffin on his shoulder and stole a closer look.

The tent was like none he’d seen so far. It was circular, tall and wide, adorned with beautiful, stitched patterns of water flowers and frogs. It looked a bit like the tent in which the Cirque Du Freak performed, but nowhere near the same size. There were three smaller tents around it and a clothesline stood behind them, hung with a variety of dresses and women’s undergarments.

A confused Wester nudged Larten, who frowned at the feminine clothes and said, “What sort of a woman would pitch her tent at the edge of a battlefield?” The answer came to both of them at the same time, but Wester was the one who exclaimed, “A woman of the wilds!”