One rescue at a time, the small unity that Leo and the others nourished grew. That didn’t make things easier, though. That only made them harder. Even though they found more survivors on their far-flung jourhroughout the area, food remained as elusive as ever. In fact, if not for the obviously diviervention that made nuts and berries spring ienearly every day, even in the winter, he was quite certain that most of these people would have starved to death.

  Leo had learned Brother Farbaer’s triake loves of bread spring from nowhere, but it was harder than healing magid he couldn’t do it all the time. Instead, he mostly stuck to fighting. He and his friends had broken up into two groups now. Now, half of them struck out every week to search for survivors, threats, and anything else that might be useful. As they did that, the other half of the group stayed here to defend the little town of Wayward, which had stuck, despite ara insisting the whole thing was a joke.

  “I just meant that the eople could stay here until we found somewhere better!” she said half the time someone brought up the name around her, but that just made people want to use it more. For better or worse, it was going to be Wayward until they found somewhere to take all of these people to, and so far, the options were looking grim.

  Unlike everyone else, Leo ayed with the group that defended Wayward. Some always stayed itle seaside unity to defend the nearly hundred souls they’d gathered into one spot, and some came with him on some of his expeditions. However, he was only ever in Wayward for a few days at a time before he was back out again. At this point, there wasn’t much out there, he reflected as he watched a few of the women making a meager stew with more water than roots in a rge cauldron they’d found on a ret trip.

  It was a good find. It was going to be a long time before anything new was made of cast iron in the area. Even basic bcksmithing was currently beyond them. That wasn’t a problem now, but it would be when they ran out of ons and armor to sge.

  “You look worried,” Toman said, sneaking up on Leo as he sat there on his stump. “You guys find something out there?”

  Leo just shook his head and answered, “Nothing to find.”

  That wasn’t quite true, of course. There was Rahkin. He’d seen it on the horizon on more tharip now, along with its plume of evil that hung over it like the thick smoke over a forest fire. He’d wao go and explore it, but each time he’d told his friends, he’d been outvoted. It wasn’t that they feared the dark exactly. It was that they thought he was foolish.

  And he was foolish; he didn’t say that, though, not to Toman or anyone else. Instead, he just said, “It’s slim pig out there. If we want to find anything worth finding, we’re going to have to go farther. Maybe when it warms, we take everyoo the northwest and see if any of the Eastern Kingdoms still stand.”

  “If Rhakin fell, then why would anyone else be left standing?” Toman asked.

  It was a fair question, but Leo didn’t a. He didn’t know. He just khat he couldn’t just stay here. He’d wao save these people more than anyone, but now, the longer he stayed, the more he felt like a hound pag nervously in his kennel. He needed more than this. There were horrors and nightmares out there that only he could sy, and his ented bde was meant for more than this.

  After Leo’s sullen silence could be borne no more, Toman finally volunteered, “I do think you’re right, you know. When the weather warms, we should move on and try to find something worth finding because this… Well, I don’t want to stay here two winters in a row.”

  That was true enough, and Leo smiled as he remembered how miserable the winter had been to most of these people without proper houses. The light warmed him, though, so he barely felt the touch of the cold. He’d spent half the winter in a tent out in the world, looking for things to fight, but not everyone was so lucky.

  Leo was about to ent on that, but when Sam and Rin came over to join them, Leo decided not to. Moving on was an unpopur opinion, and he didn’t want to upset anyone. Increasingly, he was of the opinion that he robably going to o go out on his own and find somepce he could lead everyone else to, but he khat would not go over well.

  Leo spent the rest of the evening pretending to care about the versations that happened around him, and he mao make a couple loaves of bread to share with the young and infirm, but none of those moments quieted his mind or made him ge his mind. That night, wheched Lunaris slowly cross the sky and lost himself iwinkling of the steltions, he made up his mind. He was going to go north. First to Rahkin and then to all the pces that y beyond it.

  There might not even be anything there left to fight, he told himself. We’ve searched a few of the dungeo behind by the dead, and nothing was moving in any of them.

  Was he telling himself that because he hoped there was no great evil left to face or because he was trying to let himself down easily before he went there and found nothing worth fighting? He wasn’t sure, but he khat going there was the right thing to do. He could feel it in his heart and, more importantly, in his sword. He was certain that this is what Brother Faerbar would have wanted him to do, though he couldn’t quite say why.

  Even though Leo’s mind was made up, he didn’t leave that day or the day after. Instead, he tried to work up the o tell his friends or at least make peace with the fact that leaving them was a betrayal.

  What if marauding zombies or worse attack while yone, and people die? He asked himself. you live with that? Could you live without yourself if ara or anyone else was dead because you weren’t here to save them?

  He couldn’t. He khat he couldn’t, but that didn’t ge anything. her did the fact that ara still sometimes beat him with wooden swords. Without the silvered bde, he was only one of the best warriors among them, but with it… well, he didn’t believe anything could stop him.

  Humans hadn’t mao survive in this pce by ce. The forest roteg and nurturing them. Nature deities might rank pretty far below the Lord of Light to him, but they were still a damn sight higher in his books than the evil that wahe nd.

  He struggled with the whole thing until one m when he just didn’t anymore. After that, he didn’t tell any of his friends about his ge of heart; he just wrote a small note and put it somewhere where they were sure to find it before he left. He didn’t try to expin himself because he couldn’t, and he was doying himself up in knots about it.

  He just wrote, ‘I’m going where the Gods take me. When I find out where we are meant to be, I will return, and we take the survivors there instead. Leo.’

  Then, just like that, he was gone, going north fast enough that no one would be able to catch him easily. Leo walked through the first night and most of the sed one before exhaustion finally caught him, and he slept in an abandoned farmhouse. They’d look for him, but with a day’s head start, they would not catch him, aually, they would realize the error of their ways and turn around; at least, that’s what he told himself.

  In the days that followed, Leo took the long way, expl every vilge and crypt that had been sidered too polluted by his panions to explore on previous trips. It was in those pces he finally found things worth fighting.

  Most of the dead he and his friends had entered these days just y there or moved weakly. It was only those who g to the foulest patches of nd, with air that polluted the lungs of anyone who breathed it, that were truly dangerous anymore. Leo couldn’t see the spirits of the damned, but the old blood sptter told the story as often as not; these were pces of sughter ah.

  Sometimes, he found a mob of shuffling zombies in an old temple. Those were easy enough to dispatch. Other times, though, he entered something rger and meahose were the fights that Leo looked forward to. Fourteen-legged calvary. Siege dders made out of a mob of people. Giant zombies with armor uheir skin. Each of them was a challenge in their own way, and he learned something from ending each of them.

  It was only when the flesh giant dug itself free from the graveyard, where it had in dormant for who knew how long, that Leo could finally admit to himself that this was the reason he’d struck out on his own.

  As he dodged limbs thicker than his entire body and wove between blows that would have struck him dead, he felt truly free for the first time sihey had all left Sanctuary's gilded cage. This is what I’m for, he thought as he sliced through the rotting Achilles tendon ohing’s left leg before he scampered away from where the thing was about to crash to earth. This, right here, without having to worry about anyone else getting hurt. It’s just me, the sword, and whatever it is that o die a sed time.

  It was a thrill, both because this thing might strike him dead at any moment and because this was the first creature he’d faced that had been a challenge in such a long time. Challenge or not, ohe thing could no loand, it was a sitting duck, literally and figuratively, and Leo soon chopped it to ribbons. It was a slow death, but not because he was trying to make it suffer if the abomination was even capable of such a thing.

  First, he crippled its legs and then its arms, and it was only then that he took out its spine in enough pces that he could climb the shifting pile of rotting flesh and sever the giant head with blows that were more like a woodsman with ahan a warrior with a sword. It was just too big to sy with any finesse.

  Still, when his lungs were heaving, aood there spttered in ichor, he watched the miasma that g to the pce start to dissipate, and he smiled. “Well, at least that firms it,” he told himself. “There’s definitely something in Rhakin that’s still worth killing.”