Bastion

we’ll be riding double on the vanners. With snow in the air, we can’t take the chance the caravan will get stuck somewhere.”
    “For once, I agree with you,” Jakyr said, and that was that. Mags and Amily had a second night together, which went even better than the previous one, and in the morning, with Lena up behind Amily and Bear up behind Lita, the four of them headed off at a brisk trot for the next village on the Circuit. He hoped she wasn’t still sore so that riding the wide-barreled vanner was going to hurt her, but she seemed cheerful enough as they trotted off.
    Mags and Jakyr gave them a half-day head start, which would become a full day after they overnighted at the next Waystation. Jakyr spent the morning bottling up as much of the broth as he could, which was not nearly as much as he wanted, and cleaned the kettle, while Mags secured the site for another five or six days of absence. Then, after a good lunch, they were off.
    But as they approached the Waystation, they immediately knew that something was . . . not right.
    There was a smell of woodsmoke in the air, and there shouldn’t have been anyone around to build a fire. Maybe the scent had traveled from the village, but the wind was in the wrong direction, and that seemed unlikely.
    They approached the Waystation cautiously. Unlike the previous station, this one was not only in good repair, it was in suspiciously good repair. The roof was newly thatched, every stone in place, and all the woodwork repaired and stained. And, yes, there was a very thin curl of smoke coming up from the chimney.
    They looked at each other. “Someone’s moved in and is helping themselves,” Jakyr said, with a hint of a growl in his voice.
    “I thought that was against the law,” Mags replied.
    “It is. And we’re going to put a stop to this. But whoever is using it might be armed, so we’ll treat this as if an enemy had taken it.” At Jakyr’s nod, they both dismounted and turned the Companions loose. The Companions ghosted through the trees, somehow becoming practically invisible, and scouted the area around the Station.
    :Nothing out here. And we don’t scent anyone in the Station itself,: Dallen said. Mags and Jakyr glanced at each other, and Jakyr nodded, but they both kept their swords in their hands as they eased up to the door.
    Someone had modified it so that it had a real latch and a lock instead of the string latch that Waystations were supposed to have. Jakyr made a face, but Mags waved a hand at him.
    “I got this,” he said, and sheathed his sword, taking a slim dagger from his belt instead. Of course, if he had known that he was going to have to pick a lock, he would have brought the set of lockpicks with him. But who could have predicted that someone would have helped themselves to a Waystation?
    Mags had been taught by an expert, a member of the City Watch who’d once been a thief. He himself was by no means an expert, but this was a very crude lock, and that was being generous; it yielded to his efforts long before Jakyr got impatient.
    When they opened the door, it was to find that the unknown someone had not only helped himself to the Station, he had moved in, lock, stock, and barrel.
    One of the bed boxes had become a curtained bed. The other had been turned into a storage chest, complete with a lid. The storage cupboard had been joined by a second as well as a wardrobe. There was a table with a basin and a pitcher, a little table with a chair, a rug on the floor, a chamber pot in the corner, and very little room left in which to move.
    There was also a pot simmering over the fire in the fireplace, which suggested that the occupant could be expected to return at any—
    :He’s coming up the path,: Dallen warned. Mags and Jakyr positioned themselves on either side of the door, weapons ready. They waited, scarcely breathing. The door swung open.
    Before the man could react to the fact that “his” door was now unlocked and unlatched, the two were on him, Jakyr’s sword at his throat, as Mags snatched away the ax in his hand.
    Now, any reasonable person, at least in Mags’ estimation, who found himself confronted by an angry Herald in full Whites—scarcely someone whom you could mistake for anything but a Herald—would acknowledge the fact that he’d been caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t and surrender.
    This fellow was evidently not a reasonable person.
    He tried to knock the sword aside and went for