Mahon jumped directly on the ground when he was a meter above it. He bent his knees to absorb the shock and then walked away to let others come. Jorik followed closely behind and jumped at his side.

Once the whole group was at the bottom of the sixth wall, on the battlefield side, the rope ladders were being pulled back up to the top. The soldiers on the wall wished them good luck, and the unit quickly organized itself to prepare for the march forward.

When you tried to be discreet, twenty-eight persons were a high number to hide, but Jorik had experience leading such a group. He sent forward Mahon with a few other soldiers to act as the front guard.

“The goal is twofold.” Jorik started as Mahon was ready to leave. “Don’t meet Amentiae and report on what you see.”

They had been given a rough map of the battlefield up to the third wall, but Amentiae were masters of Earth magic, and they were known to use It to change the ground and lead the scouts into deadly traps. In short, Mahon had a map, but he didn’t know how reliable it was.

“Keep to the small forest areas, even if we’re not moving straight. Best not to meet any Amentiae and arrive a couple hours late at the fourth wall.”

They had planned to camp near the fourth wall tonight and then scrutinize the Amentiae movements before going back tomorrow evening. From Mahon’s understanding, they were relatively safe up to the fifth wall, but they could still meet Amentiae patrols on the way.

Amentiae patrols were not so hard to get rid of with a Mahon’s unit size, but if one managed to escape, the insect would pass the words they were here, and if they didn’t leave fast enough, they would have to deal with more and more patrols coming their way.

Still, most of the patrols survived back up from the fifth wall. Closer to the fourth wall, however, the Amentiae were more numerous and the patrols bigger. If an Amentiae spotted a human at that time, Klaern, the soldier which Mahon had spoken with during yesterday dinner, told of fifty-fifty odds of getting alive. Only Shadows had reliable experiences going back alive from a third wall scouting mission.

Mahon exchanged more words with Jorik on their strategy, and they agreed on a path up to the fifth wall upon which they would re-evaluate their situation and take a short break. The two men talked a bit more about signaling and what they would do if they saw Amentiae. For most of the other things, they already had experience from the scouting lessons, and they didn’t need to speak about it.

Actually, Mahon and Jorik were perfectly suited for such a mission. If not for the novice soldiers they were taking with them. In fact, the two students would have had an easier way scouting with only the two of them, alas, it wasn’t how the army worked. They had to have the strength to at least be able to fend off an Amentiae patrol.

Mahon left with a quarter of the group and walked forward to the next forest grove. From above, the ground looked more flat than it really was. The striae from before were in fact half buried trenches. They didn’t look anything like the trenches dug between the sixth and seventh walls, and in fact, most weren’t even parallel to the walls. They reeked of bloody history and endless fights from centuries ago, but nowadays they were just pathways to move through the battlefield.

The soldiers walked as silently as they could, bending to hide in the hollowness of the plain. They soon reached a small forest area, and they were able to move more freely while observing their surroundings. They spent a few minutes there while Mahon studied his map and the landscapes in front of him before choosing the best route forward.

He left a message for Jorik and continued. Soon, he had a simple system in place where he scouted forward with a First Blue actually decent at scouting and left sentries on the way at critical places to make sure Amentiae wouldn’t pass without being noticed.

They couldn’t afford to be stretched too thin, as the longer they stayed on one spot, the more chance they would have to be spotted. From Mahon’s vantage location in the front to the last soldier of Jorik’s main group, they only had a ten minutes gap. It was the fastest they could move at, while being sure they wouldn’t be spotted that easily.

Mahon continued to pave the way forward, and they soon reached the fifth wall. It wasn’t exactly at the spot they had chosen previously, but the hazard of the field had made Mahon choose a slightly different path that he had deemed safer.

The whole group gathered together in the shadow of the remnants of a fifth wall tower. The portion of the wall was still twenty meters high, but only a few dozen meters wide. The east side was akin to a cliff, but the west side offered almost natural stairs from the way the stones had crumbled.

Mahon and Jorik climbed the wall from the west, while keeping their movement as discreet as they could, and soon the two men were lying on their stomach at the top of the wall, facing south, towards the next wall.

There, the ground wasn’t very different from the one they had already crossed, aside from even wider hollows and bumps. There were still some trees grouped together here and there, like halos of heaven in the otherwise creepy landscape.

It seemed similar to the previous one, but the mood couldn’t be more different. When Mahon had first seen it atop the sixth wall, he had thought it almost beautiful. But now that he had crossed it and he was on the fifth wall, the way ahead only seemed more dangerous. The fact the land could both hold a part of beauty while reeking of trouble and traps added to the eerie feeling Mahon had when looking at the fourth wall.

Or what was left of it. If the fifth wall was badly damaged, the fourth was almost non-existent. None of it was intact, and more than nine meters out of ten were simply a pile of scraps. The remaining one out of ten stood barely fifteen meters high, sometimes much less. From where he was laying, Mahon couldn’t spot a single part where the top of the wall was not destroyed.

“It may be best if I walk forward from now on.” Jorik started once they had observed their surroundings long enough. “We can’t afford to meet any Amentiae now. The soldiers wouldn’t survive a forced retreat back to the camp.”

Mahon acquiesced. He understood Jorik’s plan without a problem. The noble was better than him at scouting, and Mahon had spent half of the day scouting ahead already. It was best Jorik took over while he rested and prepared to fight Amentiae if the need arose.

“Sounds good to me. None of the fourth wall sections looks interesting enough to camp safely, though. Where do you want to go?”

Jorik took some time before answering, studying the open field in front of him. Once they got down, they wouldn’t have another nice viewpoint until they came back here.

“See the forest here.” He pointed to a spot where a group of trees had grown alongside a not so destroyed part of the fourth wall. “I’ll try to aim for that spot. We could then have sentries all night long looking in every direction atop the wall while the rest of the group hid between the trees.”

Mahon’s eyes made the way back from the location Jorik had pointed at to their actual position.

“You think you can get us here without trouble? The path doesn’t seem easy.”

“I think I can. And I also think we have some leeway. I can’t spot anything moving from there. It’s as the mission stated, the insects must be in the west. It wouldn’t surprise me if we end up not seeing a single one of them.”

Mahon nodded. The surroundings were indeed very calm. It also made sense, since even if they were at fault, Rym wouldn’t have agreed to send them to a too-dangerous mission with so few preparations. Still, Mahon wouldn’t have minded meeting up with a small Amentiae patrol to relieve some stress.

Better luck next time, I guess.

The two men went back down and joined their soldiers. They ate a small but consistent sandwich that had been prepared for them, and Jorik soon ordered the little group forward once more.

“We’re switching with Mahon. I’m going to take the lead while he will stay with the main group. I don’t need to remind you that we’re entering a zone where Amentiae are more akin to patrol. Stay alert and silent. Let’s go.”

Jorik led Mahon’s previous unit forward at a rapid pace while Mahon finished packing their impromptu camp from the break. They left five minutes later, after he ordered someone to get the sentries back.

The more numerous group he was now leading was even more silent than the previous one. They didn’t need to share any information while moving forward and simply followed behind Jorik’s trail.

As a replay of today's morning, Mahon progressed through the creaks, from a group of trees to another, slowly zigzagging across the plains landscape to reach the fourth wall.

Jorik didn’t linger on their discretion, and more than once he forced the group to go back on their steps or to walk a path leading them away from their destination. But the First Black was competent, and they slowly approached the spot he had previously pointed to Mahon.

The closer they got to the fourth wall, the higher the tension rose within Mahon’s group. They spent more time looking around and walked half-bent through the trenches while holding their breath.

There were only a couple kilometers to cross from the fifth wall to the fourth, but Jorik’s dedication made them spent five hours to reach within a hundred meters from their destination.

Mahon arrived with his group in a larger hole in the ground where they could all hide. Jorik was waiting for them, and he signaled everyone to move closer to him.

“We’re close to the end of our trip, soldiers. We have made careful detours to make sure we stayed hidden, and although we haven’t seen any Amentiae for now, don’t lower your guard. A hundred meters ahead, there is a nice spot where we could both hide from sight and take a good look at our surroundings. We’ll camp here tonight, observe the surroundings tomorrow from our vantage point, and head back to camp as soon as we can.”

The soldiers nodded, and Mahon noticed the tiredness in their looks from the day of walking under strain. His suppositions had been confirmed as they hadn’t met a single Amentiae, but the still present possibility they could weighted heavily on everyone, and they were tired to have such a constant but invisible pressure on their mind. A moving tree, a weird shadow, or a strangely shaped rock had been spotted as potential threats more than once during their journey.

“There is no way to cross the remaining ground at the cover of the trenches. The field ahead is just too flat. We’ll need to crawl the next hundred meters to our destination.”

A few soldiers grumbled, but most simply acquiesced. They were too tired to argue and knew the spot ahead to be more than ideal to camp.

“Mahon. You go ahead first and see if everything is alright.” Jorik glanced at him, and Mahon nodded.

He removed his bag and placed it in front of him as he lowered himself to the ground. The surroundings were as calm and silent as during the whole day, but he still spent some time making sure nothing was hiding in the nearby areas.

And then he proceeded to crawl his way to the fourth wall with slow motions. The day had been long, but Mahon had seen worse and he kept his focus as he moved while keeping an eye on his surroundings. Alas, they were really alone and not an insect suddenly appeared on the horizon.

He reached the wall, ditched his bag behind a tree, and observed the wall. It was too old and had not been maintained for centuries, if not millennia, and there were more than enough holes to make the climb effortless.

Mahon chose a spot behind the dense foliage of a high tree so he would be out of sight and within a minute, he had pulled himself to the top. He crawled to see what lay behind the wall with extreme discretion, but he only saw another deserted plain and a line of destroyed stones lying around as the third wall.

He released a sigh of relief as he noted the absence of any Amentiae.

So they had really moved somewhere else on the battlefield. We didn’t even meet a patrol. Did they simply abandon the whole sector? What are they planning?

Mahon pivoted his body to turn into Jorik’s direction and indicate to the noble that the surroundings were clear when he saw them.

Countless moving silhouettes were swarming atop the fifth wall. Large blue flags floated in the wind here and there, as if the appearance of thousands of soldiers wasn’t enough to know of the presence of this army.

They didn’t even try to hide, but, again, with so many of them, it was hard to hide anything. They were kilometers away, but Mahon could still distinguish some of their particular features, such as an extra pair of legs and black and red chitin carapaces.

Amentiae.