The report came at the third hour past midnight.
Not from a scout. The scouts Aragon had sent into the tree line at dusk hadn't come back yet, which was either because they were being careful or because something had happened to them, and in the current circumstances both possibilities deserved equal consideration. The report came from the pair of sentries posted on the northern battlement — two men named Aldric and Cob, both of Malaica's third company, neither of them the type to invent things.
