Loka just glared at him from under her hat, arms wrapped tightly around her waist.  The chill fog was beginning to seep through the leather and velvet into her bones, and only the fire of her resentment was keeping her from shivering.

"Fine." she shot back.

The carriage driver cleared his throat awkwardly from his perch, his voice echoing faintly through the soupy, moonlit darkness.

"I'll, um," he cleared his throat again, "I'll just get myself to the village as well, then, shall I?"  He reached into his greatcoat and took a dearly-needed swig from a glimmering silver hip-flask, turning his head toward the black wall of the Oakheart wood.  "Roost in the barn or suchlike.  Anything other'n sit here like a roast pheasant a'waitin' to make a meal for some blasphemous mutt, is what I mean."

Loka sloshed back through the water, gravel and mud to the carriage and extended a gloved hand.  The man was handing over the flask before he even knew he was doing it.  She took it, tilted it back and swallowed, relishing the burning warmth spreading through her body.

"Do as you please," she said, handing it back up and licking her lips. "He's doing the talking."

She turned back, coat flowing behind her, and followed Gregor as he stepped up the soiled, wet, leaf-strewn embankment and stepped into the pitch darkness of the wood.  

[hr]

The moonlight turned to little more than a pale haze seeping through a threatening canopy of shadows, and tiny silver slivers against invisible treetrunks and claustrophobic undergrowth.  Insects chirped on every side, and here and there the rustle of some unseen animal bolting away from them set her heart suddenly pounding and her hair standing on end.  Gregor's torch illuminated a perilous, vulnerable patch of firelight surrounded by a sea of impenetrable blackness.  And somewhere within it, if the Inquisitor's tales were to be believed, lurked a monstrous killer.

Loka ran her tongue against her teeth, trying to take slow deep breaths through her nose.  The odd, unpleasant scent was fainter in the thick, mulchy damp of the wood, but the sharp smell of blood still coiled through the looming trees, along with all manner of others, seeping in every direction.  She could almost see the trails, floating like the mist all around them.  Wet fur.  Dung.  Rot.  Sour water.  The heavy perfume of unfamiliar northern plants.

"Gregor," she whispered as quietly as possible, trying to focus on anything at all in the suffocating gloom, "How do you find them?"