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Unexpectedly, Ike's journey went without any problem during the first weeks. They moved forward throughout the day, avoiding the most populated areas of the Fireswamps so no one saw them, and camped at dusk. In spite of having a pair of canvas tents with them, all agreed they would not waste their time setting and unsetting them, at least not until they were closer to Northundra and the intense cold forced them to do so.

Ike slept with one eye open the first nights they spent out in the open, but after a few days he realized that no one in the group seemed to be willing to kill him, at least not yet, and he could relax. Still, he did not want anyone to catch him off guard; after all, he did not know his companions well, or what he could expect from them.

He found out his names, however. The panther was called Rohm and the leopard was Atha. They usually travelled ahead, talking with each other and glancing back from time to time, as if they were making sure that the rest of the group still followed them. Ike had deduced that both knew each other from before and did not want to socialize with him, her sister or Kodu, but he could not help but feel a bit concerned about their habit of going it alone.

<<At least, they don't whisper to each other>> the lion told himself, trying to stay positive <<There is nothing more suspicious than whispers>>.

He did not talk too much with Kodu either. The first days, the cat had informed him of the things that had happened in the year he had been gone.

It seemed that his father had carried out one last incursion to the lands of the Barkinclouds, even joining the skirmish that had taken place. Ike knew that by then his father only joined those battles in order to maintain his reputation and reaffirm his power in the throne, while it was true that when he was younger, he had felt attracted to the battlefield. The lion could not help but remember sadly how his father had tried to engage his interest in arms when he was younger. <<It does not matter>> the king had said finally, when he had understood that the prince would never learn how to use a sword <<The power can be shown in many ways. Let us hope for your own good that at least you learn any of them>>. That had been the first time the lion had disappointed his father.

Kodu told him that many thought Alekai had been injured in the incursion and that, probably, it would be the last time he would set foot in a battlefield. Ike knew how stubborn his father could be, so he was not that sure.

When he was not talking with Kodu, or trying to ignore the endless monologue of her sister, Ike thought about Zèon. He imagined him lying in the bed, getting weaker and weaker each day, as Shiba barely managed to protect him in that tower. Then, his heart shrank and he had to stop himself from turning back and running in the opposite direction, towards the castle.

But it was even worse when he looked for the warmth of the arctic fox and he could not find it. Then, he wondered if carrying on with that journey would be worth it, and if he was really doing the right thing.

They soon went through the Fireswamps and entered Plumbland. After six weeks, they had left the vast wasteland behind and were heading towards the Strait of Tarcha.

Even Ike could sense the change in Atha and Room's attitude. Up until that moment, both had travelled unworried, smiling and conversing with each other casually. However, once they went through the crude barrier that separated Plumbland from the Strait, the smiles disappeared from their faces and a heavy silence fell on the group. Even Kathreen remained silent, as if she could understand why she should not make any noise, for some reason.

Ike could feel the tension, too. Tarcha had been a conflictive territory in the past, but as far as he knew, his father had placed it under the yoke of the fehlar in the first phase of the invasion. There were some incidents from time to time, of course, but it was not one of the most conflictive territories; or at least, that was what he believed. He could not help but wonder with each step why his guides seemed to be so concerned.

He soon found out.

It happened while they were walking through a little forest of withered, twisted trees. They had not gone far enough for the climate to be much colder, but the vegetation of that little forest already showed a dun, faded color, and a thin layer of fallen leaves covered the ground, muffling steps of the group.

It was Atha who suddenly rose a paw, ordering the group to stop. Rohm seemed to understand and shot a warning glance at the rest of the group, but it was not necessary; Kodu and Kathreen had already stopped and Ike, who had been feeling a bit uneasy for a while by then, had made the same. The panther smiled, satisfied, and turned again to the leopard, nodding. It was obvious that they had perceived something the rest of the group had not.

Atha walked away from them and, before Ike could even ask himself what was happening, the leopard disappeared into the thicket. The rest of the group waited there, patiently, hidden among the trees, during what seemed to be hours. Finally, the shadow of the leopard appeared again between the bushes. Whatever he had found, he seemed to be more relaxed now that when he had left the group.

"Come with me," he said, with a strange smile.

Everyone followed him to an embankment bordered by a line of shrubs. When they reached the edge, the leopard crouched down and made a gesture to the others to do the same. With increasing curiosity and hiding behind the bushes, Ike asked himself why they had to be so cautious.

The answer was not far from there, and the lion had to contain a shout of astonishment when he finally understood what Atha had seen. Beyond the embankment, some hundred meters away, there was a little open space in the forest. If they had been in a lower point they would have not been able to see it, since the vegetation around that area was dense and thick, but from their position, it was not difficult to spot the unmistakable shape of a tent in the middle of the forest.

And it was not the only one, Ike understood. Dozens of tents, grouped in that hideout and hidden from indiscrete eyes.

"It's a camp of kane refugees," the lion whispered, with a dry mouth.

Atha nodded, still smiling in that strange way.

"They usually hide in the forest, but I thought they were more cautious. This is not the best place to be, especially knowing how easy they can be spotted from here."

"Maybe they still don't know about this embankment," Rohm opined.

"Or maybe they are getting too confident. In any case, they won't last much. I reckon they will be found in a couple of months and if that's not the case... well, we'll have to report it."

It took Ike a few seconds to assimilate those words.

"Hey, hey, wait. Report it?"

Rohm turned to look at him, surprised.

"You don't know? Anyone who finds a camp of kane refugees must inform immediately your father's army of its position. Not doing so will be considered treason."

The lion gave him a horrified look.

"It's true," Kodu intervened, before Ike could say anything. "When the last phase of the invasion finished by the end of last year, your father decided to concentrate all efforts in prevent any attempt of revolution that the kane might have in mind." The cat paused for a moment. "In that sense, the refugee camps are the perfect place for the rebels to gather, so your father immediately targeted them."

Ike did not say anything. Instead, he just kept looking at the tent among the trees, with anguish. He knew that, not far from there, there were kane trying to keep a normal life, trying to escape from the tyrannical regime of his father. Those kane, probably, were not aware that they were being watched, or that very soon, a column of his father's army would arrive there to destroy the only place where they had managed to stay in freedom up until that moment...

"This is war, prince Alekai," Atha said, guessing what he was thinking.

"War? No, this is a massacre," Ike replied, containing a bitter laugh.

"You haven't seen what they can do," the leopard insisted. "They are not as helpless as they might seem."

"I see, I see," the lion answered, with a gloomy smile. "From here I can see the catapults, the siege towers and their troops forming. Can't you?"

Atha glanced at him and cracked a disdainful smile.

"I'm sorry to tell you you're wrong, your Highness."

"Well, well," Kathreen intervened then, with an exasperated sigh. "Watching a tent and theorizing about it sure is fun, but it is not one of my favorite pastimes. Besides, I thought we were in an important journey. Can we move ahead, please?"

"Of course," Rohm murmured, standing up. It seemed like he had also grown tired of the argument. "We'll have to walk around the camp at a safe distance if we don't want to be seen. In any case, it shouldn't take us much more than..."

He stopped in the middle of the sentence, with his eyes fixed above the lioness' shoulder. Ike did not understand what was happening even when the panther put one of his paws on his belt, in tension.

Kathreen reacted much faster. Before Atha had even managed to stand up, the lioness turned back so quickly that the long black sleeves of her suit caressed Ike's muzzle, and she reached out to a determined point behind them. A knife appeared out of nowhere, cutting the air, and the lion followed it with his eyes until he watched in awe how it sank in the throat of a surprised kane. The german shepherd brought his paws to his neck, making guttural sounds as he fell to the ground, covering the ground around him with blood.

Ike was still trying to grasp what had happened when Rohm, still with a paw on his belt, murmured:

"There is at least one more hidden in the thicket".

Kathreen let out an exasperated snort, while Atha took the huge axe from his back and wielded it, impatient. Kodu extracted his own sword from the scabbard that hanged from his belt and made a gesture to Ike, asking him to take some steps back. The lion, still too confused, obeyed without saying a word.

The next seconds passed slowly, as the little group kept their eyes fixed in the bushes in front of them, waiting for the slightest movement to attack. Ike gulped, suddenly comprehending that he had never faced a situation like that. He had experienced tense moments in the Box, but he had always been aware that his life was not at stake. For the first time in a long time, a wave of true fear ran through his back and made him shiver.

A little movement in the leaves on the right caught Kathreen's attention and she made another quick gesture with one of her sleeves in that direction. Another knife flew quickly towards the bush and a dull sound rose in the middle of the silence, proving that it had hit the target. However, the lioness did not have time to congratulate herself for his triumph, since a war cry shook the forest and two kane appeared from the dense thicket. Both were wielding short swords and ran towards them with clear threatening intentions. One of them had Kathreen's knife stuck in his side.

<<But they are only two...>> was the brief thought that went through Ike's mind, before Atha and Rohm walked away from the group and stepped towards the kane. The sound of the swords clashing resounded loudly as they started a violent fight.

Ike barely had time to follow the battle, but, even though he did not know anything about duels, he soon understood that his group had the advantage. The kane were not equipped for the battle and their weapons were much shorter and worse than those that Atha and Rohm wielded. The leopard, with his enormous axe, did not have any problem to keep the kane under control, and although the size of his weapon implied that he moved slowly, his enemy could not find any chance to attack. At the same time, Rohm used his own long sword to attack the other kane, who seemed to be more experienced in battle. Even though he was supposed to be in disadvantage, he made a great challenge to the panther, dodging his stabs and counterattacking with quick movements.

Meanwhile, Kodu and Kathreen watched tensely next to Ike. The lion asked himself if they were following the battle like him, and judging by the satisfied grin in his sister's muzzle, he deduced that she had also guessed they had everything to win.

A few seconds later, Atha's axe found a blind spot in his opponent's defense. The kane let out a scream of pain as the weapon sank violently in his trunk. When he saw the lifeless body of his companion falling to the ground, the other kane let out a frustrated shriek and dealt a series of attacks so fast that he managed to break Rohm's concentration.

"Rohm!" Atha exclaimed, still trying to pull his axe out of the dead kane's broken body.

The other fehlar glanced at him briefly asking for help, but understood immediately he had made a mistake. His opponent took advantage of that little distraction and concentrated all his strength in a single blow that clashed violently against the other sword and made the panther flinch.

Kodu and Atha attempted to move forward in order to support the fehlar, but before any of them could even make a single step, another knife cut the air and stuck in one of the unprotected shoulders of the kane who was facing Rohm. He let out a surprised yelp that immediately turned into a guttural noise once the panther recovered his concentration and sank firmly his sword into his opponent's stomach.

Ike watched as the second kane fell to the ground, dead, and Atha and Kodu sighed in relief almost at the same time. Rohm pulled his sword out of the kane's stomach, a young labrador, before rubbing it against the grass in order to clean the blood.

"I think there is no one left," he confirmed, introducing the sword in his belt again. "They probably were explorers. I bet they were checking that there was no one in the surroundings of the camp."

"Well, surprise, surprise! Here we were!" the lioness smiled, hopping towards the corpses and pulling her knives out of them. She stopped briefly to look at the blades covered in blood, before cleaning them in the grass. "I must say it has been much more exciting that practicing with the targets in the palace."

"You have an enviable aim, princess," Atha congratulated her, putting his axe in his back and crossing his arms. "Three out of three. That's what I call efficacy."

Kathreen giggled nervously, blushing slightly.

"Oh, please, don't be like that. I just killed one, after all."

"And as for you," the leopard added, turning to Ike and glaring at him in an unfriendly manner, "do you still believe we're not in war after this?"

It took the lion a few seconds to find the answer, as he could not look away from the blood that bathed the ground.

"Well," he murmured, uneasy. "You've heard him, they were just explorers," he managed to say, pointing at Rohm. "They were just trying to defend their camp..."

"Ha!" the leopard laughed. "You're lucky you don't depend or yourself or right now you'd be as dead as them."

"Or even worse, they would have made him a prisoner," Rohm intervened, giving Ike a serious look. "You are the heir to the throne. I doubt the kane would have wasted this chance."

"Oh, come on, don't be so harsh with my brother," Kathreen smiled, standing between the guides and the lion. "I'm sure he would have thought of something and saved his skin. He always does."

"Maybe," the leopard replied, turning back and starting to walk away from the bodies that were starting to get cold in the grass. "But right now, he would be dead. In these situations, strength is the only possible solution. It's survival, after all."

Kathreen gave him a long look, still smiling, but did not say a thing. Instead, she just put the knives in her sleeves and shook her head, starting to walk happily after the leopard. Rohm still gave Ike a last glance that seemed to tell him "You'd better change your attitude if you want to stay alive", before turning and moving forward too.

Ike stood by the corpses for a few seconds, looking at their lifeless faces, frozen forever in a gesture of surprise and pain. The smell of blood made him dizzy, but he forced himself to give a thought to those kane who, even knowing they did not stand a chance against the enemies that had appeared in their camp, had risked their lives to save their people. The lion felt anxious when he thought of the fear the camp refugees would experience when they found the corpses, when they understood that someone who was dangerously close to them had murdered those kane.

<<I know they would have killed me if they could>> he thought, shivering <<But in the end, they were just trying to protect their people. Maybe they were the first in attack, but we were a threat>>.

And, however, he knew that Atha was right and that if he had been alone, he would have not stood the least chance of survival. Should he have fight? He rubbed one of his eyes, confused, as he asked himself what would have been the right decision in that situation. Maybe it did not exist at all.

"Ike, we should move forward," Kodu reminded him, also looking at the corpses with a sad look in his face.

It took the lion a few instants to react, but he finally nodded, regretful. Soon after, he was following the steps of the rest of the group, leaving behind the lifeless bodies of those kane, but he would take them in his mind for a long time.