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Acorns lie scattered on the autumnal leaves, rolling under the boots of those that flee. In another time or place the children might have stopped and made a game of throwing the smooth oak nuts at the trunks, targets marked in chalk. All that fills the air of the temperate woodland is the sound of the leaves, crunched and torn. Taryn watches from her horse, eye to her telescope...

The acorns crack underfoot. Their shells of every brown will be enough to alert the trackers to their path, but the consequences of slowing down are too severe. Those fragmented "hats," trodden into the soft autumn mud, are as good as a signpost to those that pursue.