(No worries; my own workload has, out of a scale from one to ten, been hovering steadily at about eleven. And my own post is nearly two weeks late anyway.)<br/><br/>Elandris had never known any rituals or ceremonies that had identified him as a member of any sort of group at all. He had no common scarring, carried no betraying symbolic items, and knew no mutual passwords to convey the message to another that they were brothers in arms. Many Wardens worked autonomously, tending to their own business and keeping their noses out of irrelevance. Undoubtedly, Elandris had often surmised, there had been many occasions during which two Wardens unwittingly cooperated side-by-side to achieve a common goal, but it was no question that they had never known one another's true affiliations. The only ones Elandris knew were those he had chanced to meet in the Draggenden Warden headquarters. And most of them were dead.<br/>The patterns of sunlight crisscrossed the shadowy path that led through the forest, trees dancing slowly back and forth to a silent rhythm of unheard music. For a long while, the only sounds were that of boots and hooves striking the ground. Elandris considered attempting to begin a conversation, on the grounds that it was what normal people did, but decided against it. Both men, it was clear, were followers of solitude, and conversation was uncomfortable at best.<br/>Elandris' ears caught a faint rushing sound; he knew from the rate at which they had been traveling and from the speed that the sun was rapidly sinking in the sky that they had reached the river.<br/>"We'll make camp on the bank of the river," he called back to Karllandren, quickening his pace. "Tomorrow we cross."