Mouse has set herself apart from her people. With the Sun's blessing, she tries to forge a new path. But she is still one of them. When a deathspeaker introduces himself, her skin crawls and she grips tighter the shaft of her walking stick and her instincts say<em>strike, strike quickly</em>.<br/><br/>She does not.<br/><br/>She looks back at her people, a sidelong look but a hard one, the sort her mother gave her when she was too battered and bruised to continue training but tried anyway. She hopes they'll understand.<br/><br/>"How many, and how recently?" Mouse turns back to the corpse-speaker, "we might look a little ragged, but we are exceptional warriors. If you can give us what we need, we can get your people back for you."