Yevgeni Kamarev is druzhina, ataman and rotamaster of Kyrnoka, at the edge where the Southern and Eastern Oblasts meet. So was his father before him, and his grandfather, and so, everyone expects, will be his son Teodor. Teo has trained with the Winged Lancers, and though he was not part of the rota when they were last called (some greenskins coming out of the foothills) the stanitsa expects he will be made rotamaster before two more summers have passed.

But today, he is not riding a warhorse, nor wearing armor. He is trotting along a path in the woods on a smaller horse, looking for the place where his grandmother told him he could find Baba Sonya, the Hag Witch for this part of the back country.

And then he turned a sharp corner on a game trail and saw the hut, nestled beneath a pair of bent trees.