The War Mastiffs slowed to a heavy trot and then halted as Reidar raised his hand, signaling Jake and Lena to hold their position while they were still hidden by the tree line.
The settlement walls rose in the distance, but there was no one around. Instead of the organized mass of people he expected from a church's outpost preparing for war or maintaining its daily grind, the place around here, which should have been filled with thousands of people, was empty.
The lack of movement in a place that should have been a crossroads, a door to the adjacent region, was an anomaly that set his nerves on edge.
If the base had been attacked, there would be visible damage in the surrounding area, such as scorched earth, abandoned equipment, or bodies left in the open, but the area looked normal, or better, as normal as it could be in this situation.
