much as their skills to stop the attack. As the two Rangers return to their cabin in the woods, a castle Courier, Alyss, Will's unwitting crush, frantically gallops up and informs Will that Ebony, his dog, went missing three days prior. Will realizes that Roamers, migrant performers and musicians who travel in familial bands and in whose wake missing things follow, probably took Ebony. Halt suggests Will and Alyss go together because a woman is less suspicious to the Roamers than a strapping young man and that the two go as fast as possible because the Roamers liked staging dog fights. Will and Alyss, disguised as simple country folk track the Roamers for a two days, stopping one night in barn where they receive another warning of the dangers of leaving a dog with the Roamers. On day three, the pair catch up to the Roamers and do some reconnoitering that night. They deduce from a conversation in a tavern that there would be a dog fight in another couple days. Spying on the Roamers again, Alyss devises a plan to take the place of an old servant woman name Hilde, disguising herself to look like the hag. Will made sure that Alyss' disguise held, before taking the old woman to the nearby village and helping her make a new life at a friend's restaurant. Alyss follows two of the Roamers, Petulengo and Jerome, as they head out to the woods, assumably to feed the dogs meant for fighting. Alyss ends up being called to help move the dogs. She finds Ebony there, but is attacked by a vicious dog that Jerome lost control of. Will shoots it before it can hurt Alyss, but it doesn't die and it kills Jerome when he falls over it. Returning to the Roamer camp, Will gives them a dire warning to leave the kingdom and they obey. Purple Prose Will reviews a speech for the royal wedding of the knight Horace and Princess Evanlyn, two of his closest friends, in front Halt and his wife Pauline, the head Courier. They conclude it is a bit pompous and florid in language, although Will is very fond of it. Halt informs Will of a mission to stop a group of moondarkers, shipwrecking gangs who lure boats onto dangerous coastlines and the steal the cargo, who had been moving up the coast. Will and Halt arrive