A crackling campfire of aromatic pine logs and dry cedar roots burned brightly in the center of Gate Seven’s repaired southern courtyard.
The massive forty-meter breach in the outer curtain wall had been temporarily sealed with linked heavy dark metal-heavy blast barriers and fresh ferro-concrete inner walls. Beyond the barrier, the frozen badlands were dark and quiet under a vast canopy of sharp, winter stars.
Around the glowing hearth fire, the smell of charred iron and sulfur was fully banished, replaced by the mouth-watering aroma of Toby Mallow’s victory feast.
A massive fifty-liter iron cooking pot hung from a tripod over the flames. It bubbled with a thick, fragrant stew of braised badland beef, sweet yellow parsnips, wild mountain leeks, and roasted barley. On a flat steel grill beside the cooking pot, thick slabs of prime-cut aether-ox steaks sizzled over glowing embers, dripping savory juices into the fire with mouth-watering hisses.
“Toby, if you had cooked like this at the academy dining hall, Dean Pendelton would have named you Minister of Agriculture instead of expelling you,” Valerie Koslov laughed. She leaned back against a wooden ammunition crate with a steaming tin cup of spiced chicory tea in her hand.
“Hey, when I was in the cadet dorms, my budget was forty copper coins a week and a sack of moldy oats,” Toby replied with mock anger, brandishing a long iron basting fork like a fencing dress sword. “Now I’ve got the supply order budget of the Seventh Vanguard Expeditionary Regiment…
