On the second morning after the lake, two senior line captains from the outer garrison came down the northern ridge trail with a mule train of splints, salt pork, and field stretchers, having followed the silent relay posts down into the valley.
There was no grand courtroom set up on the rocks, and nobody pretended that a speech could tidy up what had happened in the Cradle.
The senior captain, a grey-haired woman named Halda who had served with the border engineers, spent an hour inspecting the collapsed upper basin, the cut relay cables, and the bruised, hollow-eyed soldiers sitting round the terrace fires. She listened to Corporal Senn’s report and read the original marching warrant Veyt had carried from the pass.
Then Captain Halda walked over to the flat stone where Commander Veyt sat with her cloak wrapped around her shoulders, unbuckled Veyt’s officer’s gorget from her collar, and placed her into formal military custody for exceeding her written orders, seizing temple personnel under false medical pretexts, and endangering both her own company and civilian handlers in an unstable underground fault.
Veyt did not fight the guards or demand a speech. She stood up, held her bruised hands out for the leather wrist-straps, and walked to the rear baggage mule with the blank, heavy posture of a woman whose war had finally run out of map.
