The northern plain of Grey Crag was a tiered arena of frozen tension.
At eight o’clock in the morning, a thin white frost-fog hung two feet above the gravel, clinging to the frozen mud and the sharp ditch stakes. Under a cold slate sky that threatened fresh snow, two thousand royal legionaries stood drawn up in rigid battle cohorts three hundred paces from the castle ditch.
Their polished iron breastplates caught the pale, watery sunlight. Their shields bore the double-headed balance beam of the Board of Trade, held in neat, disciplined rows.
Behind the infantry ranks rolled forty heavy supply wains, their canvas covers frosted white. In front of the army, flanked by fifty heavy knights and four heralds, sat Lord Silas Crane in a raised velvet pavilion chair. His powdered wig was freshly curled, his ermine cloak pulled tight around his thin shoulders.
Before him stood Giles Croft.
Giles had erected a simple wooden speaker’s podium on the outer berm of the ditch, directly beneath the sharp sixty-degree prow of Bastion Alpha.
On the podium rested the four-hundred-page, pigskin-bound Comprehensive Public works & Border Offset Ledger. Beside Giles stood Lady Millicent. It held her quill and inkstand. Captain Kenneth Drake, his ten-foot pacing rod planted firmly in the gravel.
