Sunrise on the sixth day broke clear and sharp over the alder windbreak. That turned the hoarfrost along the sagging black roof tiles into sheets of red-gold glass before the melt began to patter into the porch crocks. By the time seventeen-year-old Bren and fifteen-year-old Tella hurried up the footpath from the river village with their breath steaming in the cold air, Daro Kesh had already swept the eighteen-inch dirt lane between the central cabbage beds and unwrapped the willow-and-comfrey compress from his right elbow. Thanks to Seyun’s midnight warning and three hours of straight rest by the hearth, the swelling along Daro’s pronator sheath had subsided fully. That left his sword-arm steady and supple.
Before calling the students to the line, Daro unlocked the raised stone grain-crib and marched Senior Steward Osen Tal up to the far western corner of the porch. Rather than leaving the fifty-year-old administrator locked in the dark dampness of the stone crib all day Daro hobbled Osen’s ankles with an eighteen-inch span of hemp cord and tied the lead line to the porch corner-post. It would stiffen an older man’s knees before a mountain journey. Osen sat on an overturned cedar bucket with a wool blanket over his shoulders and a mug of hot barley water in his bound hands. He watched the unlicensed schoolyard with the sceptical calm distance of a checker waiting for an amateur play to collapse.
