Late afternoon shadows stretched from the western low roof wall across the scored flat stone slabs. Then, Daro Kesh finished checking the leather wrap on the handle of his twenty-two-inch short sword. Then he walked over to the eastern pillar where Seyun was resting between slow breathing sets. Daro was not a man who hid behind polite encouragement. Just then, a battlefield math looked grim.
At dawn, he had stood as martial witness and confirmed that the dispute between Seyun and Nara Soth had ended. That was because the words carved on Uren’s tablet left no room for sophistry. Yet all afternoon, watching Seyun pause after twelve breaths to press a hand against his aching breastbone, the veteran swordsman had been doing the cold math of the coming siege.
Stopping two paces from Seyun, Daro pointed the sword sheath tip of his short sword toward the northern ridge. There, the pale ring of Heaven’s Measure turned relentlessly against the darkening sky.
Speaking in the blunt, measured voice he used when correcting a flawed stance at his black-roof school, Daro laid out his fear. Within roughly two weeks, the northern sky-slit would complete its one-lunar-turn gathering cycle and go down in full correction across the inhabited valleys. Against that descent, they had three Early Jade fighters—Soran, Vaska, and Daro himself—one Deeper Bronze spearwoman in Ilyra, one Deeper Bronze staff fighter in Seyun, and Nara Soth.
