The sunlight hit the road like a hammer, washing out the shadows and revealing every detail of the standoff on the high verge.
Sella Rusk did not draw a blade. She carried no spear, no baton, and no hunting bow. Her right hand was held open, fingers splayed at shoulder height in the universal gesture of an unarmed envoy on a disputed border. Her left arm bore only the small, circular buckler of boiled ox-hide, reinforced with crosswise bands of hammered iron rivets, its surface scarred by a hundred briar scrapes and old flint gouges.
She walked three deliberate paces into the dry summer dust, stopping directly between the advancing wall of shields and the ditch where young Joss lay groaning beside his blooming briar.
Her boots settled into the gravel with a firm, unmistakable crunch.
“Halt the line, Captain Dorn,” Sella said.
She did not shout. She did not need to. Her voice carried the flat, chest-deep authority of a veteran non-commissioned officer who had called the watch in mountain blizzards while the men in front of her were still learning to grease their harness.
The front rank of the Crown platoon stopped dead.
It was not fear that checked them this time. It was the absolute, ingrained habit of military service. When an older scout in a regulation Survey jerkin plants herself before a file with an open palm at shoulder height, every soldier who has ever taken the King’s shilling knows that something official, tedious, and potentially…
