The draft slate lay across Prit’s knees like a tombstone, its surface gray with the powder of freshly cut stone.
Noll Vey brought his awareness into the low granite arch of the lower foundation chamber, where the seepage from the old well ran in cold, dark threads down the bedrock. Here, thirty feet beneath the hearth hall, the hill was silent. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic drip of water into an iron drain-pan and the dry rattle of Sergeant Berr’s scabbard against his greaves.
The dead soldier leaned against an unmortared pier of native limestone, his brigandine rusted to the shade of autumn dock-leaves, his withered hands resting on the pommel of his notched service sword.
“Eight rooms in the upper ring, sergeant,” Noll said, his voice rolling through the damp vault like low thunder. “That is the current register of the Bastion. The gatehouse, the guard-room, the kitchen, the forge, the hall, the clinic, the nursery, and the magazine. Every one of them has an open door, a hearth flue, and a threshold that smells of barley bread and cabbage soup.”
“A neat holding, showman,” Berr rasped, his jaw moving with a faint clicking of dry cartilage. “Clean flagstones. Honest latrines. If I were an auditor with a tax book, I would give you a bronze seal and three cheers for public hygiene.”
