By middle afternoon, the hill fort had grown cold and dim.
Noll Vey had systematically drawn his force inward, pulling the blue light out of the ceiling cornices and banking the warmth in the secondary flues. In the long dormitory corridor where sixty mutineers had slept thirty years ago, the glowing calcite veins faded to dull chalk-white, leaving only the smoky yellow glare of two tallow dips stuck to iron nails.
In the kitchen vault, Hobb stood over his split-log cutting board with a small brass balance scale and an iron spoon.
“Two ounces of dried peas per man,” Hobb said, his voice flat as he dropped green pellets into a row of wooden bowls. “Half a salt herring for the watch, and a cup of thin barley water at sundown. If the mill in Mere is cut off for more than six days, we start boiling the harness leather.”
Fen sat on an empty salt firkin near the scullery door, bandaging his own left wrist where a slip with the pinch-bar had taken off the skin.
“The sick-bay needs warmth, Hobb,” the healer said, biting the linen tape with his teeth to tear it. “I have two miners with lung-bleed and an old weaver from the town who took the chills when Vane’s cavalry turned her cart back at the ditch. If the room drops below freezing tonight, the weaver won’t see sunrise.”
