“I don’t know yet,” had been Noll Vey’s only answer to the ninth door—four plain words that tasted of cold lime dust—and an hour before noon, Sella Rusk went out to the north road barrier to see whether the fourth clause of the dawn claim could keep a living company safe in broad daylight.
Through the high stone embrasures of the north gatehouse, Noll watched the parley take shape across the frost-heaved gravel of the upper ridge track.
The morning sky was low and lead-colored, threatening snow before dusk, and the wind whipping down off the mountain spurs carried the sharp rattle of sleet against iron helmets. Outside the fort’s boundary stones, where the old coaching road curved around the shoulder of the hill before dropping toward the river ford, Captain Lira’s vanguard company of eighty border infantry stood in double file in the slush.
Even from Noll’s wall-sight sixty paces back inside the gate arch, the eighty soldiers looked worn to the bone. They had held the exposed north ridge picket for three days and three nights with wet alder roots for fuel and frozen turnips for supper. Half the men had rags wrapped around their split boot-soles; all of them had the hollow, twitchy stare of soldiers who had spent the dark hours smelling phantom mutton fat in their blankets and listening for bent spoons under the snow.
