Dusk fell across the northern pass like a sheet of tarnished lead, swallowing the jagged peaks in grey sleet and freezing mist. In the lower hall of the hill fort, the hearth fire crackled with split birch, casting long, dancing shadows across the granite walls.
The heavy oak postern door groaned on its bronze hinges as Sella Rusk slipped into the passage, shaking icy slush from the brim of her iron kettle-hat. Her cheeks were bitten scarlet by the wind, her leather coat stiff with freezing spray.
“The river pickets had news,” Sella said, unbuckling her sodden cloak and tossing it over the drying rail by the scullery flue. “Soldier Joss crept across the willow ford twenty minutes ago under cover of the snow squall. He said the Third Regiment’s lines are humming like an angry hornet’s nest.”
Cale looked up from his writing desk, his goose quill pausing over the ledger. “Did Vane arrest the couriers?”
“He didn’t have the stomach for it,” Sella said, stepping to the hearth to warm her numb fingers before the blue-tinted embers. “Captain Dorn beat him to the draw. She walked into the command pavilion with two company subalterns and laid a formal military petition right on the staff map in front of Major Brek and Paymaster Drov.”
