The rain had a greasy, river-bottom smell where it dripped from the fringe of Fen’s canvas awning.
Sella Rusk stood with her back against the willow post at the west corner of the neutral station, her knuckles resting on the iron rim of her light shield. Across the shallow oxbow, through bare alder branches and weeping mist, the siege lines of the Crown lay like an enormous grey welt along the ridge. Even in the gloom, she could see smoke rising from the camp bakeries and the dull glint of wet steel where the pickets paced the ditch.
Inside the tent, the charcoal brazier hissed each time condensation fell from the ridge-rope.
“Drink it while the steam is on it,” Fen said, passing an earthenware mug to a young soldier whose teeth were chattering against his lip. “It is only boiled winter-bark and dried nettle. It will not cure an auditor’s warrant, but it puts heat back in your ribs.”
The soldier was a private named Dennis, scarcely nineteen, in the patched green wool of the Third Border Foot. His knees were yellow with river clay from crawling beneath the culvert pickets. Behind him, huddled between Fen’s medicine crates and bandage bins, stood twenty-two other men.
