The copper smell of wet iron hung heavy under the canvas roof of the river aid station.
Captain Arda Dorn stood inside the entrance, the wool hem of her cloak dripping onto the damp sawdust that covered the dirt floor. She held her sheathed sword across both forearms, the brass fittings dull against the black leather scabbard. Outside, thirty paces down the gravel bank, the six soldiers of her escort stood facing the river road, their iron shields overlapping in a rigid wall against the grey rain.
On the scrub table, beside an open jar of sulfur salve and three rolls of clean linen, lay the parchment Lord Auditor Orin Vane had sent to her quarters two hours before daybreak.
It was not a warrant of arrest. Vane was far too experienced a magistrate to hand a popular border captain an outright martyrdom while eight thousand soldiers sat in the mud with cold rations. Instead, he had sent an offer of administrative clemency, inscribed on fine vellum with the red silk cord of the Council of Finance.
A finding of procedural error, the first clause read. The commanding officer, having exercised unverified discretion regarding the deployment of auxiliary shoring teams during the emergency at Drift Nine, shall accept formal reprimand, surrender field command of the Second Border Foot, and retain all accrued pension allotments under third-rank retirement.
