Sergeant Berr did not hurry down the stone risers of the amphitheater. His movements possessed the slow, deliberate rigidity of seasoned oak that had spent three decades drying in an unventilated cellar. He wore no boots; his bare, bleached tarsal bones clicked against the cold limestone with a dry, rhythmic tap that seemed to measure out the remaining minutes of the hall. His service sword—the heavy, notched iron spadroon of the Third Border Regiment—hung straight against his skeletal hip in a scabbard whose leather had rotted away to grey lint, leaving the corroded blade bare to the lantern light.
Behind him walked Fen, the clinic healer’s wool sleeves rolled up past his elbows, his forearms stained with vinegar and dried spruce gum. Fen carried a shallow basket woven from peeled willow twigs. Inside the basket lay forty-two small lead identity tallies, each corroded by thirty winters of damp lime, and a single charred roster sheet rolled around an ash wood dowel.
The assembly did not murmur as Berr approached the rail. The soldiers of the siege regiments drew their knees back, pressing against the wooden benches to give the dead sergeant a wide, frightened berth. Only Major Brek remained leaning forward over the rail of the western tier, his scarred face tight as dried parchment, his eyes fixed on the regimental collar badge still pinned to Berr’s desiccated leather tunic: THIRD BORDER, SECOND FOOT.
