The wind on the northern ridge had teeth. It blew straight off the high tarns, carrying cold rain and the sulfurous stench of burnt black powder across the churned clay of the gun line.
Arda Dorn climbed the revetment of the first mortar pit with steady, deliberate strides. Her boots were clogged with yellow mud, and the hem of her dark wool tunic was soaked through. She wore no officer’s gorget, no enameled sash of the Third Border Guard, and no sword at her hip. The brass buttons of her rank had been cut from her collar two days ago at the aid station, leaving small, ragged holes in the coarse wool where the King’s lions had once sat.
Behind her, scrambling up the wet sandbags, Soldier Joss hauled his breath in ragged gasps. The young private kept his right hand tucked close to his ribs, cradling the palm that Fen had treated after the thorn-spear at the gate had torn his flesh. At his belt hung his only possession: a short, dull camp bread knife in a grease-stained sheath.
In Arda’s hands was a bundle wrapped in coarse linen—an ordinary kitchen cloth dusted with Hobb’s rye flour. Beneath the folds rested the heavy, lead-weighted cylinder of Master Serit’s Great Seal, and beside it, the small, polished bone disk of the Saved Chorus Token.
