The mud in the lower siege trench smelled of stagnant ditch water, spent sulfur, and the cold grease of boiled mutton rations.
Sella Rusk kept her empty hands out from under her wool cloak where every man on the parapet could see them. Behind her left shoulder hung her delve shield, scarred across its seasoned oak facing by old river rocks and patched with copper rivets, but her broad belt held only an empty sheath loop and a canvas water bottle. Beside her, Captain Arda Dorn walked with the steady, measured trudge of a company commander who had spent thirty winters learning how to march through freezing clay without losing a boot to the suction.
“Keep your head up, Joss,” Dorn said quietly to the young soldier trailing three paces back. “If you tuck your chin into your scarf, they think you’re carrying a hidden pistol.”
“Aye, Captain,” Joss muttered. He carried twelve of Cale’s transfer slates pressed against his ribs in an oiled grain sack, the roofing slate corners clacking softly against his belt studs. His left arm was stiff from the fresh linen Fen had bound around the thorn gouges, but he did not falter.
Ahead of them, where the third traverse cut through the ruined apple orchard below the fort’s lower terrace, forty men of the Second Border Foot stood behind an overturned timber cart. They held their eight-foot ash pikes leveled at breast height, the steel points dull in the gray sleet. Behind them, two sergeants…
