The silence in the cellar was broken by the distant rattle of an iron-rimmed cart wheel crossing the timber bridge above the mill flume.
Cael Ardent remained seated against the foundation wall, his blued-steel greaves stretched out into the aisle, his gauntlets resting palm-up in the dust of the flagstones. The fever in his skin seemed to subside slightly as the cold air from the broken bulkhead washed over his brow, but his eyes stayed fixed upon the candle flame, dull and unblinking.
Jon pulled the plain ash stool from beneath the trestle table, set it three paces from where the knight sat, and sat down. He smoothed his leather apron across his knees, resting his calloused palms flat against the dark hide.
“Tell me about the east trench, Cael,” Jon said, his voice dropping into that quiet, conversational register he used when auditing grain sacks with the millers. “The skirmish on the second afternoon of the seventh turn. The rain had turned the ditch into red clay.”
Cael’s eyelids twitched. The question seemed to touch a live nerve in his tactical registers, and his posture straightened involuntarily, the soldier’s discipline asserting itself through the haze of exhaustion.
“The east trench,” Cael recited, the words coming in clipped, rhythmic bursts like an officer reading a dispatch to the general staff. “Secondary defense line. Three hundred paces south of the willow weir. The terrain slopes at four degrees toward the riverbank. Ash Host vanguard probed with forty light skirmishers armed with…
