Refuge had no dignity. In the songs sung by travelling bards in the common room before the war, a rescued people wept tears of silver gratitude, fell to their knees before their saviors, and offered heartfelt blessings to the righteous knights who had delivered them from bondage.
The reality was forty-eight pairs of soaked wool breeches steaming in the close heat of an apple barn, the stench of diarrhea rising from a corner stall where two toddlers were vomiting sour ditch-water, and a deserter trying to cut the halter off an inn mule with a stolen paring knife.
Jon found the man behind the south hayrick, where the shadows were thickest.
The conscript was barely twenty, his skin yellowed from flue smoke and his collarbone jutting out like an adze blade beneath his torn Host jerkin. He had already backed the dun mule out of its stall, wrapping a hemp tether around his forearm while his right hand sawed frantically at the hemp cheek-strap. The animal was snorting, rolling its white-rimmed eyes, its hooves stamping the packed dirt floor with heavy, hollow thumps.
“Put the knife down,” Jon said. He did not shout. He did not draw the border knife at his belt. He simply stood in the narrow alley between the hay bales, his arms hanging loose at his sides, his mud-caked boots planted shoulder-width apart.
