The victory lasted less than three hours.
By midday, the streets of Alexandria-Khorat were drowning in cold rain and triumphant bedlam. In the market plazas, apprentice scribes were roasting slaughtered court guard horses over bonfires of taken away tax ledgers. The grand bronze statue of the First High judge had been toppled from its stone stand outside the Court of Petitions, dragged through the mud by fifty shouting weavers, and wedged into the drainage water gates of the river canal.
Yet on the northern castle walls above the Upper High court, there was no celebration.
Vane Vale knelt on the wet limestone flags. His counting frame was balanced on an upturned ammunition crate. Beside him sat four stolen baggage mules, their canvas panniers bulging with stolen goods. Forty-eight pounds of hard winter biscuit, twelve flasks of lamp oil, two razor-sharp kits packed with carbolic bandages, and three leather sacks containing eleven thousand silver marks looted from the Board’s central treasury vault.
“We have three days of rations at standard marching pace,” Vane said, his fingers flicking the wooden beads with rapid, rhythmic care. “Four if we cut the bread with dried oats and boil the leather straps for broth. But none of that matters if the northern canyon road is cut.”
