The lower water tank room of Cloud-Rest smelled of wet charcoal, stale blood. The sharp, chemical reek of vinegar used to stop phosphorus burns.
Two kerosene lanterns hung from iron meat-hooks driven into the vaulted granite ceiling, their yellow flames swaying in the draft that whistled through the drainage drains. On the stone floor, forty-two people huddled together in small, shivering clusters. The twenty-three desert refugees from the Crying Wells, wrapped in salt-stained blankets, and nineteen mountain auxiliaries who had come off duty on the outer castle walls with their hands raw and blistered by the wind.
In the driest corner of the vault, beneath the heavy stone arch of the main water channel, Brother Ren knelt beside a pallet of dry straw.
The Saint’s raw, unwhitened burlap habit was caked with road-dust, his bare feet wrapped in bloodstained linen strips that left faint, damp smudges on the flat stone slabs. He didn’t use needles. He didn’t use razor-sharp metal tongs. He leaned over an eighteen-year-old artillery loader whose left arm had been shredded by a flying fragment of brass casing during the giant crossbow’s recoil.
Brother Ren laid his scarred, callused palms directly over the torn muscle.
“Be still, brother,” the Saint whispered, his voice like warm rain falling on dry earth. “The road is long, but the iron is finished with you. Let me carry the weight.”
