The lower bailey of Fort Karst was an ocean of freezing mud, wet canvas, and human misery.
Three thousand refugees were packed between the inner curtain wall and the dry ditch, huddled beneath carts, lean-tos of rotting pine boughs, and greasy wool blankets. everyone could feel the reek of unwashed bodies, burning wet peat, and the sharp, hacking cough of sulfur-croup. The icy wind gusted off the Ashen Plains. Each time, a low, collective murmur of shivering despair rose from the tents like the sound of dry leaves scraping across flat stone slabs.
In the center of the muddy common ground, beneath an unhinged stable door propped up on two empty cider barrels to form a makeshift desk, Ren Vale sat with a roll of sheep thick parchment weighted down by a chipped dark rock cobble.
Beside him, clad in his full blackened plate and wolf pelt, stood Lord Ren. To the left, Vane Vale paced atop an upturned grain crate, his gold-trimmed counting frame clicking in sharp, nervous bursts, his midnight-blue coat held tightly closed to keep the smell of peasant misery from contaminating his bergamot-scented lapels.
“This is madness,” Vane muttered for the fifth time that morning, snapping three beads down. “You can’t run a defense on voluntary civic covenants! In the capital, when an army approaches, the judges declare the Levy of the Blood Sovereign. You seize every male between fourteen and fifty, chain their left ankles to an iron trace-wagon, hand them a hooked pruning blade…
