The news of Commander Raymond Cole’s death moved through Fort Karst faster than the sulfur smoke from the ruined tower.
Within twenty minutes, the inner courtyard was packed with two hundred men and women. The four surviving guard post sergeants—grizzled veterans who had spent twenty years taking orders from a man whose voice was now silenced—stood near the dry water trough. Their axe-spears clutched in shook hands, their faces hollow with the sudden, terrifying realization that they were alone. Around them crowded the civilian leaders. Thomas Miller with his sledgehammer resting against his boots, Martha the weaver, Kael the one-eyed cart driver, and half a dozen wealthy merchant refugees in mud-stained wool mantles.
The whispers began as a low rustle and swelled into an angry, panic-stricken murmur.
“The charter was expired anyway,” a merchant named Bartok shouted, his florid face mottled with red terror as he clutched a leather pouch of silver coins to his chest. “We’re legally classified as unbonded vagrants! Under Section Twelve of the Emergency Code, holding a royal castle wall without a commissioned castellan is summary high treason! If Brand’s legion breaches that gate, every man who carried a pike will be impaled on the switchbacks!”
