Yseld dropped to one knee before the massive iron fire-shutter. She held the horn lantern six inches above the limestone threshold doorstep. She drew a flat bone spatula from her belt, gently sweeping the thin surface deposit of crushed mountain rock flour that had settled across the flat stone slabs.
Suddenly, the scout froze.
She raised her right hand. She held her fingers rigid in the universal military signal for total halt.
“Hold,” Yseld whispered, her voice tightening into an edge of razor-sharp vigilance. “Don’t take another step toward this doorstep. Look at the rock flour.”
Kezra knelt beside her, with Fellis and Paxa leftover three paces back near the corner of the survey hut.
In the low, raking beam of the horn lantern, the floor before the iron shutter told a chilling, undeniable story.
Across the grey, century-old crust of undisturbed stone dust that coated the courtyard flags, there were three distinct, overlapping boot impressions. They weren’t the soft, moccasin-like tracks of highland drovers or the bare-toed scuffs of mountain goatherds. They were the crisp, heavy, square-toed impressions of military issue marching boots, their soles studded with diamond-patterned iron hobnails and heavy with three-fluke steel heel irons.
“Cairn Host boots,” Yseld rasped, her eyes scanning the shadows of the rock overhang. “Standard heavy backup infantry issue. Look at the heel plate: three flukes on a three-sided boss. Captain Hest Vale’s pioneers.”
