Dawn on Day 77 brought a thin, pale winter light through the cracked shutter of the Needlehouse map room, painting the swept limestone flags in cold ribbons of grey and silver. Kezra Venn sat cross-legged on her folded wool blanket, chewing a dry oat cake and a strip of salted mutton. Meanwhile, her eyes moved between the three large route folios spread across the slate table.
Beside her, Paxa Sel was re-bandaging Fellis Dain’s braced left forearm with fresh linen strips soaked in dry willow-wash. Meanwhile, Yseld Arken used an oilstone to put a fresh, razor-sharp edge on the iron head of her short spear.
“Look at the bearings on these three sheets,” Kezra said, using the blunt end of her brass dividers to tap the paper. “This is the pre-siege district survey drawn by the regional guild forty years before Nym’s disaster. It shows the main mule road dropping northeast from the main gatehouse, following an open limestone bench for six hundred paces before joining the Alderfast mine road.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Paxa said. She tied off the linen knot over Fellis’s wrist with practiced speed.
“It was reasonable forty years before the siege,” Kezra replied, her divider point shifting to the second folio. “Now look at this one. This is a Cairn Host military scouting sketch, captured by Joric Thane’s scouts eight years ago. It shows the only usable descent heading due north past a sixty-foot limestone pinnacle called the Bishop’s Mitre, leading down into an open scree…
