The mountain sunlight was cold as chipped ice. It cast the shadow of the drawn broad-head arrow long and sharp across the frosted terrace path.
The watchwoman behind the breast-high wall didn’t tremble. Her sheepskin vest was weathered by twenty winters of mountain frost. Her fingers on the recurve ash bow were calloused and steady. Her pale grey eyes swept the four travelers with the unblinking, lethal competence of a frontier sentry who had survived three years of siege.
Beside Kezra, Yseld Arken remained fully motionless. The veteran scout kept her right palm three inches clear of her short spear’s ash wooden handle, her elbows flared, her balance point anchored into her hips.
“No steel drawn,” Yseld said. Her voice dropped into a calm, low, neutral rhythm that offered zero threat. “Four travelers on foot. We carry tools and paper, not weapons.”
Standing before the breast-high terrace wall under the watchful eye of Cressa’s ash bow, Kezra Venn didn’t feel the slightest trace of fear.
She felt only the calm, unmoving balance of a land-mapper who had measured the ground beneath her feet to the sixteenth of an inch.
The watchwoman didn’t lower her bow. The steel arrow-point remained locked on Yseld’s breastbone.
