Ten minutes after Captain Vale climbed the granite ramp toward the keep, the heavy iron-rimmed boots of Marshal Solvan Krail struck the flags of the lowest courtyard.
He was accompanied only by Vale and two senior sapper corporals carrying crowbars, timber wedges, and heavy iron hammers. The commander of the Cairn Host didn’t wear his parade armor or his ritual fur mantel. He wore a field cloak of heavy charcoal wool over dark steel brigandine. His leather gauntlets were tucked into his belt. His sharp, austere face was calm, impassive, and unreadable, showing neither anger at the delay nor distress at the sudden interruption of his afternoon schedule.
He walked past Captain Orvath without acknowledging the officer’s rigid, trembling salute. He walked past the timber headframe and the mules. His dark grey eyes took in every detail of the sunken arena with the swift, analytical smooth speed of a master tactician who measured men and stone by the same unforgiving scale.
He stopped at the frame stand table.
For twenty seconds, Krail stood in total silence. He looked down at the open documents beneath the dripping canvas awning.
His eyes rested first upon Master Ulvan Dret’s spotless thick parchment profile folio, noting the neat watercolor washes and the bold red question mark slashing through the western foundation stone base. Then his gaze shifted to Kezra Venn’s bonded notebook. There, the glowing amber warning still burned upon the thick parchment: STATUS: BLOCKED — CONTINUITY FAILURE.
