The stone tool shed was cold and smelled of damp earth, animal fat. The sharp, iron tang of freshly turned soil. Outside, two basin miners stood guard with heavy splitting mauls propped against their thighs. Their silhouettes blocking the was pale autumn daylight that filtered through the narrow doorway. Inside, the two captured Host scouts sat back-to-back on a cedar bench. It was bound to the heavy center roof-post with double turns of oiled hemp cord.
At the rough pine workbench across the room, Davren Venn sat on a three-legged stool with his iron-braced left leg stretched out straight before him. A cedar lap-board rested across his knees, supporting a sheet of grey rag paper upon which he recorded names, ranks, and marching dates in sharp, disciplined strokes of black carbon ink. He had freshly ground the carbon cakes in a small stone mortar. That added two drops of pine resin and gum arabic to ensure the ink bit deeply into the fibers and wouldn’t smear under mountain damp. His face was pale and drawn from the morning’s alarms. But his eyes were steady. He watched Yseld Arken step forward to conduct the questioning.
Yseld didn’t draw a dagger or raise her voice. She pulled up a wooden nail-keg, sat down three feet in front of the younger of the two scouts—a wiry corporal named Vane whose lip was split from the ditch fight—and laid her hooked climbing staff across her knees.
