The stone milestone that marked the northern customs boundary stood five paces to the left of the old royal road, its weathered granite face carved with the faded sun-wheel of the pre-Host administration and the numeral forty-two.
Fifty paces beyond the outer seam of Kezra’s defensive barrier, the roadway was swept clear of loose gravel and dressed with coarse river sand to give traction to cavalry mounts. Two iron tripod fire bowls, their charcoal burning down to grey ash with red cores, flanked the milestone. They cast a steady, ruddy warmth across the frozen flat stone slabs.
Captain Hest Vale stood between the fire bowls, her gloved hands resting loosely on the handle of her broad-bladed cavalry saber. She wore the dark grey wool greatcoat of a royal field captain, unbuttoned at the throat to reveal an unpolished steel gorget, and high leather riding boots lined with felt. Her face, hardened by thirty-three winters of border service and scarred along the left jawline by an old pike graze, showed neither anger nor triumph. Only the cold, skilled test of an officer who had spent her life managing supply lines, forage registers, and siege trenches.
Behind her, four dismounted guards stood in a disciplined row, their heavy composite bows unstrung and cased across their backs, their round iron target shields slung over their left shoulders. They held four ash lances driven upright into the roadside dirt, their points wrapped in squares of bleached linen to denote a formal truce.
