The torch smoke above the western castle wall blew flat and pungent in the rising gale. It filled the narrow stair chimney with the stinging reek of pitch and scorched wool. Marshal Solvan Krail remained standing at the low roof wall rail, his heavy furred cloak drawn close against the cold, his dark eyes fixed upon the slow-moving ash chair harness as the carriers reached the thirty-eighth step.
Beside Krail, Host Cartographer Ulvan Dret leaned his forearms against the weathered coping stone. Ulvan’s brass-cornered folio sat unopened beneath his elbow, his knuckles white against the dark pigskin cover. His lined face was pale in the torchlight, his breath wheezing faintly from the scarred lung tissue that had ended his field seasons five winters ago. Behind them stood Captain Hest Vale. Her helmet was tucked beneath her arm, a dispatch roll clenched in her gauntleted fingers.
“Forty minutes,” Krail said, his voice flat, devoid of dramatic fury but laden with the heavy, calculated displeasure of an army commander whose timetable has been disrupted. “The evening schedule called for the western back gate to be barred at sunset. The cavalry remounts were to begin moving through the southern outer gatehouse at dusk. Instead, my hostlers are cooling eighty-six horses in the wind, my tunnel diggers are standing idle at the barricades. The valley approaches are open to any scout who cares to watch our muster.”
