The lower cavalry stables of Stonewake Citadel were built from massive, unmortared blocks of dark baked flint-rock, tucked deep beneath the northern curtain wall where the limestone bedrock formed a natural underground vault. The air inside was thick with the warm, heavy scent of dried mountain clover, stale horse sweat, and leather harness oil, punctuated by the restless stamping of iron-shod hooves against the wet cobbles.
Between ten at night and midnight on Day 144, Kezra Venn stood in the central stable aisle, her dark land-mapper’s coat buttoned tight against the bitter draft that sucked through the open stable archway. Through her boots, she felt the nervous rhythm of eighty-six horses and heavy mules shifting in their stalls. A vast pool of living mass that sat directly within the 1,024-pace Horizon boundary.
Beside her, a junior cavalry lieutenant named Varek stood with a coiled rawhide quirt gripped in his leather gauntlet. Two dozen mounted troopers stood behind him with flared pine torches, their breath smoking in the cold air, their spurs clinking impatiently.
“We’re two hours behind the marshal’s muster,” Lieutenant Varek said. His voice clipped and was tight with military urgency. “We have eighty-six mounts in these rows: fifty-two cavalry chargers, twenty-four pack mules, and ten heavy artillery draft teams. If we drive them out in a single troop down the southern ramp, we can clear this entire stable block in twenty minutes. Crack the whips behind the stalls, blow the assembly bugle, and herd them through the gate.”
