By midday on Day 146, the outside civilian camp on the broad limestone terrace fifty paces below the former castle gate was humming with the wild, purposeful activity of ninety-one people reclaiming their lives.
Kezra had enforced the civilian clearance on Day 144. Then, every household that worked inside Stonewake’s walls. The laundresses who washed the guard post linen, the smiths who shod the officers’ horses, the bakers who stoked the great bread ovens. Their thirty-four children—had been needed to leave their heavy iron kettles, grain sacks, and furniture behind inside the 1,024-pace boundary. To prevent the soldiers from looting their goods before the shifted weight, Krail’s logistics sergeants had locked the civilian property into three massive dry-stone outside storehouses built outside the boundary line along the old supply road.
Now, under the bright alpine sun, families were gathered around the padlocked timber doors of the storehouses, trying to identify their belongings through the barred windows.
Ulvan Dret walked down the terrace path with his hands in the pockets of his faded officer’s coat, his iron ring of storehouse keys jangling softly at his belt. He approached the central storehouse where a group of twenty quarry masons and their wives were arguing with two basin guards about which door should be opened first.
