The formal audit of the living muster took place on the stone terrace overlooking the hot spring.
Tomas sat behind an unplaned fir table, flanked by Nessa Vale and Sergeant Jarek Thorne. In his capacity as Provost of Claims, he wore his full official regalia. His dark wool porter’s coat, his brass badge of office pinned to his left lapel. His newly awarded Provost’s seal ring—an iron band engraved with the balanced scales of common transit—resting on his right hand.
One by one, the twenty-eight surviving soldiers of the line stepped forward to tender their depositions.
They were old men now, their hair white as mountain firn, their hands scarred by decades of rock-hauling and frostbite. Many had lost toes or fingers to the winter of sixty-four. Three walked with wooden pegs strapped to their knees with rawhide thongs.
Yet every man had scrubbed his patched wool uniform coat with hot spring water, polished his pewter buttons with wood ash, and stood before the table at rigid military attention.
“State your name, rank, and regimental number,” Tomas instructed each man, his reed pen ready over the settling quire.
“Private Elan Thorne,” the first man answered, his voice clear and proud. “Company A, 14th Mounted. Enlisted Year Fifty. Regimental Number Seven-Fourteen.”
