The formal reading of the arrest warrant took place in the open square before the Low Sunder guard post house. There, three hundred valley citizens had gathered under a pale winter sky.
Magistrate Corin Pell stood on the raised timber steps of the courthouse. He was flanked by his heralds and the twelve Crown court guards.
In the center of the square stood General Orson Brant and Senior Quartermaster Malcor Vance. He was surrounded by a calm distance of the country watch whose captain had broken his own saber across his knee rather than obey Brant’s final orders.
Magistrate Pell unrolled the heavy royal arrest scroll, its scarlet ribbons fluttering in the cold mountain draft.
He read the charges aloud, his voice carrying to every corner of the square:
“By power of the High Assize of the Realm and the Imperial Bench of Justice: Orson Brant, formerly Inspector General of the War Ministry, and Malcor Vance, formerly Senior Quartermaster of the Fourth Division, stand convicted before this Extraordinary Trial of High Treason, Fraudulent Conversion of Crown Escrows, Spoliation of Public Records, and Constructive Murder in the Abandonment of the Fourteenth Mountain Battalion.”
The crowd remained dead silent, listening to every syllable of the judgment.
