The court called its next sworn witness. Corporal Kael, an eighty-year-old retired army ostler with bowed legs and hands gnarled from fifty years of currying horses.
Kael walked to the witness rail with the help of an ash-wood cane, placed his trembling hand upon the King’s Bible. Then he swore the ancient oath of the sovereign court trial.
“Corporal Kael,” Hester Quill said. She stepped forward with her split steel nib poised over the settling parchment. “State your rank and duty on the fourth day of Autumn, Year 021.”
“I was Corporal of the Horse and personal orderly to Colonel Brand,” Kael said, his voice quiet but steady in the cavernous ballroom. “I saddled his grey charger at five in the morning. At nine, the Colonel called me into his field pavilion and ordered me to pack twelve iron-bound chests into his personal four-horse carriage.”
“What was inside those twelve chests, Corporal?” Senior Justice Vance asked from the bench.
“The regimental payroll, Your Honor,” Kael replied, looking directly at Brand. “Forty thousand silver crowns meant for the conscript rations and ammunition. At eleven, the Colonel ordered the cavalry to mount. Captain Danel came running to the stirrup. Then, begging for ball and powder to hold the drainage ditch, the Colonel drew his riding crop and struck Danel across the face. Then he ordered the rear gates chained so no commoner could follow us.”
