Dain fed me before he'd talk. I want that on the record about him. Whatever he thought I was, I came up that road grey and shaking with two days of the Hollow's rent paid out of my body, and the Beta of Ironmoon sat me at the gate-house table and put barley stew in front of me and stood over me with his arms folded until I'd got half of it down, and only then did he lay out the ruin.
"He marched at dawn yesterday. Four hundred, the strength he could move fast, meaning to hit the bridge garrison before the southern column reached it and cut you a road home." He turned a stool with his boot and sat, forearms on knees. "You should have the shape of the argument, since you're the subject of it. Half the council said let the south keep you. Said it politer than that, but that was the meat. One
