“Aye, sir.”

As Campbell saluted and turned to relay Bran’s orders, another man in the gray garb of a clerk approached from a neighboring tent with a sheaf of parchments in his hand. When Bran glanced idly in his direction, the man made a self-conscious bow before extending a brown feather quill toward the earl.

“Your correspondence is ready for signature, my lord. The couriers are awaiting your orders.”

With a slight nod, Bran took the letters and glanced through them briefly, a look of boredom on his face, then handed his goblet to the man to hold while he scrawled his mark at the bottom of each page. When he had finished, he returned the documents to the clerk in exchange for his goblet, and would have returned to his idle scanning of the mountains except for the insistent throat-clearing of the man.

“Ah, my lord…”

Bran glanced back at the man, mildly annoyed.

“My lord, your letter to the Countess Richenda—don’t you wish to seal it?”

Bran’s glance flicked to the parchment in the clerk’s hand, then back to the man’s face with a bored sigh. Slipping a heavy silver signet from his thumb, he dropped it into the man’s outstretched hand and said, “See to it, will you, Joseph?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“In fact, deliver the letter in person. If you can persuade her, I think it would be a good idea to move her and my heir to some neutral place, perhaps Dhassa. They’d be safe with the bishops.”

“Very well, sir. I’ll leave at once.”

As Bran nodded acknowledgement, the clerk closed the ring in his hand and bowed, then backed off to make way for an older man in captain’s uniform, who gave a casual salute as he approached. He was wrapped from neck to knee in a rough wool cloak of faded blue, with a blue plume a-tremble atop the steel helmet under his arm, and Bran allowed himself an easy nod.

“Morning, Gwyllim. Some problem I should know of?” he asked.

Gwyllim shook his head lightly. “Not at all, m’lord. The men of the Fifth Horse request the honor of your review this morning.” He glanced at the mountains his lord had been surveying. “It will probably be a sight more entertaining than watching those accursed mountains, at any rate.”

Bran chuckled and set aside his goblet. “No doubt it will. But be patient, old friend. There will be action enough even for you, once this stalemate ends. Wencit of Torenth will not stay on his mountain forever.”

“Aye, you’re—here, what’s this?”

Gwyllim had turned his attention toward the pass again as he spoke, and now he straightened and peered more intently into the morning mist. Bran, noting his companion’s new interest in the landscape, turned his gaze in the same direction, then snapped his fingers for the page who had been hovering just beyond earshot all the while.

“Eric, my glass, quickly. Gwyllim, sound the alert. This may be it.”

As the boy scampered to do the earl’s bidding, Gwyllim summoned several of his men waiting a few dozen yards away and began issuing orders. Bran shaded his eyes and continued to watch where a slow-moving mounted column was beginning to emerge from the mist, its riders picking their way carefully along the flood-washed trail. The lead rider was garbed all in white, and carried a lance with a white banner hanging limply from the top. His accompanying escort, perhaps a dozen of them, were heavily cloaked in a dull russet-orange and mounted on bright bays. Frowning, Bran put a spyglass to his eye and studied them more closely.