Calla Westyn arrived at Millbridge on the seventh day of her second journey, and the first thing she saw when her carriage entered the market square was the Snarling Wolf banner above the market hall in exactly the position where it had been when she left.
The same banner. The same position. The army of eight thousand warriors that had been fighting a combined force of twenty-five thousand for three months was still in this valley, still holding this town, and the banner above its command position was unchanged and undiminished, the wolf's snarl carrying the same quality it had carried on the day of the first session.
She stepped down from the carriage and looked at the banner for the moment that her professional habit required for the reading of symbols, and what the banner communicated to her on the second reading was something that the first reading had not fully captured because the first reading had occurred before twelve more weeks of the campaign's evidence had accumulated.
