The walls of the Bastion loomed through the autumn mist, as vast and imposing as the fortifications of Lencum, capital of Habadia, or the high redoubts of Oizen.
But where the stones of a capital might stand with a defiant, grayish-white luster, these walls were the color of sun-bleached bone. They were choked with moss that had been watered by three months of human blood, a run-down expanse of masonry that looked as though it were being slowly ground into powder by the sheer weight of the conflict.
The Prince stood in his pavilion, staring at that stubborn grey line. He had assaulted it until his siege towers were splinters. He had starved it. He had bombarded it with stones until the earth shook. And yet, battered as it was, the Bastion still stood.
They had defied him.
Had any man told him at the onset of the spring thaw that he would be standing in the exact same muddy footprint months later, he would have had the man's tongue for the insult.
