Millennial Mage novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: The Hungry Gap
Harrow Gap was nine thousand men in a mud pit, and every one of them was hungry.
You could tell from the way they looked at the wagons.
It was the look of a person watching a door open on a dinner they have not been invited to.
Bran drove the convoy through the lines at a walk.
Soldiers ran alongside with their hands out.
"Wait for the Marshal," Bran shouted. "Wait for the Marshal."
Isaura's red cloaks formed a wall.
I walked behind the lead wagon, counting the faces I passed, and the numbers got too big, and I stopped.
At the center of the camp stood a long timber hall with a flag.
A broad woman with a gray crop leaned on a cane at its door.
This was Marshal Ilsabet Corr.
She had a voice for shouting over rain.
"Who brought me the salt and flour?" she called.
"Bran Ostler, cart-master, twenty-two wagons, Marshal," said Bran, and bowed over his bad hip.
"Good man. Who counted it?"
Bran pointed his pipe at me.
Everyone looked.
I wished I had worn a better cardigan.
"Hana Dressler," I said. "I'm a clerk."
"A Dust-rank outsider," Isaura said, stepping up beside me.
"Marshal, she read my delivery slips.
They were forged, all seven, and she is the only person in this camp who could tell me so."
A man laughed.
He had come out of the hall behind the Marshal.
He was a plump man with ink on his cuffs and a heavy gold chain of office, and four clerks flanked him.
"A Dust-rank clerk," he said. "In the Marshal's service. Is this a joke?"
"This is the quartermaster-general," Corr said, flatly. "He is a cousin of the High Examiner."
"The stores are in perfect order," the quartermaster-general said. "Thirty days' provision in the barns. We are merely experiencing a distribution problem."
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