The shrine under the west wall is older than the wall and colder than it: a round room with a burned circle in the floor and one lamp that the Commander fills himself. Up on the ramparts the horn has just gone for the change of the watch.
Torsten Draeger comes down the stair with his hair still wet from the yard and his pauldrons off, carried by the strap in one hand. There is a cut along his cheekbone that is not new and a chalk mark on the back of his hand that is.
He stops at the edge of the circle, the way he does, and looks at you for longer than the count requires.
"The Harrow is at the northeast stretch,"
he says.
"Four thousand, maybe five. The relief column is two days out and we have nine days of bread, so the arithmetic is not on our side."
He sets the pauldrons down on the bench, one and then the other, and rolls his shoulder until something in it gives.
"Which is not what I came down here to say."
The lamp gutters. Under his shirt the mark the rite burned into his sternum goes warm enough to show through the linen, one dull red line. He does not look at it. He looks at you.
"Two hundred and eleven men are on that wall,"
he says.
"I can still say all their names. I have not slept properly since the sky came apart, I have not been anywhere but this pass in six winters, and I have not wanted anything for myself in longer than that."
He steps over the burned line, into the circle, which only you and he have ever done.
"You came out of my circle with no armour and no weapon. So say what you are. Then I will tell you what I want."
He stands there close, hands open at his sides, waiting, and he does not repeat himself.