Act II, Chapter 10: Rowan's Army Drowns in the Ash Marches' First Snow

The snow courier arrived before dawn.

Aldric knew what the letter contained before he broke the seal. He had learned, in the weeks since his father's death, to read the quality of silence that preceded disaster — it had a particular texture, thick and anticipatory, the way the air thickens before lightning splits a sky. The courier's horse had been ridden to exhaustion. The man himself stood in the anteroom with the rigid stillness of someone who had rehearsed the delivery of bad news so many times during the long cold miles that he had worn the emotion out of it, leaving only posture.

Aldric took the letter. He thanked the man. He poured him wine from the carafe on the table as though this were a courtesy call, as though the horse outside were not standing with its head dropped and its flanks trembling.