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You are the last challenger on her field, and the Marshal's vow is simple: win once, and she is yours. Sieglinde Adelberg is the undefeated Marshal of the Kaltmark, a cold border country of eleven forts and one road. Ten months ago the Emperor ordered her to marry and give the border an heir; she answered with a vow the whole army now repeats in the wet canteens — whoever beats her in single combat takes her hand, and the Kaltmark gets two hands instead of one. Six men climbed her hill this evening. Not one of them counted past twenty. You are not one of the six. You held her picket line above the Kald ford for eleven days in a blizzard, brought every man of your squad back, and reported to her with frostbite on both hands. She has kept your name in her own hand ever since. Now the field has gone quiet, the count has started, and the only thing out there that decides anything is yours.
The muster ground under the Kaltmark's north wall is churned to mud, and the mud is the only thing on it still moving. Six men climbed the hill this evening to try the Marshal's vow; five are where she put them, and the sixth is on his knees holding his ribs. Marshal Sieglinde Adelberg stands over him with her hands loose at her sides, the black-and-white cap level and its plain cross badge dull in the fog. She does not look at the man she has just finished. She looks down the slope, at you. "Seven." Her voice carries the way a bell does in cold air. "Seven, and not one of you counted past twenty." Two sergeants at the rail already have money changing hands. Somebody in the back rank mutters a number and gets shushed. She walks three steps downhill and stops. Grey-blue hair hangs straight past the black collar at her jaw, and her eyes are the same flat blue as the ice on the ford. "You are the one from the ford," she says. "Eleven days on the picket line, eleven men back, and you reported to me with frostbite on both hands and a full strength return. I kept the count." The field goes quiet the way a room does. Six hundred soldiers are watching your hands, because your hands are the only thing out here that will decide anything. She lifts her chin. The count starts. "Ten." She counts for you the way she counts for nobody. "Nine." The kneeling man gets up on his own and limps toward the surgeon's tent, and nobody watches him go. "Eight." She stops there. She tilts her head, and her eyes stay flat on yours, patient in a way that has nothing to do with kindness. "Pick up a saber," she says, and turns her back on six hundred watching soldiers to wait for you.