The Spring Inquiry

Ashfall Academy, book 3

He kept a fort fed for forty days. Now a court will decide whether he starved its wounded by choice.

Spring. Corvin Hale marches Cinder Company two hundred and forty miles to Highmarch for the Crown Games: nine days, three scored events, and the academies of the realm on one board. The odds on his thirty support cadets are forty to one.

He brings something else to the capital: the ledger of Kell's Ford, with every one of the three hundred and twelve dead in his own hand. Magister Drask has reopened the inquiry into the fort, and the court sits in the Rolls Hall on the days between the events.

The motion is simple. If the court finds that the supply sergeant withheld rations from the wounded by his own choice and not by necessity, the war council folds the Support Track into the levy. Not only his. Every one in the realm. The finding comes on the last evening of the Games, and the council votes straight after.

In his coat is a letter that would end the inquiry on the first day. It would also ruin the commandant who gave him his post. He won't use it.

So he has the March, forty miles with two tons of stores. The Gate, against crown veterans. The Long Hold, at the gate of a ring fort that no entry has ever held through the night. He has Isolde Rook as officer of record, Senna Thorne at the forge, and a court where only what is read aloud is on the record, and one false line strikes a whole book.

On the field he needs points. In the hall he needs the truth. All of it.

Book 3 of the Ashfall Academy series, a men's adventure academy LitRPG. It stands alone: a complete story with its own ending, and the series arc continues in book 4. Slow-burn, closed-door romance (no explicit scenes): the harem builds across the series. All characters are adults.

Coming soon to Amazon.