Winter Rations

Ashfall Academy, book 2

Two hundred mouths. One store. Fifty-one days to the thaw.

The winter exercise in the high pass was four weeks of drills and cold feet. Eight days in, glass tracks came down the north ridge, and by dusk the pass belonged to the Hollows.

Corvin Hale brings Cinder Company down the only road to Rimewater, a mountain village on a frozen river: thirty-one cadets, the survivors of the pass garrison, a hundred and fifty villagers, and one granary. The ice is the Hollows' road now. Help can come over the mountains only after the thaw, and the latest the ice has ever gone out is day fifty-one. Eleven days longer than Kell's Ford.

His System skill does the sum without an opinion. At half ration, the store lasts fifty-four days. On paper, that is enough. Corvin has seen men live on half ration. He knows how long it takes, and who goes first.

And someone is counting him. Lady Vespera Kain, the crown's auditor, has three border forts with empty storehouses and Corvin's name in her brief. To feed the village from one count, he must declare the granary his store, and the System wipes his memory of the academy storehouse: the one record that could answer her. He does it in front of her.

The last time the sum did not add up, Corvin chose who ate. The Hollows don't eat. They can wait.

Book 2 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 3. Closed-door romance (no explicit scenes): Corvin and Isolde Rook's story goes on, and the harem builds slowly across the series. All characters are adults.

Coming soon to Amazon.