Guardsman Harren had drawn gate duty on the worst night of the year, but he was determined to make the best of it.
"The way I see it," he said, stamping his feet against the frozen flagstones and pulling his heavy cloak tighter around the mail underneath. "Is that every man at the feast tonight is going to eat his fill, drink till he's blind, and leave half of it on the table."
"Noblemen always do, Harren said sagely. "They take three bites of each course to show they've got taste and leave the rest for the dogs."
"We're not dogs, Harren," his companion said from the other side of the gate. The other man to draw the short straw tonight was a younger man named Pol, whose nose had gone red from the cold and whose breath rose in thick white plumes that caught the torchlight.
