The Witnesses
Forty days before Hollbrunn: the Fire Wardens hold a besieged salt city, and the enemy at the gates does not want to storm it but to persuade it. Five stories, each from a different vantage — the wall, the canal, the enemy camp, the infirmary and the chronicle.
From the wall: Captain Bre'kar lands at Hollbrunn and learns that this siege is fought unlike any he has known. This is where the forty days that everything turns on are set.
The same ring, seen from below: bridge warden Tammo Rieck has worked the sluices of the brine canal for forty-one years. He appears briefly at the edge of the first story — here he tells his own.
The side you do not usually hear: the leader outside the gates, his doctrine and the road that brought him to Hollbrunn. After this story you read the first two again differently.
In the salt store beneath Gate Two: Apothecary Dra'kaan counts the same vials every morning. The story leads up to the question of what will happen on the fortieth day.
The finale, as written down by Chaplain Vel'Schwur: days thirty-six to forty — and what of it may enter the Chapter's chronicle and what belongs only in the other book.