Star Wars back piece with Vader and stormtrooper

The quartermaster at Vell Ostrin finally let us have paper, so forgive the smudges. Mother has stopped asking when you are coming home, which means she has started asking the goats instead. The lamp-men say the Grey Lord's black-masked envoy came through the eastern pass again last week, and this time he did not stop at the toll gate. He rode straight past it with his cloak snapping like a sail, and nobody dared fire.

They have built a new thing out past the salt flats, a round grey moon of iron that the engineers call the Hollow. Pell from the armoury swears it has a mouth wide enough to swallow the chapel bell. I told him that was how he'd talk himself into a transfer, and he didn't laugh.

Last night the white-helmed garrison marched down from the ridge in their long lines, the ones who never lift their visors, and their walkers came behind them on four stilted legs, stepping over the wall stones as if the wall were not there. The little winged fighters went over in a V and I counted nine before I lost them against the stars. Sergeant Odo says the stars out here are the same ones the old kings named, and that is why the Lord wants them.

Tomas, if they call for Hollow crews, say you have a wife and a cow and a crooked roof. Say anything. Then find the bounty-hunter in the bottom of the bell tower and ask him, quietly, what the price of a way out is. He will tell you. He always does.

Your loving sister, Ilse