Anyone who had lived a winter in the river-valley south of Oran knew the temper of a fourth-month marsh squall.
For twenty miles to the west, the great reed-fens lay flat as a carpenter’s bench without a single hill or forest belt to break the wind when cold air from the upper mountains dropped down into the warm spring basin. Within three minutes of the sky darkening, the first level wall of wind and cold rain slammed across the canal weir of Sluice-Gate Village with the boom of a siege-ram striking a timber gate.
Up above the ceiling beams of the burial house—and across the narrow gravel yard on the northern slope of Marta’s cottage roof—two hundred heavy grey river-slates took the full, howling brunt of the gale.
Lying with his spine propped against the inner stone wall of the storeroom. Meanwhile, the last minutes of the fifth rest-interval trickled through the brass sand-glass, Seyun looked up once toward the heavy oak rafters overhead. He listened intently through the roar of the wind.
There was no clatter of sliding stone tiles, no tearing of wet sailcloth, and no trickle of cold rainwater dripping through the laths. Every locust-wood peg he and young Tomas had driven over the past four days. Every thumb-thick ribbon of goat-hair lime-mortar fourteen-year-old Lorn had mixed in the trough below the ladder, held fast against the squall like solid cliff-rock.
