The Bellmoor company made its attempt in the marsh mist before dawn, on the third morning after the password, and Harrow saw it from the ridge because he had not been able to sleep and had gone out to count the stars.
He was on the Survey House’s north stair, at the top of the fourteen rock-cut steps, with his count-cord coiled round his fist and his back against the cold stone. The mist lay on the marsh below like wet wool, thick and white and motionless, and it hid the causeway and the stake and the toll-house and the cordon’s flat stone entirely. Harrow could hear it, though. He could hear the frogs going quiet in the reeds, one pool after another, the way they always did when something large was moving through the water. He could hear the creak of the iron-bound wagon’s wheels, and the clink of chain, and the soft, uneven scrape of boots on planks.
He counted the boots.
Forty-two. He counted them as they came up out of the mist on the causeway’s south side, one by one, in two ranks, with the crossbows slung across their backs and their bolts ready in their quivers. They came up in silence. They came up with the careful, unhurried tread of men who have been paid to do a thing and have decided to do it well. Harrow lost his count for a moment at the front rank, where the mist was thickest, and then he…
