The ram came once in every watch of the night, and each blow ran through Brannoc like water through a culvert that was never meant to carry so much.
He felt the first one at the second bell after midnight. It struck the river gate’s oak from the far side of the causeway, where the Hollowed had dragged their timber up the slope in the dark, and it was not a loud sound. It was a sound that arrived in the bones of the gate before it arrived in the ears. The oak took it. The iron straps took it. The gate-seat, which was a place inside the Hold’s weft and not a place at all, took it in a long shiver that started at the top hinge and ran down the water-side of the wood to the sill, and then up again, and then out into the rest of the body.
Every Hand felt it. He knew that. He could feel them feeling it. Harrow, asleep at the south wall, woke with a jolt in the chest and said a number aloud. Ysra, on the Watch-tower, turned the lamp on the stair. Korrin, who never slept, swore in the Lash’s short voice and then was quiet. Gaunt, on the Forge’s stone-watch, felt the blow in his bad hand and said nothing at all, which was worse than any of his objections.
