The heavy wooden clubs caught the flat glare of the noon sun. They were not polished parade batons; they were working tools of the constabulary, scarred with old dents, darkened by oil and grease, their lead-weighted heads wrapped in cross-hatched cord to keep the timber from splitting when it struck a man’s collarbone.
Captain Arda Dorn slapped the flat of her oak truncheon against her palm with a dry, rhythmic thud.
“Shields locked!” she shouted. “Front rank, link rims! Overlap by three inches! Keep your heads down behind the leather! Second rank, clubs to the carry! We are not clearing a rebel fort today, men. We are serving an administrative writ of attachment on an unchartered timber-and-granite structure!”
The remaining twenty-six soldiers snapped into formation with the dull, synchronized clatter of seasoned veterans. The heavy oval shields of boiled ox-hide and ash laths locked together, forming a curved, unbroken wall four feet high, bristling not with iron points, but with blunt clubs held ready to shatter kneecaps and sweep aside barricades.
Dorn took her position at the center of the line, her shield rim resting on the shoulder of Corporal Vess, who had dropped his water-lily into the roadside weeds and wiped his sticky hands on his breeches.
