The dawn came up a flat wash of tallow-gray that revealed the full geometry of the trap.
Noll Vey felt the cold steel of the valley road through his Bastion bedrock roots. Every cart track and gravel ditch leading out of Mere carried the sharp vibration of pickaxes driving timber stakes into frozen dirt.
In the upper courtyard, Sella Rusk stood on the north parapet with her hood thrown back, the wind whipping dark strands of hair across her scarred temple. Below her, the valley floor was ringed by a double line of earthworks.
“Both roads are dead, Noll,” Sella called down the speaking horn into the gatehouse vault. “The river bridge has spiked chevals-de-frise chained across the middle arch, with a picket from the Fourth Foot in the toll-keeper’s shed. And on the high ridge trail, Vane has posted two light companies with trench guns.”
Noll brought his awareness into the limestone embrasure. “What about the woods above the gorge? The sheep-trods?”
“Pitched wire,” Sella answered, her lips pale with frost. “Outriders spent the night stringing snare-lines between the beech trunks. A deer couldn’t pass without rattling a bell. If my old company from the Border Survey received my letters, they never made it past the gap. And the packets Hesta’s players tried to smuggle south in their costume chests... they’re sitting behind Vane’s pavilion, or burning in a ditch.”
