The hearth hall was as cold as a chapel vault.
Thirty people sat crowded along the scarred trestles, their breath rising in thin, gray ribbons toward the soot-stained oak beams. Nobody had taken off their coats. Hobb had set three iron kettles of hot chicory water on the hearth-grate, but the steam barely traveled past the stone curb before the freezing draft from the west embrasures swallowed it.
Noll Vey brought his awareness into the limestone fireplace, warming the hearthstones until the blue luminescence bathed the lower edges of the pine benches.
“Show them the surveyor’s tracing, Sella,” Noll said softly.
Sella Rusk unrolled a sheet of heavy rag paper across the center table, weighing down the curling corners with two lead musket balls and Fen’s brass pestle. Her dark ranger leathers were stiff with river mud, her forearms bare to the elbows despite the chill.
“This is the south ridge,” Sella said, tapping a charcoal mark two furlongs above the Mere road. “Battery-Chief Gant has begun digging his gun platforms in the dry turf behind the beech woods. He isn’t setting up light eight-pounder field guns to batter down a wooden gate. He has sixteen sixty-pound iron bombards on double-axle siege carriages.”
