Dusk fell over the valley of Mere like soot settling on wet wool.
From the high parapet of the north bastion, the mountains to the east had already turned the color of bruised iron, cutting off the last cold amber light of the winter sun. The wind had dropped, but the cold froze muddy puddles on the flagstones into cloudy ice that cracked under Sella Rusk’s boots.
She did not lower the brass field glass from her eye. The cold metal tube was chilled enough to numb the skin around her socket, but she kept her hands wrapped tightly around the leather grip, tracking movement along the sheep-pen lane three hundred feet below.
Behind her, near the chimney stack of the gatehouse, Fen stood with his woolen scarf pulled up to his nose, hands tucked deep into armpits. Beside the physician, Renn—one of the younger carters who had helped build timber revetments during autumn—leaned against a merlon with an unstrung yew bow, teeth chattering in the gloom.
“Can you see the turn?” Renn asked, his voice strained and thin. “My sister Mira was supposed to take the children down the drainage ditch behind the old sheep-pens as soon as twilight hit the willows. She said she had three sacks of meal and two goats.”
