At the frozen willow ford, the ice was thick enough to hold a starving dog and thin enough to break under a booted heel.
Fen stopped at the grey boundary boulder where Sella Rusk had laid her sword that morning. Dusk had come down fast off the northern ridges, turning the snowbanks along the river into long blue shadows, and the wind smelled of wet wool, mule dung, and the sour green smoke of alder branches burning in shallow pits. Ahead of him, stretching across the valley meadows on both sides of the road, the siege camp of the Royal March looked like a second, uglier town dropped onto the mud around Mere—hundreds of low canvas wedges, earthwork parapets bristling with sharpened ash stakes, and the dark iron snouts of Battery-Chief Gant’s cannon pointed straight back at the hill fort Fen had just left.
A shuttered horn lantern clicked open twenty paces away under the drooping willow boughs.
Soldier Joss stepped out onto the gravel bar. He wore his heavy infantry greatcoat belted with rawhide, his tin helm tucked under his right arm, and his left hand—still wrapped in the clean linen bandage Fen had tied for him—held the lantern ring high enough to show his face.
