Grey morning crept through the arrow loops of the upper bailey, casting pale bars across frosty flagstones. On the lower lintel above the descent to the ninth door, the white chalk digits read one hundred and sixty-four hours. Six days and twenty hours, the steady countdown cutting like an iron chisel through the quiet of the fortress.
Noll Vey did not linger in the hearth. His presence flowed through conduits of mortar and stone into the main gatehouse where Sella Rusk checked her chainmail hauberk.
“The winch will not turn on magic if the core goes dark, Sella,” Noll said from the stone housing of the windlass. “You have leaned on my pressure to brake the counterweights. If the Hall takes that balance, two thousand pounds of pig iron will drop like a boulder.”
Sella set her gauntlets on the parapet. “Then explain how the mechanical release catches, Noll. Show me where the shear pin sits.”
“Look behind the secondary drum,” Noll instructed, directing a faint blue shimmer along the gears. “There is a drop-dog forged from cold-rolled steel. Strike that wedge with a four-pound mallet, and the secondary pawl engages the ratchet. The gate will lock at five, six, or eight feet. It will take four stout men on the capstan bars to haul it back up without my help, but it will hold against a ram even if the hill stone turns as numb as a river pebble.”
