A dungeon core of the fourth rank cannot walk down to the town bridge on his own two legs, even when those legs are carved out of prime grey quarry limestone and pinned at the knee with honest iron dowels. Step three paces past the outer gatehouse ditch and the mortar in the joints goes numb as tallow. Step ten paces farther and a host is merely seven hundred pounds of dressed masonry waiting for a mason’s wagon to haul him home.
What Noll Vey could do, however, was lean his heavy stone shoulder against the wet keystone of the lower culvert arch, press two thick limestone fingers to the copper-wired acoustic pipe running down the drainage ditch, and listen through the lime-washed boundary marker Sella Rusk carried stitched inside the hem of her oilskin cape.
Water was always a generous gossip. Where the fort’s deep drainage culvert spilled into the mill stream beside the southern post-road, the cold runoff soaked into the old bridge abutments and crept up the mortar of the wheel-guard stones. Through that damp skin of lime and river silt, Noll could see the dark alder bend almost as clearly as if he had hung a row of footlights along the wet branches.
