Sunrise on the sixth morning of the siege came up the colour of a pewter tankard that had been left out in the turnip patch all winter.
From the high stone gallery of the Grand Hall, Noll Vey stood in his heavy limestone shell and watched the cold mist peel back from the roofs of Mere. Down by the iron market well, three March Ledger bailiffs in polished half-armour were driving square-headed iron nails into the oak notice-board with a carpenter’s mallet. Each hammer-stroke came up the hill half a second after the flash of the mallet head, flat and dry against the wet slate roofs.
Inside the Grand Hall, the smell was considerably more civilized. Hobb had been up since four o’clock coaxing a reluctant sack of bruised winter barley and dried horse-beans into a thick morning pottage over the fuel-less hearth, and the warm scent of toasted grain, onion skins, and salt pork fat drifted across the scrubbed floorboards. Along the lower benches, several of the retired shaft timbermen who had sat up all night with Edren Dene were snoring gently under borrowed wool blankets, their grease-stained pay chits still buttoned safely inside their waistcoats.
The outer courtyard door banged open against its leather bumper.
