The dead hours between midnight and dawn were the coldest the hill had known since the first snows of November.
Outside, the western ridge was still smoldering. The raging crown fires had eaten their way through the dry lodgepole pine, leaving a jagged horizon of blackened snags that glowed like dull charcoal against the starry sky. An oily, yellow haze hung over the courtyard, smelling of burned hemlock sap, scorched moss, and the damp wool coats of forty town delegates sleeping fitfully in the outer guardhouses.
Noll Vey stood on the lower gallery landing, his heavy basalt body motionless in the shadow of the vaulted arch.
Through the foundation channels that ran outward from the hill fort into Mere, he could feel the pulse of the valley. Two miles to the south, the Crown siege camp was a sprawling sea of quiet restlessness. Eight thousand soldiers lay under damp canvas, listening to the wind howl down the limestone gorges, terrified that the mountain would crack open before morning. Their collective fear did not sleep. It pooled in the trenches like cold water, flowing along the old drainage seams straight into D-10.
Beside Noll, Sella Rusk was cleaning the lock of an old light hunting crossbow with an oiled goose feather. Her oilskin cape was propped against the wall, stiff with frost.
