The morning mist smelled of wet cedar charcoal and cold mountain stone.
From the gatehouse rampart, Noll Vey looked down the winding throat of the pass lane. The dawn was a pale slit along the eastern ridge, cutting through the low clouds like an iron wedge driven into wet pine. Below the boundary marker, where the road widened into the stony pastures of Mere, eight thousand men were waking under sodden canvas.
Drums had beaten reville an hour before daybreak, their rhythm vibrating through the limestone beneath Noll’s boots. Yet no cavalry came up the gravel slope. The regiments that had climbed in the predawn darkness had halted two hundred paces short of the red ditch, waiting in double ranks for the sun to clear the peaks.
Inside Noll’s breastbone, the blue core chip pulsed with a steady, quiet ache.
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He had burned one hundred and fifty points in the night to buttress the ninth door against the creature’s thrashing limbs, leaving his core lean. He could feel every joint of his quarried limestone body: the dry mortar in his hips, the iron pins through his knees, the cold air whistling through the chisel marks across his ribs. It carried the weight of every pound of masonry resting upon its shoulders.
