The sound of iron boots pounding against damp cobbles echoed up the stone stair of the gatehouse before the man himself appeared.
Alden Bram hauled his massive frame through the arched doorway onto the parapet walk, his ash cane striking the flagstones with heavy, hurried thuds. The master mason’s leather apron was stained with dried lime and black ditch grease, his coarse linen shirt plastered to his broad chest with sweat. He dragged air into his lungs in ragged gasps, his grey hair wild and tangled in the river wind.
“Jon!” Bram called out, ignoring the soldiers who parted around his broad shoulders. “Sir Cael! Get down from this wall! They aren’t coming at the bridge!”
Cael paused at the landing, his hand resting on the hilt of his greatsword. “We saw their columns turning north along the ridge road, Master Bram. Marshal Ors is circling the upper orchard.”
“He isn’t circling the orchard, you fool!” Bram leaned heavily on his cane, pointing a blunt, calloused finger back toward the western slope of Old Hill where the grey slate roofs of the weavers’ cottages huddled against the limestone bluffs. “He put thirty sappers into the sunken ditch behind the dry wash! They’re in the old stormwater conduit!”
