The Old Bridge did not echo with the proud bugle calls of the capital chronicles. It roared with the wet, choking fury of iron cleaving bone in four inches of muddy water.
Jon Hale reached the river gatehouse with his border knife drawn, his boots slipping on greasy river moss as he rounded the stone revetment. The river fog had mixed with black chimney smoke from the granary fires, settling over the limestone piers in a thick, choking blanket that tasted of boiled pitch and wet river reeds.
Through the murk, the five arches of the St. Jude bridge were crawling with gray-clad skirmishers.
Denied the marsh crossing by the salted brine and turned back at the aqueduct gate, the Ash Host had deployed four flat-bottomed freight rafts beneath the cover of the artillery barrage. They had drifted silently down the river current, their oak hulls muffled with bundles of dry straw, wedging their bows against the lower cutwaters of the bridge piers. From the rafts, thirty shock infantrymen had hurled iron grappling hooks over the stone parapets, swarming up the knotted hemp ropes like river rats boarding a stranded wool barge.
At the center of the span, Captain Dain’s municipal watch was locked in savage, desperate hand-to-hand combat.
