In the darkened front taproom of the River Lantern Inn, Jon unhooked the small iron spy-slot in the center of the heavy oak street shutter and looked out with Alden Bram and Lady Signe Lorr into the midnight rain.
Outside at the West Quay crossroad, the wet cobblestones gleamed like black river-ice under the solitary horn lantern hanging from the toll-post. The driving gale had slackened into a cold, swirling mist that smelled of bruised pine needles from the northern hills, wet limestone, and the hyper-saline brine rising from the Low Sike marsh half a mile south.
Down the narrow slope from the West Quay Stone Granary came the final two-wheeled military hand-dray.
Its iron wheel-rims had been wrapped in strips of wet burlap sacking so the metal wouldn’t ring on the stones and carry across the river to the Ash Host’s listening posts. Lashed tightly onto the flatbed beneath a tarred sailcloth tarpaulin sat the last ten iron-hooped quarter-casks of Lot 884-Vanguard blasting powder—making thirty casks in all that had been hauled up out of the granary undercroft over the past ninety minutes—along with the coiled copper-wired fuse harness and the sawed drainage grate tube.
Four of the Royal Oath Guards strained in the rope hauling-traces with Corporal Morvath bracing the rear brake-pole against his shoulder.
