Day 5 broke not with sunlight, but with an iron roar that shook the marrow of the hills.
Two leagues to the north, on the bluffs overlooking the great river bend, Marshal Ors’s heavy batteries opened fire. The concussion rolled down the river valley like thunder trapped in an iron flume, rattling the frost-crusted shale beneath Jon’s boots and sending flocks of rooks exploding into the grey sky. Seconds later, a dull, pulsing boom echoed from the stone bridge—the first twenty-four-pound iron shot striking the outer parapet.
Jon crouched on the upper timber platform above the False Gate, fifty feet above the quarry floor, peering through a slit in the dry pine revetment.
Beside him, Alden Bram knelt with his ash cane resting across his thighs, an iron trip-lever held in his right hand. The master mason wore a thick wool cap pulled down over his ears, his breath pluming in short, dense clouds against the stone. Behind them in the rock gallery, Garek and six Host deserters stood beside the counterweight cradles, their hands gripping the release ropes with white-knuckled intensity.
“That is the diversion,” Bram murmured, his voice calm, unaffected by the distant artillery thunder. “Ors wants Dain to think the entire army is forcing the bridge. He will pound the north towers for an hour with solid shot, make three feigned charges with light horse, and wait for our reserves to commit to the parapet.”
