The dispatch rider reached the quarry terrace on a lathered bay mare whose nostrils were rimmed with pink foam.
It was not Tobin; it was young Peter, a sixteen-year-old miller’s apprentice who had been assigned to Dain’s runner detail. The boy slid from the saddle before the horse had fully stopped, his boots sliding through the freezing slush of the staging ground, his wool tunic spattered with black powder grains and dried river water.
“The bridge holds!” Peter shouted, his voice cracking with a wild, triumphant joy that echoed off the high granite walls. “The north parapet holds! Captain Dain drove their dismounted vanguard into the shallows, and Sir Cael took the black ram banner from their cavalry colonel!”
A roar went up from the thirty town guards and twenty Host deserters who were stacking timber props along the quarry road. Men threw their iron pry-bars into the slush, embraced each other with powder-blackened hands, and cheered into the cold mountain air. Garek threw his woolen cap against the rock face, laughing with the raw, hysterical relief of a soldier who had stared into an open grave and found it empty.
Jon stood on the stone sill of the False Gate, his hands resting on the cold iron of the outer locking pin. Beside him, Alden Bram leaned heavily on his ash cane, his grey beard beaded with meltwater, looking down at the cheering workmen with a slow, cautious nod.
