The smell of horse sweat, damp wool, and cold river water was the only thing that kept Tobin’s mind from shattering under the concussive roar of the siege engines.
He vaulted into the wet leather of his courier saddle with a single, fluid leap, his left boot finding the iron stirrup before his buttocks touched the sheepskin pad. Beneath him, the five-year-old bay gelding bunched its powerful hindquarters, snorting white steam into the freezing sleet, its hooves dancing nervously across the greenheart planks of the catwalk. The animal’s coat was lathered white where the breeching straps rubbed against its flanks, its ears pinned back against the deafening thunder of the spillway.
“Easy, boy,” Tobin murmured through his chattered teeth, leaning low over the horse’s muscular neck to shorten the split reins. “Easy, lad. We know this ditch. We’ve ridden it in the dark twenty times when the post horn was blowing.”
Behind him on the weir platform, another heavy iron grapple clattered over the oak railing with a shower of red sparks that hissed in the spray. He heard Alden Bram’s war cry—the gravelly, furious roar of an old mason swinging an iron sledge—cut short by the wet thud of an axe striking wood. Captain Dain’s broadsword was clanging frantically against two enemy shields, while the weaver apprentices shouted in terror as the second sapper barge ground its iron-shod snout into the stone cutwater.
