All through the early afternoon, while the iron-shod wheels of Marshal Ors’s siege mantlets rumbled slowly down the western shale slope into bowshot of the dry palisade, Jon Hale split his hours between stacking wet sand-sacks along the west wall scaffold and checking the north willow ditch where Tobin had ridden out at noon. By the third bell past midday, the drizzle had thickened into a stinging grey sleet that coated the cured oak hoardings in a skin of black ice and turned the clay lanes behind the North River Gate into ankle-deep mire.
Tobin had returned alone an hour after noon, his bay mare blowing white froth at the bit after leaving the six sappers at the third willow island, and had gone straight back up to the north dike lookout with a spyglass wrapped in oiled leather.
At half past the third bell, as Jon and Alden Bram were wedging a spare balk of salted pine timber beneath the west gatehouse lintel, Tobin came sliding down the muddy embankment steps two at a time, his deerskin jacket dark with sleet.
“The reed-ditch below the north weir, Jon!” Tobin panted, grabbing the innkeeper’s wool sleeve with mud-caked fingers. “Movement in the dead sedge fifty yards outside the stakes. Captain Dain’s bowmen have crossbows drawn on the bank, but it isn’t a lancer patrol—they’re dragging children through the ditch-water!”
