Rain-sleeted dusk settled into the cobbled stable yard behind the River Lantern, smelling of wet straw, horse dung, and the sharp pine-tar salve Jon Hale used on cracked leather harness. Under the overhang of the fodder loft, where a single horn-paned stable lantern hung shielded from the western wind, Jon braced his knee against the ribs of Tobin’s bay mare and hauled the double-woven hemp girth strap one notch tighter. With his bare right index finger and thumb, he scooped a dollop of rendered mutton tallow mixed with black plumbago from an earthenware grease-pot and worked it thoroughly into the iron tongue of the cinch buckle, the stirrup leathers, and the cheek-rings of the snaffle bit.
“Not a chime out of the iron once you pass the outer willow stakes,” Jon murmured, testing the muffled clink of the bit ring with his knuckle before moving to the grey garrison pack-mule standing patiently behind the mare. “And keep a strip of wet wool twisted around the lantern bails until you’re ready to set them on the bluff wall. Sleet carries sound across flat water almost as sharp as clear frost.”
Tobin stood at the mare’s head, checking the rawhide lashings on the three shuttered whale-oil lanterns slung across the pack-saddle alongside two coils of braided hemp drag-rope. The twenty-two-year-old courier had tied a strip of dull brown sacking over his deerskin shoulders to break the outline of his collar against the night mist.
