The rain did not slacken as the dark deepened over the parley ditch. It fell straight and cold through the still air, drumming against the wet sheepskin covers of the beer casks and turning the clay into slick, yellow slurry.
Marshal Ors did not ride away immediately after the names were spoken. He remained fifty paces up the slope, his gray horse turned three-quarters away, its head low, steam rising in pale curls from its drenched flanks. The two torchbearers held their smoking pine brands high, their red embers hissing as droplets struck the pitch.
When Ors turned his mount back toward the split oak rail, his spurs did not touch the horse’s ribs. He guided the animal down the slope with a soft cluck of his tongue, stopping three paces from the ditch edge, where the clay broke off into the black drainage trench.
“You speak well for an innkeeper, Master Hale,” Ors said, his voice quiet, stripped of the military edge he had used before his captains. “Better than many who sit on the Privy Council with gold chains across their doublets. But speeches do not keep trebuchet stones from splitting roof beams. Let us speak of the machine itself.”
