The air on the cellar landing tasted of pulverized lime and damp stone.
Through the heavy oak ventilation grating that looked out onto the stable ditch, the daylight was a sullen, bruised purple. Above the vaulted brick ceiling, the ruins of the taproom were still settling with small, intermittent groans of splintered cedar and the soft hiss of trickling plaster. Every few minutes, a piece of broken roof slate would slide down the slope of rubble and shatter against the flagstones near the outer hatch.
Jon Hale sat on the third riser of the cellar stairs, his left boot planted on the step below to brace his spine. His bandaged right arm rested across his belly in the sling, the comfrey-soaked linen dark with grease and dust. In the crook of his left elbow, he held the wooden ledger board containing the defense muster.
Crowded around the landing in the smoky circle of a single horn lantern stood the surviving ward masters of Harth.
Harlan Pike, master of the river carters, leaned against the damp limestone jamb, his heavy sheepskin coat torn at the shoulder where an iron crossbow bolt had grazed his sleeve. Opposite him stood Bessa Karr of the wool-staplers, her gray hair bound in a soiled linen kerchief, her hands dark with grease and garden soil from helping drag the wounded out of South Lane. Between them sat old Joran Finch, clerk of the municipal court, clutching his iron ink-horn and a crumpled parchment roll to his…
