The heavy iron knocker on the pump house door fell three times with a hollow, booming strike that echoed through the stone tiered arena like a muffled hammer on an anvil.
“Open the latch, Splitflint,” a rough deep voice called out from the sunlit gravel outside. “Unless you spent the night drinking salt water, you know the knock.”
Inside the vaulted room, Tesk stumbled over a loose pile of iron couplings, wildly wiping his bloody thumb against his thigh. Meanwhile, he tried to smooth his soot-streaked tunic. He looked up at the high pine shelf where he had shoved Kezra’s notebook, checking that the waxed leather was hidden behind a stack of rusted pump valves, before hurrying to the timber door. His boots scuffled across the dusty oak planks, kicking up small clouds of grey powder that caught the slanting morning light.
He threw the heavy oak crossbar back with a loud clatter and pulled the door inward.
Through the narrow window gap beneath the stonework doorstep, Kezra and Yseld watched two men step across the threshold into the cool gloom.
Both wore the travel-stained dust-grey wool cloaks and high leather riding boots of Captain Hest Vale’s mobile field calm distance. Over their shoulders hung short recurve horseman’s bows cased in boiled leather, and heavy cavalry sabers in steel-ringed sword sheaths swung against their left thighs. The older man—a thickset corporal with a salt-and-pepper beard and the bronze compass badge of an outrider sergeant pinned to his lapel—carried a rolled…
