By late afternoon on Day 159, the central square of Kilnstep was alive with the noisy, chaotic energy of a community reclaiming its ground.
Thirty-two households had returned from the refuge hamlets in the western hills, their two-wheeled ox-carts and hand barrows rumbling over the cobblestones. Women were unlatching wooden shutters that had been barred for three weeks. Children were chasing squawking geese through the alleyways. And men were hauling iron pry-bars and buckets of wet lime plaster to repair the damage left behind by Captain Hest Vale’s occupying soldiers.
The soldiers had withdrawn southward three days earlier, following the receipt of dispatch packets confirming Stonewake’s shifted weight and Krail’s removal from command. They had left in an orderly retreat down the turnpike. But their occupation had left scars. Three timber doorposts were scorched with torch fire, forty sacks of barley meal had been looted from the communal storehouse, and two dozen large heavy clay water jars lay smashed in the gutter beside the village well.
Yet the great brick firing kilns that formed the heart of the village stood undamaged. Their massive arched chimneys rose twenty feet into the clear afternoon sky. They waited only for dry firewood and fresh greenware to resume their work. Down by the settling troughs, two older potters were already shoveling clean sand into the filter beds. It tested the flow of the spring water with wooden paddles.
