The Black Sluice Canal at two in the morning was a landscape of steam and shadow.
A freezing ground-mist hung three feet above the oily water, thick with the smell of stale ditch mud and sulfuric coal gas. From the discharge slip of Blast Furnace Number Four, a nonstop stream of boiling waste water cascaded into the canal through a brick under-road drain. That created a billowing white heat fog that obscured the timber wooden support posts of the unloading wharf.
Captain Sile Rook crouched on the towpath levee twenty paces back from the slip. His boiled-leather brigandine was dark with freezing drizzle. He held his plain forged guard-sword unhooked in its sword sheath, his left hand resting flat on his iron-heavy oak tall body-shield. His master key-ring, holding forty-two notched keys, was wrapped in an oiled woolen rag inside his belt to keep the metal from clinking in the dark.
“outer edge clear on the north towpath, Tomas,” Sile rasped, his voice a low, gravelly shaking that barely carried past his collar. “The yard watch just changed at the brick house. Two men with lanterns walked the upper rail, but they won’t come down to the slip. The sulfur vapor is too thick for their lungs. Even their hounds refuse to track past the cooling pits.”
