The sound came through the cobblestones before it reached the air. A deep, rhythmic thrumming that rattled the windowpanes in their putty and set the pewter mugs dancing on the dressers of Tanners’ Row.
Tomas Reed ran along the frozen canal towpath, his boots breaking the crust of sleet with sharp, rhythmic crunches. Behind him, Sile Rook marched with heavy, measured strides, his heart-tall oak body-shield slung across his shoulders. He was flanked by four veteran lightermen carrying twelve-foot ash poles and iron boathooks. In the freezing mist ahead, the red brick mass of the Central Sluice House loomed like a castle against the black waters of the basin.
From the Sluice House roof, a plume of steam sixty feet high was roaring into the night sky, lit up from below by the dull orange glare of the blast furnaces. The sound was no longer a whistle. It was a nonstop, shaking scream that set the teeth on edge. Then it made the horses in the brewery stables half a mile away kick at their stall partitions in terror.
Renn Tal knelt by the cast-iron check tap at the corner of Foundry Road, his gloved hands struggling to tighten the brass union of his portable Bourdon gauge. The brass pipe of the tap was already weeping droplets of scalding water that sizzled as they struck the frozen mud.
