The mounted corporal didn’t spur his horse. He sat motionless in his saddle, his knuckles white around the ash shaft of his lance. His gaze was locked onto the lead sledge.
Behind the barrier, on the valley side of the gatehouse, a crowd had begun to assemble. Word had traveled fast through the timber cabins of Low Sunder. The porter from Bellwether had come down from the high pass with five sledges. The old Fourteenth Battalion was standing at the timber.
Drovers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and valley laundry women crowded against the outer wooden wall. Their wool shawls pulled was tight against the cold wind. Their murmurs rose into a steady, churning hum that drifted over the gatehouse roof.
“Let them through!” a voice shouted from the crowd—an old wagon driver with a leather apron. “Those are our boys from the fifty-eight levy! That’s Kael’s sledge!”
“Silence behind the line!” Vance yelled, his face flushing with fury as he wheeled his charger to face the wooden wall. “The High Council has declared martial law over this roadway! Any civilian attempting to breach this barrier will be treated as an enemy combatant!”
He turned his horse back on Tomas, the horse’s nostrils flaring with steam.
