The dawn broke over Checkpoint Three with the cold, gray glare of wet slate.
A biting wind whipped off the northern raised stone road. It drove thin needles of sleet through the open bays of the check pavilion. But this morning, the queue outside the barn was not the docile, hopeless herd of shivering travelers that the guard post guards were accustomed to kicking into the mud.
Six hundred marsh wagon drivers, peat-cutters, and weavers stood packed shoulder to shoulder across the levee road. Their heavy wooden boots were locked into the freezing mud. They didn’t shout. They didn’t brandish weapons. They stood in disciplined, unbroken ranks behind forty heavy freight wagons whose timber tailgates had been lashed shut with four-inch hemp mooring lines. In every carter’s hand was a brass boat-bell or a tin whistle, silent for now. But held ready at waist height.
At the front of the column, standing on the timber apron of the check platform, stood Tomas Reed.
He wore his gray wool tunic, brushed clean of marsh silt, with his lead-lined courier satchel cross-slung across his chest and the ash-wood pack frame resting square upon the floorboards beside his boots. On his left wrist, the calfskin brace was freshly greased with sheep fat. It held the scarred tendon firm and straight. Behind him stood Nessa Vale, her brass sound horn resting against her collar, and Old Marta. She was wrapped in her otter-skin coat. She held Alia Sen’s silver hearth-ring visible on its blackened…
