The swamp had eyes, and not all of them belonged to frogs.
Captain Sile Rook walked into the survey tent. Just then, the first gray light of dawn broke through the autumn fog. He carried his heavy ash truncheon in his right hand, his boiled-leather brigandine dripping with cold marsh dew. In his left hand, he held a clump of cut sedge grass tied with a strand of greasy yellow sinew.
Tomas sat at the folding table, his left leg raised on a spruce stacked timber frame block, heating a cup of chicory tea over a clay pot charcoal fire bowl. Beside him, Nessa was sharpening her bone dividers on an Arkansas oilstone.
“We have company on the east flank,” Sile said. He set the bundle of sedge on the table.
Tomas looked at the grass. The reeds had not been broken by the wind. They had been sliced cleanly at an angle with a sharp, thin blade, then bound with animal sinew to form a portable watching blind.
“How many?” Tomas asked, his voice calm and unrushed.
“Three sets of tracks,” Sile replied. He unbuckled his wet leather belt and sitting upon a nail keg. “Narrow, soft-soled hide moccasins greased with fish oil. The kind the border poachers wear in the Great Sump. They came across the southern slough in a skin coracle during the dark of the moon, dragged the boat into the elder scrub fifty yards from our corduroy road, and watched the sally port for at…
