The attack came at the darkest hour of the night, three hours after Tier Two had been hauled to the gravel ridge.
A freezing sleet had begun to fall over the Weeping Delta. It rattled like lead shot against the tarred canvas covers of the loaded turf wagons. On the ridge, the twenty plaster-jacketed crates sat in neat rows, resting in their beds of wet lime plaster and sawdust.
In the brush fifty yards north of the corduroy roadhead, Sile Rook sat motionless behind his heart-oak tall body-shield. His leaded ash truncheon rested across his knees. His ears were tuned to the whistle of the marsh wind.
A faint sound broke through the hiss of sleet. The soft, wet squelch of rawhide boots stepping through soaked peat.
Through the darkness, seven figures moved in single file along the ditch, their silhouettes low and sharp against the gray mist. They carried short-limbed hunting crossbows and coiled hemp grapnels. Two of them carried empty wooden crates lined with oiled wool, designed specifically to carry stolen fire-glass.
Sile didn’t shout a challenge. A shout would alert their rear guard. Worse, it might panic an intruder into loosing a fire-arrow into the canvas wagons.
