The morning bell of Dry-Wells was ringing the third hour when Tomas Reed reached the courthouse square.
He didn’t walk alone.
Behind him marched thirty refugee wagon drivers, their faces scrubbed clean of bitter salt dust. Their hair was tied back with clean strips of linen. They didn’t carry crossbows or swords. They carried the tools of their honest trade: four-foot hickory wagon spaves, heavy iron wheel-wrenches, splitting mauls, and drawknives stuck through their leather aprons. In their center walked Old Kaelen Brant, dressed in his faded royal cart driver’s tunic with the brass supply buttons polished bright with wood ash.
Beside Tomas walked Sile Rook, his oak tall body-shield strapped to his left arm, the blackened iron hooked pruning blade resting across his shoulder. On his right walked Nessa Vale. It carried her brass-fitted transit sighting scope and her bound volume of earth-measuring three-point sighting tables.
The townspeople of Dry-Wells pulled back into their doorways as the column marched down the main street. The rhythmic, heavy crunch of thirty pairs of hobnailed boots striking the crushed pale limestone road sounded like the approach of an iron battery. Shopkeepers rolled down their canvas awnings. Clerks in high linen collars peeked through shuttered windows. Wagon drivers holding fat mule teams pulled their wagons onto the side curbs to let the silent column pass.
