The Trade group grain depot stood beside the dry post road on the northern outskirts of Dry-Wells. Three massive timber-framed grain elevators, each forty feet tall and sheathed in corrugated iron sheets, dominated the landscape. Inside those towers, four thousand five hundred bushels of prime winter rye, wheat flour, and seed barley—harvested from the stolen Green River fields—sat behind heavy oak gates studded with iron spikes.
Guarding the entrance gate stood twelve Trade group overseers in boiled-leather brigandines, armed with heavy wheel-lock hunting carbines and iron-headed axe-spears. In their center stood Theron Pike, a sharp-faced merchant factor with a fox-fur collar and a pair of cocked pistols tucked into his silk sash.
“Halt where you stand!” Pike shouted, raising his pistol as the column of wagon drivers crested the road rise. “This is private property of the Grand Merchant Trade group! Any trespasser who sets foot across this ditch will be shot down like a wild dog!”
Tomas Reed didn’t break his stride.
Beside him, Sile Rook stepped forward two paces, planting the iron-shod foot of his blackened tall oak body-shield into the ditch gravel. With a sharp metal clang, six veteran draymen raised four-foot seasoned ash bucklers beside him. He formed an unbroken, linked timber wall that covered the entire width of the gate approach.
