The approach to Bastion-Nine was not a road. It was a black, quaking morass of drowned peat and rotten-egg clay where the drainage water gates of the old castle had choked and backed up into the forward glacis.
Tomas Reed stepped onto what appeared to be a firm ridge of turf. His right boot broke through the thin crust of dried moss with a hollow, sickening crunch, plunging his leg to the mid-calf in cold, greasy black slime that smelled of stale copperas and decomposing vegetation. The suction held his foot fast. It pulled at the leather heel until the stitching groaned against his ankle. He didn’t pull upward with a sudden jerk. He had learned in the lower river basins that jerking against deep clay only tore the welt from the sole. Then he left the boot in the mud.
“Hold the trace,” Tomas called out, bracing his hips against the suction. He extended his right arm, catching the ash timber that Sergeant Karr thrust out from the firmer bank.
With a coordinated haul, Tomas dragged his leg free from the black quag. That left a pool of oily water that bubbled with pockets of marsh methane. He sat down upon a dry hazel hurdle, breathing heavily in the cold air, his boot coated in a thick, jelly-like black mud that reeked of ancient stale water.
