The autumn dusk fell swiftly over the river wharves of Crown-Reach. That turned the brown water into dark oil that reflected the flickering torches of three hundred armed citizens marching along the South Quay. At the head of the column walked Tomas Reed, his ash pack frame strapped securely across his shoulders, with Captain Marcus Thorne of the City Watch and two Crown Marshals wearing the black velvet surcoats and silver lion chains of the King’s Bench.
Behind them marched forty city watchmen with grounded axe-spears. He was followed by sixty common draymen and river wagon drivers carrying timber balks, hemp snubbing lines, and heavy forge sledges. In Tomas’s right pocket lay the heavy bronze key-matrix surrendered by Morvath. In Hester Quill’s leather portfolio rested the Writ of Immediate Forcible Entry, signed by all twelve Chief Justices and bearing the Great Seal of the realm.
The column moved through the rain-slick streets of the mercantile quarter with the disciplined silence of a river at night. Common shopkeepers stood on their doorsteps holding animal fat candles aloft, lighting up the way for the twelve wagon drivers who hauled the eighteen-foot oak battering ram mounted upon twin rolling dollies. The iron heel-plates of Tomas Reed’s boots clicked rhythmically against the wet cobbles. His scarred left arm pulled firmly against the stiff calfskin brace, the hardened tissue across his wrist holding its shape under the leather. He ran through a quiet test set, flexing the fingers of his left hand thirty times against…
