Before dropping into the flooded stairwell, Sile Rook paused at the ruined lychgate of the chapel garth, his eyes scanning the south raised stone road through a narrow gap in the crumbling limestone boundary wall. The winter rain had settled into a fine, drifting mist that chilled the skin without washing away the heavy marsh smell. Half a mile to the south. There, the corduroy timber road emerged from the willow thickets onto the higher gravel ridge, two yellow lanterns flickered through the wet dark.
The dull, muffled clop of heavy cavalry mounts on wet alder logs traveled clearly across the soaked bog.
Sile knelt behind his oak tall body-shield. He pulled a blackened iron lever from his belt to wedge the shield’s iron-shod base into the turf. His Keloid burn scars across his right ribs pulled taut against his woolen undershirt as he leaned forward. But his breathing remained slow and controlled. For twenty years, he had patrolled the flood-scarred outer edge of the river communities. He knew the gait of town cavalry horses better than the city court guards knew their own ledgers.
“Six horses,” Sile murmured without turning his head. “Heavy chargers, not road hacks. They’re carrying plate bards on their chests and iron-shod lances in their buckets. That isn’t a routine border patrol. That’s the Duke’s personal household squadron from Iron-Hold.”
