The oak door of Number Seven swung inward with a dry, shuddering groan, revealing the narrow deep gap of Printer’s Alley in the gray winter light.
Captain Sir Branoc of the Iron Gate stood three paces back from the threshold, his six-foot two-handed axe-spear lowered to the charge. He was surrounded by ten armored infantrymen in blackened breastplates. Behind them, two burly siege laborers were setting the iron nose of their timber ram down upon the wet cobbles, their breath panting in white plumes. The torches they carried sputtered in the damp sleet. They cast greasy red shadows across the leaning tenement walls.
“Seize the room!” Branoc bellowed, his iron-plated gauntlet pointing toward the open door. “Smash the beds! Put every man in irons!”
He took one stride forward. Then he stopped.
Behind him in the lane, a dull, rolling roar—like the sound of ten thousand sacks of barley tumbled down an iron ramp—echoed from the mouth of the alley where it joined Weaver’s Square.
Branoc spun around, his axe-spear coming up in a gut block.
The alley behind him was no longer empty.
From the tenement doorways, from the dark cellar stairs, from the side passages of the Tanner’s Guild, a wall of working men was pouring into the lane. They carried no swords, no axe-spears, and no crossbows. They were dressed in coarse wool smocks, grease-stained leather aprons, and cowhide cart driver boots. In their hands, they held the everyday tools of their trades: five-foot ash-wood packing bats…
