The Great North Gate of Crown-Reach was not merely an archway in a stone wall. It was a castle of dark gray dark rock, eighty feet high. It was flanked by two eight-sided drum towers whose machicolations leaned out over the highway like heavy, watchful brows. Four hundred years of iron-shod wagon wheels had worn two deep ruts into the granite sills of the outer gatehouse, smooth and dark as polished coal. Meanwhile, the iron drop-gate hung suspended in its stone groove above. Its six-inch chisel spikes shone with black anti-rust pitch.
The evening watch was changing. Twelve city guards in steel kettle-hats and padded leather jacks stood on the cobbles, their axe-spears resting against their shoulders. Meanwhile, a long line of country carts—empty vegetable wagons returning to the market gardens, heavy cart carts laden with empty beer casks from the dockside taverns, and drovers herding tired sheep—crowded the exit lane in the gathering dusk.
everyone could feel the smell of wet wool, coal smoke, horse sweat, and the pungent tang of stale beer lees. Across the rooftops of the city, the bells of the seven parish churches began to ring the Angelus, their slow, bronze strokes mingling in the misty air with the distant clatter of iron wheels on river stone.
