The gates opened at the fifth hour's first light.
The capital's eastern gate, the gate that the Horde had entered through the postern beside it two days before, swung wide on the hinges that the gate mechanism's interior operation provided. The gate's two iron-bound oak panels, each fifteen feet tall and eight feet wide, separated at the center and the gap between them widened and the gap's widening admitted the dawn's light into the gate's arch and the arch transmitted the light into the street that connected the gate to the market district's eastern approach.
The western gate opened simultaneously. The southern gate opened three seconds later, the delay produced by the gate mechanism's age and the specific resistance that the mechanism's three-century-old components imposed on the mechanism's operation when the operation was conducted by warriors whose familiarity with the mechanism was the familiarity that two minutes of inspection had provided.
