The drums of Airgead Mountain spoke together in the dark; one doubled concussion, deep as a giant's heartbeat, rolling across the snowfields to break against the walls of Lothian City like a wave against a cliff.
– BOOM BOOM –
Then silence, one heartbeat, then two, just long enough for more than ten thousand people to stop whatever they were doing and turn south, and then the march began in earnest. The drummers of Airgead set the rhythm. It was slow and measured to begin, and the column of Hanrahan moved down out of the hills toward the torch-crowned walls with the Crimson Knight at its head.
Sybyll rode at an unhurried walk, and Poppy kept the drummers' time beneath her as though the mare had been born to it. A few weeks of blood and patience, and already the spirited mare carried darksteel through a winter's night like a lady carrying a fan.
