The noise hit him before the cold did.
Trafalgar stepped out onto the landing above the common hall and the whole street below him went up at once. It was not the ragged cheer the miners had managed at the mine mouth yesterday. This was the entire settlement, packed shoulder to shoulder between the houses, spilling into the side lanes, faces at every window and children up on the roof beams, and every last one of them roaring the instant the door opened.
He stopped where he was, and for one graceless breath had absolutely no idea what to do with himself.
'Right,' he thought. 'This.'
He had walked into a nest under a mountain alone and felt less exposed. Down there the rules were simple and the work was work. Here thousands of people were looking up at him with wet eyes and open mouths, waiting for something from him, and he had no idea what it was supposed to sound like.
