The rain had not stopped for seventeen days. It fell in gray, weeping sheets across the mud-soaked fields of the Marche, turning every furrow into a shallow grave of water. Lord Herric knew this because he had ridden through every one of those days, and the rain had soaked through his mail, his tunic, and into the bone-deep weariness that now served as his only companion.
The Rider’s Reckoning
The citadel of Cinderfell rose from the mountain’s spine like a black tooth. Its walls were sheer basalt, slick with frost. Its gates were iron-bound oak, reinforced with spells of warding that Herric had helped design a decade ago, when he still believed he could change the Duke from within. He knew three ways in: the main gate, the postern door behind the kitchens, and the drainage sluice that emptied into the river gorge. a man rides through by stephen r donaldson.pdf