The sun was still high in the sky, but it felt like the darkest of nights. Could they make it work? What if they kept the gate open? Vol dared to imagine that Nolan might be able to sneak in – if Nolan ever came back – and keep the city gates open, so that they could pillage whatever they wanted and then run back to the mountains… But even imagining such a thing, it seemed unlikely.
"They'll run us down on horseback immediately," Harland said, voicing the very same thoughts that Vol had just been thinking. "It's a day or two at least on foot from the edge of the Black Mountain forests towards that bloomin' hunk of rock. We'll be cut down in an instant. We're not escaping armoured cavalry on foot, not in a million years."
