The watch sent four riders before the second hour.
Not one — four, from four different stations, within twenty minutes of each other. Lysander was at the table with the Varos correspondence when the first one arrived at the palace gate. By the time the fourth came he was already dressed and moving.
The harbor master's office window.
The horizon.
'More than three hundred boats,' he thought. 'And still coming.'
He had learned to estimate from the way the horizon looked — the density of the shapes, the spread, the movement pattern. The first large wave had looked like this but smaller. This was not smaller.
'This is the wave that was gathering.'
'Hector said three weeks was a pattern. Five weeks of decreasing numbers and then this.'
'Not slowing. Gathering.'
He went down to the gate.
________________________________________
Hector was already at the northern gate.
