His lips shaped a silent whistle when he came through the last fringe of bare-limbed oaks into a clear space and saw the town walls.

"Wouldn't like to have to storm those," he muttered. Even allowing for how the darkness made them seem to loom… "No, sir."

Must be thirty feet high, and pretty damned thick, he thought. And towers every hundred yards, half bowshot apart, and I'd say they're half again as tall. You don't see many things built after the Change that height.

He'd seen walls that had a bigger circuit-the town couldn't have more than three or four thousand people; Des Moines had thirty times that-but few that looked stronger.

And never any painted like that.

The surface looked like pale stucco; along the top below the crenellations was a running design of vines and flowers with… He peered through the murk.

Faces. I think. That's a woman's face, isn't it? With vines for hair. And that's a fox or a coyote. And that's…

The towers along the wall had pointed conical roofs sheathed in green copper and shaped like a witch's hat, which was appropriate if the wilder rumors he'd heard were true. There were two hills showing above the ram parts, off west to the other side of the town. One was crowned by a huge circular building without walls, just pillars supporting a roof; he could see the outline of it because a great bonfire blazed there, and even at this distance he could catch a hint of eerie music and dancing figures. He crossed himself by conditioned reflex at the sight, but without real fear-he'd never been excessively pious, even before he became a wandering freelance.