Five months before the Snarling Wolf reached the capital's walls, Fort Harken fell.
The thundermaker ball struck the main gate's left tower at the third hour of the second day's bombardment. The impact was not the impact of a catapult stone, which hit and cracked and required repeated strikes to produce structural failure. The thundermaker ball hit and punched through. The stone facing on the tower's eastern side exploded inward, fragments of masonry the size of a man's head spraying across the courtyard in a horizontal rain that killed three soldiers who had been standing at the tower's base and wounded nine more who had been moving between positions.
