The gray dawn crept into Dugout Seven through the chinks between the sandbags. That turned the lantern flames into dull, yellow smudges against the damp gloom.
Arthur Vance sat cross-legged on an ammunition crate beside the main running table, a clean sharpening stone balanced on his knee. He ran the edge of his nine-and-a-half-inch heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron body razor knife along the oiled whetstone, producing a rhythmic, whispering scrape that matched the slow, steady breathing of the three companions resting around him.
Grimm was sprawled across the floorboards at Arthur’s feet, his massive, scarred head resting heavily over the steel toes of Arthur’s combat boots. The Ashen Bone-Fang hound was fast asleep, his long tail sometimes thumping once against the wood in response to some distant dream of chasing phantom hares through the ash barrens.
On the zinc running slab, resting atop three folded woolen blankets, sat Titus.
The linen squeezing bandages wrapping the tortoise’s back shell had dried fully during the night. They were no longer white and supple. They had turned a deep, gunmetal-gray, stiffened into a rigid, stone-like cast by the hardened stone healing wrap beneath.
A soft, scratching sound broke the quiet of the dugout.
