The cold bitter salt wind that struck them outside the rear melted rock waste gate felt like a lash of frozen wire across raw meat.
They dropped from the concrete foundations of Kiln Four into the dead cinder dunes of the eastern terrace. That left the blazing bright fire glare behind them. In less than thirty paces, the three-hundred-degree radiant warmth of the casting hall was stripped away by the gale, replaced by the bitter, sub-zero river frost that rolled down the eastern limestone escarpment.
The shift was violent, body, and immediate.
Len’s body, pushed beyond its living limits for forty-eight in a row hours, began to fail by degrees.
The fight-or-flight rush that had driven his dive across the cherry-red copper plates, through the thirty-inch crawlway, and up the iron ladder drained from his blood-vessel system in a cold, nauseating rush. His knees buckled twice on the loose glass cullet. His river boots slid in the sharp, crunchy gravel, his torso pitching forward until Bram Ash’s heavy arm caught him beneath his right shoulder, arresting his fall before his face struck the frozen cinders.
“Steady, boy,” Bram muttered, his voice thick with plain concern. “Keep your heels under your hips. I have your pack.”
