The upper staging platform of the Number Two hoist head smelled of wet mule hair, crushed shale, damp cedar grease, and cold morning drizzle.
Len Vey stepped out from the iron lattice cage onto the compacted melted rock waste of the surface yard, his courier boots right away finding their familiar, grounded grip on the crushed gravel through Surefoot. Behind him, Ivara Quill, Bram Ash, and Geth Marr emerged into the dim, olive-lit shed. She was followed by forty veteran quarry drillers who fanned out along the timber outer edge walls with their sledges and pry-bars resting across their forearms in disciplined silence.
In the center of the covered loading bay stood Bevin Soot’s heavy four-wheeled freight wagon.
The wagon was built like a mobile castle, its oak sideboards three inches thick, heavy with bolted iron straps and sheltered beneath a double-layered canvas tarpaulin coated in boiled linseed oil. The four heavy draft mules in the traces were unhitched but still wearing their work harnesses, their broad flanks steaming into the cold air, their breath puffing white clouds against the iron roof beams. Two young stable boys from the Tram yard were rubbing the mules’ hocks with straw wads. That kept the beasts calm while armed miners watched the timber gates.
