Ivara pulled Len into the deep, shadowed recess of an abandoned stone water tank sixty feet below the first fortified switchback.
The water tank was carved directly into the dark rock bedrock, dry. He smelled of ancient silt and dry pine needles blown down from the upper crests. A rusted iron overflow pipe protruded from the ceiling, weeping a slow, rhythmic drip of bitter stone water that tapped against the stone floor like the second-hand of a headsman’s clock.
Ivara leaned her back against the curved granite wall. It caught her breath in short, measured puffs. She reached into her wool tunic with her right hand. Then she pulled out a small brass monocular. A land-mapper’s scouting glass with a scratch across the objective lens, held together with waxed linen thread.
“Hold the pole,” she whispered, handing Len her iron sounding rod.
She raised the glass to her eye, resting her elbow against the lip of the water tank to steady the image. Through the green twilight cast by the outer edge lamps on the terrace above, she systematically scanned the crenellated low roof wall of the outer defense wall.
“Forty guards on the lower works,” Ivara said. Her voice dropped into a flat, skilled tally. “Twenty living conscripts assigned to the outer gates and the fuel depots. Twenty assigned doubles patrolling the inner domestic terrace and the lens approach.”
