The thunder of Bram Ash’s service pistol bought them ten seconds.
In a narrow granite trench where three men were shooting crossbows and two artificial bodies were swinging six-pound iron wrenches, ten seconds was the difference between an orderly retreat and a butcher’s heap.
The smoke from Bram’s double charge hung thick and yellow between the dark rock cliffs. It smelled terrible, of sulfur and scorched saltpeter. The lead court guard, Kroll, was still on his knees in the black slurry, his wrist pinned through his iron gauntlet to the shattered ash wood of his tall body-shield. It screamed incoherent curses at his junior men. The second court guard was curled in the ditch with his kneecap broken, clutching his leg and vomiting into the weeds.
Len didn’t look at them. He kept his eyes locked on the narrow breach ahead.
He knew what Bram had sacrificed to pull that trigger. A gunshot in the Narrow Cut was a clear signal flare to every patrol within half a mile. Captain Vance’s household troops would be swarming the coal hopper before Bram could even draw his truncheon. Everything they had fought for across the last five hours—the bitter minutes spent sneaking Urel’s burned wife through the domestic halls, the desperate coordination that had lowered the two small girls down twenty feet of hemp line into the cutting—hinged on whether Len and Ivara could reach the drainage water chute before the double rose from the mud.
