The lower quarry cart was waiting in the drainage cut beneath the third terrace. A heavy, low-slung timber flat-bed built from six-inch oak planks, bolted together with forged steel straps to withstand the impact of two-ton blocks of crushed aggregate. It was hitched to two shaggy, short-legged mountain mules whose nostrils were thick with sheep fat to protect their lungs from the biting sulfur mist of the chimney pipes.
Bram Ash sat on the driver’s box, wrapped in his dark blue court guard’s coat. His left hand gripped the leather reins with white-knuckled intensity. At the same time, his right arm remained pinned inside his lapels, bound tightly against his chest where the gunshot wound from the toll-gate skirmish had begun to seep dark, yellowish fluid through the coarse linen bandages.
Beside him in the wagon bed stood Heth, her canvas apron smeared with road grease and lime dust, busily spreading armfuls of fresh barley straw and dry wool horse blankets across the rough floorboards.
“They’re coming through the wooden props!” Heth called out, pointing toward the dark, timber-lined mouth of the lower pump breach fifty yards up the scree slope.
Melli and Edda emerged first, their heavy boots slipping on the loose limestone talus as they supported Ivara between them. The land-mapper’s head lolled forward. Her feet dragged through the gray shale chips. But her sound right hand was clutched tightly around the brass buckles of her leather transit case. He refused to let the instruments touch the dirt.
