Len Vey reached the southern approach of the River Ward bridge with Ivara Quill and Bram Ash. Just then, the town alarm gong began its wild, irregular clamor from the gatehouse belfry.
They had covered the three-quarters of a mile from the tram shed in twenty-two minutes. They ran through the unlit drainage cuts with only the narrow green beam of Bram’s hooded copper lamp to guide their boots. Len’s fractured left radius was screaming inside its split-ash casing, every stride sending blinding spikes of agony from his wrist into his shoulder blade. But his Level 5 improvement, Road Sense, kept his feet moving across the frozen ballast without a single misstep.
They burst through the arched stone portal onto the wet roadway above the weir. The river wind hit them like a wall of wet ice. They smelled of dead moss, sulfur foam, and the hot, metal breath of the intake water chutes.
“Down there!” Bram shouted, his uninjured arm pointing over the low roof wall. “On the lower check narrow high walkway!”
Len leaned his chest against the cold granite coping of the wall, his brass sounding pole braced against the stone floor. Down on the narrow stone ledge fifty feet below, bathed in the harsh emerald glare of Nessa Tern’s defensive screen, stood the figure in the land-mapper’s canvas coat.
