Len ran through the unlit stonework chimney pipe. His boots struck the loose slate with the ragged, heavy rhythm of an exhausted man.
He had no lantern now. He had dropped the copper safety light when he spun out of his coat. That left the green beam to light up an empty pool of water forty paces behind him. He ran through total, choking darkness, relying entirely on his Road Sense to keep him from breaking his neck against the low-hanging iron steam channels.
Road Sense operated through the soles of his boots like a second pair of eyes pressed to the earth.
He had learned to trust that body instinct through four winters of hauling mail across the northern passes, where blizzards wiped out the trail and a courier had only the grain of the rock beneath his feet to tell him if he was on the road or three inches from a four-hundred-foot drop. With every stride, the tactile feedback of the stone informed his movement nerves. Three paces of sound granite cut stone. It was followed by a fractured slab where an old floor drain had collapsed. Two feet of loose limestone gravel, then a slippery patch of black iron-scale that offered no lateral traction. He adjusted his stride unconsciously, shortening his gait. Just then, the stone thinned, throwing his weight toward the stonework wall. Just then, the floor dropped away into a shallow runoff channel.
