The decoy had bought Len Vey fifty yards of cold air. But the road demanded its physical toll in immediate, unsparing currency.
He had pivoted on the slick stone to heave Deren’s brass bell down the side gallery. Then, his right boot—the sound foot that had carried his unbalanced frame for eight days—had caught in a two-inch fracture between two shifting dark rock slabs. The stone had been cracked during the morning’s ground-shaking settling, unmortared and loose.
When Len threw the full turning force of his upper body into the throw. His right heel was held. Meanwhile, his forefoot twisted forty-five degrees outward against the granite lip.
The sound inside his ankle was not a break of bone. It was the sickening, stringy crunch of the anterior talofibular joint cord tearing across its attachment.
A white-hot flare of blinding agony shot up the lateral compartment of his calf, straight into his groin and lower spine, punching the air from his lungs in a strangled, reflex gasp that tasted of hot bile. His knee buckled instantly. His balance point pitched forward, and he slammed into the damp dark rock wall of the incline, his good right palm slapping against the slime-slick stonework to arrest his fall.
