The drag trail climbed through a narrow chimney of broken slate where the morning wind rattled dry milk-vetch pods in the crevices. Twice they found dark stains on the stone where the injured ewe had bled during the climb, and alongside every stain was the unmistakable print of the sideways fourth claw. Whoever had chiselled that sinkhole wider had meant for trapped animals to stay down in the dark until a crew came with ropes and block-and-tackle; Oru had robbed their pit by sheer neck and shoulder strength.
Halfway up the chimney, the loose slate opened onto a tilted shelf beneath an overhanging brow of gray granite. The mountain wind split around the rock nose, leaving the wide hollow beneath the overhang dry and sheltered from the frost.
Ysabet held up her left hand, signaling Chaska, Ashaun, and Osha to halt behind a waist-high granite boulder near the shelf’s lower edge. Lilt glided up from the lower terrace on silent wings and settled onto the flat top of the boulder, folding her broad sandray fins with a soft rustle like dry canvas.
“Stay by the rock,” Ysabet murmured, setting the butt of Suth’s ash staff silently in the gravel. “If he’s inside, four people crowding the narrow entrance will look like a hunting party.”
