At dawn they left the two-wheeled mineral barrow cached under a cairn of flat slates—the spine indicated by the Stone Shepherd’s soapstone tally was far too steep and narrow for wheels—and divided the remaining sacks of oats, chalk, and winter grease between the human pack-frames, Lilt’s cargo-harness, and the three iron wolves. The original field mouse rode in its familiar half-covered wooden box strapped securely inside the top flap of Ysabet’s pack, where it could poke its nose out under her collar to take bruised oat-kernels from her left hand without getting bounced by rocks.
By mid-morning they had climbed onto the high razorback ridge that separated the outer pass from the hidden basin of the Wild Cradle.
Here the mountain wind did not blow in one honest direction. Warm, mineral-heavy updrafts rose continuously from the thermal gorges on the left side of the spine, while freezing, knife-edged downdrafts spilled off the snow-peaks on the right. Where the two currents met above the jagged shale ledges, the air twisted into invisible chimneys and sudden drops that made Chaska’s cloak snap like a wet sail in two directions at once.
And every ledge along the mile-long spine was crowded with the nests of the high-pass forkwings.
