When the borehole blew, the blast of hot mud shook the infirmary tent hard enough to snap two guy-ropes on the windward side.
Ashaun did not bother with the front flap where the sentry was staggering up out of the ditch with steam in his eyes. Bracing her translucent stone left forearm against the corner post, she drove her right-hand skinning knife into the laced canvas seam at the back of the tent and ripped downward to the ground-sill.
Inside, Kiv was already on his feet beside the narrow camp cot, tipping an overturned willow-bark tea mug off his boots.
“Belt’s on the stool,” Kiv said before she was halfway through the slit.
Ashaun scooped up his leather belt and brass horn with her right hand, tossed them to him, and backed out into the supply trench as the second shockwave rolled under the camp.
Thirty yards down the slope, the front wall of the cliffside stone shed had split from eaves to sill. Four temple orderlies and two pikemen were straining at the iron haul-rings of a greased timber sled, dragging the heavy black-stone bell cage and the brass resonator frame out onto the tilting gravel apron. Fifty feet below them in the scalding mist of the nursery terraces, Ysabet and Pip were shoving half-formed reed-calves up the slick drainage steps out of the rising hot water.
