Before anyone stepped over the sill, Kiv gave a short, two-note whistle that brought his three iron wolves trotting down from the west gallery steps where they had been keeping the frightened drill laborers from wandering back toward the tool sheds.
Siv came first, his broad gray muzzle scarred from years of harness work and his heavy iron-plated shoulders moving with a careful, unhurried roll. Behind him came Tern, leaner in the flank with the pink furrow along his ribs from the ledge fight with Fesk, and Moth, the quietest of the three, whose dark slate coat blended almost completely into the wet shadow of the terrace wall.
Kiv went down on one knee between them. When he reached to scratch behind Siv’s ears, he kept his fingers carefully clear of the left side of the old wolf’s upper jaw; the infected tooth Ysabet had drained and packed with clove oil days earlier no longer swelled his cheek, but cold draft air and heavy tugging still made the old male flinch if he bit down wrong.
“They’ll go with you,” Kiv told Ashaun and Ysabet. “Three noses down in the rock will smell sour gas or a live wire long before you see it, and if you have to drag a heavy load over gravel, Tern and Moth can take trace lines on their chest rings. Just don’t put a haul strap on Siv’s jaw.”
