The Grey Crag town granite quarry was situated two miles north of the star-castle wall, carved deep into the grey roots of the mountain shelf.
Even under the howling sub-zero blizzard, the digging pit was alive with the clink of steel chisels, the rumble of iron pry-bars. The steady creak of heavy derrick cranes hoisting dressed cut stone blocks onto hauling sledges.
A network of covered wooden chimney pipes, tapped from a pair of backup charcoal hearths at the base of the cutting, circulated warm air beneath the hoisting winches.
The warm air prevented the gear lubricant from congealing in the bitter cold.
The quarry was an indispensable organ in Grey Crag’s town body.
From its benches came the dense, fine-grained grey hard speckled granite that formed the stone retaining wall of the eight star-castle walls.
Each block had to be quarried along natural cleavage planes, squared to a hair’s breadth with iron scutches. Then he loaded onto ox-drawn sledges.
Master Duncan Stone-Splitter stood upon the third digging bench, his heavy sheepskin coat white with fine granite dusting powder.
