The dark rock wall of Granite Gap didn’t look like rock that intended to negotiate.
It rose forty upright feet out of the peat moss, black, wet with autumn seep. Then it scarred by ancient ice-slow scouring. For six miles to the east and eight to the west, the fiery ridge formed an unbroken spine dividing the Upper Grey Crag valley from the high southern meadows and the iron-rich red hills beyond.
Giles Croft stood on the land-mapper’s stool forty paces from the rock face. He peeked through the telescope of his transit level.
“Angle of height to the crest is thirty-eight degrees,” Giles muttered, adjusting the level tangent screw. “Rock face is columnar dark rock with upright cooling joints.
Crushing strength about twenty thousand pounds of pressure. Moderate weathered overburden along the lip. Sub-base is solid igneous doorstep.”
Beside him, Master Duncan Stone-Splitter leaned heavily upon his six-pound dressing hammer, his weathered dwarven face drawn into deep lines of despair.
“You can’t pierce it, Lord Giles,” Duncan said. He spat a mouthful of granite grit into the weeds. “My clan has quarried stone in the Western Marches for five hundred years. Dark rock doesn’t split along a bed like sandstone or slate.
