Everything happened in the span of two heartbeats, governed by the unforgiving gravity of the gorge. Twenty feet below the switchback shelf, the two twenty-pound leather-bound weapon catalogues that Archivist Vel had thrown into the mist reached the narrow rock spur where the second Court recovery fighter was leaning out to catch them. Had they been light scroll-tubes, the Bronze guard could have snatched them from the air with one hand. Instead, thirty pounds of wet cowhide, oak boards, and brass corner-plates—speeding up through twenty feet of drop—struck the fighter squarely across the visor of his iron helmet and the bridge of his collarbone.
The impact sounded like a mason’s mallet hitting a tin bucket. Knocked backward off his two-inch toe-notch before he could grab the lower section of the rope, the second recovery fighter cartwheeled out into the pale gorge mist alongside a blizzard of fluttering pike-inventory pages. Neither Ilyra’s spear nor Daro’s sword could reach twenty feet down an overhanging chute of sheer rock. The man vanished into the roaring white foam of the winter torrent eighty feet below without a second cry.
At the exact same instant, up on the lip of the switchback shelf, the upper end of the hemp climbing rope parted beneath Daro Kesh’s dark Bronze edge. Osen Tal had leaned more than half his body weight against that taut line while reaching after the dropped catalogues. Because of that, the sudden release of tension pitched his shoulders forward over the void. His leather-booted…
