With a two-handed downward thrust that poured every drop of her consolidated Bronze focus into the pulling grain of the seasoned ash wood and the dark marsh-iron fittings, Ilyra drove the butt-shoe of her spear into the V-shaped granite cleft four feet below the snapped northern rim. The iron shoe bit two inches into the frozen rock seam with a dull, ringing thud.
Without releasing her Bronze reinforcement from the wood, Ilyra angled the upper third of the spear shaft diagonally up across the notched limestone lip of the bridge and slammed her left boot heel down over the steel spearhead socket to lock it against a rock projection. In a single breath, she had transformed her prized White Heron spear into a rigid, bronze-stiffened slanted rail spanning the exact six-foot gap where the northern snow top stone ledge had fallen away.
Combined with the thirty inches of leftover flat stone on the bridge spine, the braced spear shaft provided the missing outer support rail needed for a two-pole litter—two feet outside and below the reach of Arel Fen’s stationary center point.
“Cross on the shaft!” Ilyra shouted, standing unarmed above the locked spearhead with her left boot pinning the socket and her right shoulder angled between Arel’s blade and the outer rail.
