The brown pack mule didn’t trot neatly down the center of the three-foot hall Ilyra had opened along the inner wall.
Blinded by swirling limestone dust and scared by the thunder of shale crashing onto Bel Sar’s staff two yards behind its rump, four hundred pounds of hill-bred muscle and two hundred and forty pounds of winter barley lunged forward in a wild, crabwise scramble that angled dangerously toward the outer lip of the tilted shelf.
Mer didn’t let go of the halter rope, because if the animal’s left front hoof went over the crumbling outer rim, the weight of the grain sacks would drag the mule—and the family’s winter food—straight down into the two-hundred-foot gorge. Mer ran half-crouched at the animal’s right shoulder. He hauled inward on the hemp lead with all his weight to keep the mule’s head away from the cliff edge.
Seyun was rising from his knee right beside the mule’s left flank. Just then, the animal bolted before he had finished clearing the loose tail of the rear cinch strap.
Time seemed to compress into the narrow, cold rhythm between two beats of his heart.
Above them, Daro Kesh’s short Jade sword was locked in a screaming bind with the main arc of the pale blade, blue-white sparks raining down across the granite boulder as Daro’s boots slid another inch toward the edge. Ahead at the trailhead neck, Ilyra’s rawhide-bound spear was already straining to hold the outer wind-shear off the exit gap. Behind them…
