Down at the southern shale junction. There, the ridge trail dropped past the third channel trench toward the lower timberline and Mina’s hospice, Bel Sar planted his broad boots wide across the under-road drain lip. Among the eight fighters who had climbed the northern pass tonight, Bel Sar was the only one whose training remained at Middle Bronze. He had never sought the high sect trials or the deadly squeezing of the Jade threshold. For fifteen years he had been the staff keeper of Ash Reed’s lower yard, teaching village boys how to set their heels in wet gravel, how to oil a six-foot ash pole so it wouldn’t split in January frost, and how to carry a grain sack up a mountain path without ruining their lower backs.
When the first two pale blades forced the western and eastern pairs inward toward the center of the slope, the third pale blade didn’t follow them upslope. Instead, fed by the surge of current that Socket #1 had redirected down the southern spoke, the third blade banked low over the shale embankment and drove straight at the escape junction. Aiming to sever the narrow stone under-road drain that linked the ridge battlefield to the valley below and trap all eight defenders against the upper cliff.
