The third watch settled over the northern ridge in a bitter dark before false dawn. Then, the heat on the exposed dark rock shelves dropped another ten degrees, freezing the blood-spattered slush in the eastern trough into dark red glass. Inside the central granite recess, the eight defenders had used the brief shift between watches to settle their wounded and verify their leftover tools. Vaska Ren sat against the rear wall with his three-fingered left hand bound tightly in a linen sling against his chest. Daro Kesh stood wedged into the eastern corner stone support prop with two eighteen-inch pine slats strapped along his torn right thigh and his three-times-chipped short sword resting across the waist-high stone shelf. Commander Keth Or stood beside Daro’s left shoulder with a fresh rawhide loop knotted around his three leftover right fingers. Hall Mistress Soran and Nara Soth held the western slot. And Ilyra and Bel Sar guarded the southern threshold.
Thirty paces upslope, beneath the eighty-foot white tear in the winter clouds, the yard-wide bronze drum of the lower returning hub altered its spinning rhythm with a deep, grinding clunk of internal gears. For two full watches, Heaven’s Measure had tried to classify and crush the eight fighters within the thirty-pace radius of the upper basin. First by herding their mutual rescues toward a single center, and then by doubling the eastern returning plane when Vaska’s iron wedge split the near junction box.
