Up on the northern ridge, holding the narrowed threshold of the central dark rock recess had cost the six leftover defenders every drop of sweat in their coats. Driven back four paces from the halfway stone support prop while Ilyra and Bel were down the mountain, Seyun had spent ten minutes wedged between Hall Mistress Soran’s western guard and Daro Kesh’s eastern corner. Using his twice-charred six-foot ash staff to turn wave after wave of the central ground-sheet off the shelter’s front lip. Meanwhile, Commander Keth Or and Nara Soth backed their corners in bounded three-breath intervals.
When two familiar boots finally scrambled over the southern boulder lip out of the steep avalanche chute and Ilyra and Bel Sar slid back under the granite overhang of the recess, the wind-burned faces inside the shelter lit with immediate, plain relief.
“Mer and his wife and both youngsters are under the three-foot pine timbers of the lower under-road drain, along with the mule and all four sacks of barley,” Bel Sar announced between deep, steaming draws of freezing air as he leaned his battered, hemp-wrapped Ash Reed staff against the southern rock rib. “They’re inside the covered log-way—the upper ring can’t touch a hair on their heads from here to Mina’s stove.”
