The straw hat settled over Kaelen’s nose with a faint rustle of dried river reed.
Within three breaths, his chest rose and fell in the slow, rhythmic cadence of the True Fallow State. The faint smell of sulfur and mineral steam from the emerald pool below his hammock curled through the weave of his blanket, warmer and sweeter than any hearth in Ashford Town.
Old Barnaby wants to argue tactics and Linnea is wringing her hands like a nervous hen, Kaelen thought, pulling his blanket up to his ears. They think fifty mercenaries is an emergency. To me, fifty mercenaries simply means fifty men who have never experienced the majesty of a well-timed nap behind a defensible granite barrier.
Thirty paces away, near the mouth of the dog-legged cleft, the stone remained cold.
Above the ceiling, on the jagged rim of the trench, Blood-Captain Varga wiped a streak of greasy sweat from his brow. His heavy hands shook against the neck of a pewter liquor flask as he swallowed three gulps of burning sorghum wine.
Around him, thirty guards still stared into the clean, thirty-yard scar that Kaelen had cleaved through solid granite.
“He is asleep down there,” Varga growled, slamming the flask against his iron greaves. “Nobody splits thirty yards of stone without shattering every meridian in his chest. His right arm was dead meat when he dragged that spear-girl into the hole.”
