The quarry had two entrances and no good excuse for the firing shelf above either.
Iven crouched beside Blue Fold’s watch leader, looking across the pale cutting ground. Old extraction steps rose through the hillside in shallow terraces. At the bottom stood a long shed, two carts and a six-meter cutting crawler with its toothed arm resting on a block of discarded stone.
The crawler’s boiler smoked.
“They’ve heard we’re coming,” Vorla said.
“Or they mean to go somewhere.”
“Same problem.”
Her local watch had come by the upper path before dawn. Kesh accompanied them. Tavin stayed with the freight and the three living prisoners at Blue Fold; Sera had the injured men and a local care worker. Neri was checking the loaded beds against the next road’s limits, work that would still matter when the shooting stopped.
Iven had eaten, slept and chosen his set before leaving the halt: boiler jacket, plate, turbine, shear cutter and seal skin.
