Fellis Dain didn’t believe in heroic perseverance.
“A fool with a broken arm tells himself he can still haul fifty pounds if he grits his teeth,” Fellis said. He sat on the approved dark rock kerb of the stone sorting yard. He held an eight-pace length of braided hemp cord across his knees with his left hand. “He pulls until the muscle rips off the bone, drops the line, and kills the person hanging on the other end. That isn’t bravery. It’s vanity dressed up as devotion.”
Kezra sat cross-legged on the clean dark rock flags two paces away, her own coil of half-inch mountain hemp laid out between her knees. Beside them, the three anchor notches she had carved yesterday afternoon caught the pale, low-angled sunlight of the late afternoon.
“Paxa said the horsehair stitches are holding,” Kezra said.
“Paxa’s thread is holding my skin together,” Fellis snapped back. He tapped the linen sling over his collarbone with his left knuckle. “The skin isn’t what takes the shock when a mule slips off an eight-inch ledge. The shoulder muscle takes the shock. And right now, my shoulder muscle feels like an angry blacksmith took a red-hot horseshoe to it. If I try to arrest a fall with this right shoulder tomorrow, the arm will come out of the socket before the knot even bites.”
