The grease-lamp in the corner of the harness shed burned with a sputtering yellow tongue of flame. It smelled of sheep fat and dry straw.
On the packed-dirt floor between two grain bins, twenty-eight pounds of hemp rope, forged iron pitons, and steel boundary chisels lay arranged in three neat rows. In a lowland army, an injured soldier’s gear was loaded onto a baggage wain or left behind in a royal depot. On a four-person mountain expedition with one pack mule and sixty miles of upright dark rock ahead, iron didn’t vanish into thin air. Every pound lifted from Fellis Dain’s slung shoulder had to settle into another spine, another pair of knees, or the wooden ribs of the pack-saddle.
Kezra knelt beside her ash-wood pack frame, her fingers working through the stiff rawhide lashing cords.
Across from her, Paxa was weighing the mule’s wicker panniers using an iron steelyard hung from a ceiling beam. The beam groaned softly as Paxa hooked the rawhide bale of the left basket onto the forged hook. It slid the brass poise along the notched arm until the beam floated level.
“Thirty-four pounds on the left,” Paxa said, squinting at the brass notches in the dim light. “That’s the dried bean sack, the salt-pork tin, and two seasoned ash splint-boards. On the right, we have the backup cook-pot, the animal fat jars, and forty paces of light three-ply cord, which comes to twenty-six pounds.”
