The sun hung low over the western rim of the high dark rock terrace. It cast long, violet shadows across the frozen scree. A thin, bitter wind drove down from the northern notches. It whipped dry white chalk-stone crystals against the oiled canvas of the handcart with the persistent rattle of thrown gravel. It was the twenty-second hour of Day 50. The expedition had hauled their four-wheeled cart three leagues up the grueling gravel grade. That left the shelter of the Second Basalt Dike behind them. The mercurial altimeter in Kezra Venn’s breast pocket read 4,120 paces above datum, and the thin mountain air carried the cold, metal bite of high rock that never thawed even under the heat of midsummer.
Kezra stood at the rear of the handcart, both hands braced against the notched ash brake lever. Meanwhile, Fellis Dain knelt in the loose shale to chock the wooden wheels with wedge-shaped dark rock stones. Her breath rose in steady, frosty plumes from behind her thick wool muffler, her fingers aching inside her fingerless buckskin survey gloves. Beside the tongue of the cart, Joric had already unhitched the draught harness, leading the pack mules toward a shallow recess in the dark rock wall where the animals could shelter their flanks from the biting draft.
