The falling log was not a rough-cut cedar pole meant to frighten goats off an orchard wall. It was a six-foot section of seasoned green iron-bark pine, eighteen inches thick, buttressed at both ends with heavy iron banding and loaded with two hundred pounds of scrap fire melted rock waste spiked into its core. Suspended by twin forged-iron chains from an anchor bolt driven into the overhanging roof thirty feet above the trail, it operated not as a simple drop-weight. But as a swinging weight battering ram designed to sweep the sixteen-inch shelf clear of everything standing on it.
The sentry’s axe cut the trigger thick ship rope. Then, the log dropped five upright feet in free fall before the iron chains snapped taut with a screech of links that showered rust and rock flakes down the cliff face. Constrained by the chains, the massive timber swung inward in a murderous, speeding up arc, aimed to strike the narrow ledge four feet past the blind bend at the exact height of a climbing man’s chest.
Fellis Dain was halfway around the rock corner on his hands and knees. Just then, the air above him split with the roar of dropping timber.
