The frost-chimney ten paces west of the rock recess didn’t look like a road meant for human beings, let alone a pack mule. It was an upright fracture in the dark grey rock cliff, three feet wide at the mouth, rising thirty upright feet through the rock before terminating at a shadowed notch of stunted mountain juniper. The inside was slick with slow leak from an upper snowmelt lens. The rock walls were rough, tooth-edged, and narrow enough to scrape the wool from a coat sleeve.
Yet with the main shelf blocked by the wedged deadfall log and the Host scouts climbing the switchbacks below, this cleft was their only route off the middle cliff.
The four companions reorganized their duties with the brisk, unsentimental smooth speed of people who knew that debating an emergency only guaranteed disaster. In the old arrangement, Fellis had climbed first to set the anchors, his light frame and extraordinary agility making him the natural lead rigger. Kezra had managed the transit frame and the pacing ledger. Meanwhile, Yseld had held the heavy belay line and Paxa had tended the pack animal.
That order was dead now. The log had crushed the left hand of their rigger, and gravity didn’t grant exemptions for broken bones.
