Climbing the upright chimney crack without a pack was an entirely different matter than hauling a three-hundred-pound mule. Kezra tied the light backup line around her waist, braced her boots against the opposing dark grey rock ribs. Then she walked her back up the joint in two minutes of sharp, rhythmic hard effort. Yseld’s hand caught her wrist and hauled her out onto the upper ledge. Then, Kezra rolled onto the carpet of dry juniper needles. Her lungs burned in the frosty subalpine air.
The ledge at the top of the chimney was barely four paces wide, tucked into a high tiered arena of dark crags where mountain junipers grew in dense, twisted cushions against the rock. Kezra looked down over the lip. She saw the blind bend of the lower trail thirty feet below.
The scene below was an active military hornets’ nest. Four Cairn Host tunnel diggers in iron helmets and leather aprons had reached the blind bend, their weapons slung as they clustered around the jammed deadfall log. Two of them were hammering iron wedges beneath Kezra’s crushed gear-pack, trying to pry the ruined ash frame and bent survey tripods out from behind the timber so they could reset the swinging weight chains. Their harsh, angry curses rose through the damp air, mingling with the scrape of crowbars against stone.
