Dusk arrived over the upper shelter bench not with a gentle fading of light, but with the sudden, freezing drop in heat that always signaled the onset of high mountain darkness. The shadows of the western crags lengthened across the limestone terrace. It reached like jagged purple fingers toward the timber sorting floor.
Down in the lower ravine. There, the switchbacks wound through the dark pine canopy, the clatter of iron-shod boots on shale echoed up the rock.
Yseld Arken, kneeling on the narrow limestone overhang twenty feet above the eastern entrance gully, held up her right hand with three fingers extended, then tapped her thumb against her palm.
Four scouts. Not dismounted cavalry troopers stumbling through the brush. But seasoned vanguard skirmishers of the Cairn Host. Lightly armored in boiled-leather cuirasses and iron skull-caps. It carried heavy steel-bowed siege crossbows with cocking-cranks hooked to their belts. Having finally bypassed the wedged deadfall log at the blind bend by hacking through Kezra’s canvas pack-frame, they had climbed the upper switchbacks with ruthless, hungry speed. They were fifty paces below the gully narrows, their boots crunching on the frost-hardened scree as they angled toward the shelter terrace.
On the working yard, the team moved without shouting. Every motion had been drilled and settled during the quiet hours of the afternoon.
