Up on the narrow limestone overhang twenty feet above the eastern entrance gully, Yseld Arken heard Kezra’s command to abort. She didn’t look down at the working yard. She didn’t ask why the blue light had died or why the platform had not dropped.
A guard post veteran knew that when a tactical plan stalled, questions were useless. Only time mattered.
Below her in the narrow gully, the four Cairn Host scouts were scrambling over the final rock step, barely thirty paces from the terrace lip. The lead scout—a wiry corporal with a scarred chin and a notched crossbow—had his weapon cocked and leveled toward the sorting floor.
Yseld stepped out into the open twilight on the sheer edge of the overhang.
She didn’t draw her bow. She didn’t throw her spear. She planted the chiselled steel toe of her heavy iron pry-bar beneath the bedding seam of the three-hundred-pound limestone boulder, gripped the six-foot lever bar with both hands. Then she threw her weight forward.
With a harsh, grinding screech of against stone, the massive boulder moved three inches forward, tilting over the cliff edge until its rough lower edge hovered directly above the narrow throat of the gully. A shower of loose shale and sharp rock splinters rained down the chute. It rattled like grape-shot across the iron helmets of the climbing soldiers.
