Fellis crouched beside the dressed dark rock frame of the check hatch. His braced left forearm was held fully still within its boiled-leather casing, nestled securely against the front of his coat. With his uninjured right hand, he held the small brass thumb-lamp close to the upper left corner of the heavy iron door. There, two massive, hand-forged hinges connected the plate to the stonework.
“Standard frontier corps building,” Fellis explained, his voice low, deliberate, and entirely devoid of panic. “Pioneer smiths never used sealed butt hinges on outside mountain installations. Sleet freezes in closed hinge pockets and splits the iron. They hung the door on two heavy pintle-and-gudgeon sleeves, set over upright iron pins anchored into the dark rock. And to keep the door from being lifted off its pins by levers during an assault, they drove a narrowed iron cotter pin through the top of each hinge bolt.”
Kezra knelt beside him, studying the upper hinge in the yellow beam of light.
Beneath the flaky crust of red rust, the anatomy of the hinge was plainly visible. An iron pin, two inches thick, rose from a heavy bracket anchored into the dark rock top door beam. The circular sleeve of the door strap sat over the pin, and protruding from the top of the pin was the flared, box-shaped head of an iron cotter wedge, hammered flat against the sleeve a hundred years ago.
