Dropping from the limestone cleft needed the same deliberate, unrushed discipline that had brought them up the northern ridge at dawn. Yseld Arken led the way along the reverse slope. That kept five feet below the sharp shale skyline where the wind whistled through the stunted mountain larches. The grey shale shelves here were masked by winter-stunted barberry and dense cushions of creeping juniper whose needles gave off a sharp, turpentine tang whenever a boot brushed their branches.
Davren Venn moved second in line, his movements measured and calm. He planted his ash walking stick on the uphill side at every switchback to take the jar off his braced left knee, pausing whenever the papery rattle in his chest threatened to become a heard wheeze. Behind him, Fellis Dain carried the canvas map satchel pressed firmly against his ribs with his sound right hand, his braced left forearm resting inside the oiled wool sling Paxa had fashioned for him in Alderfast. Kezra brought up the rear, her eyes constantly scanning the rock folds above and below them.
Two hundred paces south of Stonewake Citadel’s massive rubble ramp, the slope dropped into a dead ground depression. A natural hollow between two converging limestone folds that shielded them fully from the arrow-slits and giant crossbow embrasures of the castle’s southern gate tower. Here, half-buried under a century of windblown mountain grit and thorny scrub, lay the roofless ruins of the old survey-corps boundary house.
