The western curtain walk of Stonewake Citadel was windswept, exposed, and freezing cold. The wind howling down from the northern crags drove fine, needle-like flurries of rime against the dark hard speckled granite castle walls, coating the iron fire-baskets in white crust. Below the forty-foot wall, the mountain fell away into the steep, boulder-choked gully that separated the citadel bench from the western scree slopes.
Kezra Venn stood on the flat stone slab sentry path, her sounding rod planted firmly between two coping stones. Meanwhile, Fellis Dain unrolled his forty-pace knotted hemp measuring line with his good right hand. Master Ulvan Dret knelt beside a wooden sentry bench twenty paces behind them, his brass-bound folio open. His fingers shivered inside his fingerless wool mittens as he tried to keep his ink from freezing in the horn.
Marshal Krail and Captain Hest stood by the corner turret. Their wool cloaks wrapped was tight against the blast, watching every movement of Kezra’s check.
“Fellis,” Kezra called out. She kept her good right ear to the lee side of the low roof wall to catch his words. “Give me the station offset from the northwestern corner stone base.”
Fellis leaned over the stone crenellation, sighting down the brass line-weight line that dangled forty feet into the gully below. “The line weight is hanging true, Kezra! The dressed granite curb of the ancient survey-corps shelf runs straight as a die along the bedrock lip, three paces outside the base of the curtain wall!”
