The ancient irrigation channel had been chiseled out of the limestone bench more than a century earlier, back when Alderfast’s growers still diverted high snowmelt streams from the Spine to flood their terraced barley plots. Over decades of shifting gravel and winter freezes, the channel had dried up, its stone-lined bed choking with dead thistle stalks, dry nettles, and drifted pine needles. But its four-foot depth remained intact behind the upper retaining wall.
Yseld Arken dropped into the trench without a sound, landing on the balls of her feet and right away sinking into a low, forward crouch. She looked back over her shoulder, her fingers signaling hold low and follow the lead as Kezra slipped over the stonework rim behind her. Fellis came third, tucking his braced left arm securely inside his wool vest. Meanwhile, his right hand kept his four-shape signal board flat against his thigh. Behind them followed two basin growers. It was young quarrymen named Tomic and Vane, each carrying a canvas sack of fist-sized river cobbles and a pair of rawhide throwing slings.
Moving through the dry trough was a lesson in mountain shape. The channel ran parallel to the terrace slope, shielded from the sight-line of the upper path by five feet of dry-stone retaining wall. Above them, through the gaps between the capping stones, Kezra could hear the harsh, panting breath of the Host scouts, the rattle of loose shale under their iron-rimmed boots. The sharp twang of a recurve bow snapping from…
