The argument flared across the pine map table with the sudden, sharp crackle of pine kindling thrown onto red coals.
Davren Venn planted the metal ring of his ash stick firmly into the floor. His face was flushed and his brow furrowing as Kezra’s dividers hovered over the dashed red slanted line that branched off the main mule trail below the high snow saddle. The line cut sharply across three tightly packed contour intervals. It was marked in Davren’s boldest hand: East Gully Shortcut — Saves Half a Day.
“It’s a walkable talus chute, Kezra!” Davren argued, his voice rising in passionate defense of his scouting notes. “I studied it from the lower ridge for three hours through my spyglass. The gully is eighty paces wide, filled with coarse shale scree. He rose at an even thirty-five degrees. If you take the old royal mule trail, you have to slog through seven miles of switchbacks around the western stone support prop. If you climb the East Gully, you bypass the stone support prop entirely and reach the snow saddle by noon!”
“Have you ever walked it, Davren?” Kezra asked, her voice dangerously quiet.
“I didn’t have time before the blizzard—”
