The lower slopes above Alderfast were steep, narrow, and choked with frost-fractured pale limestone scree.
By mid-morning on Day 118, the four travelers had climbed eight hundred paces above the valley floor. Down below them, the stone cottages of Alderfast looked like gray river pebbles scattered across a green apron of winter rye. Meanwhile, the huge thirty-foot castle wall of the Northern Berm stood like a clean, dark bar across the military road, throwing a long three-sided shadow over the canyon entrance.
Yseld Arken led the file. She set an unrushed, rhythmic pace with her hooked hickory climbing staff. Her boots found the firmest treads of compacted sheep-turf and outcropping limestone ribs. She avoided the loose gravel chutes that slid underfoot.
Directly behind her walked Kezra Venn, her shoulders working under the straps of her external pack frame. Trailing from a brass swivel-ring at the small of Kezra’s back was a tuned fifty-pace measuring cord. Braided horsehair soaked in pine resin and animal fat to prevent it from absorbing moisture and stretching in the frost. Fifty paces behind her, at the tail of the file, miner Voss held the free end of the line lightly in his left hand, counting the passage of the red lead knots against the index finger of his heavy wool mitten.
