Leaving Voss at the central small roof-dome at first light on Day 128, Kezra, Yseld, and Paxa stepped off Empty Choir’s northern rim onto the ancient freight road. The morning was clear and bitter, the sky above the mountain shoulder a pale, cold turquoise that promised steady weather. Behind them, Voss waved once from the shaft collar before picking up his sledge to clear the upper check trenches, his breath pluming in the frosty dawn.
Unlike the precipitous upkeep cut above Windpit. It had needed rope belays, ice axes, and endless chimney scrambles, this northern descent had been engineered by the old survey corps as a permanent military and supply artery connecting Station IV to the neutral customs valleys. It began at the base of the plateau’s three cut bedrock steps. It swung wide in a graded shelf six paces across, supported on the downhill side by massive dry-stacked granite retaining walls.
Over the first two miles, the road cut through bare alpine scree and frost-shattered bedrock. It dropped at a gentle, steady six-percent grade designed for heavily laden mule trains and supply wagons. Every hundred paces, stone-paved water ditches crossed the roadbed diagonally, channeling meltwater safely away from the outer edge into natural rock gullies.
