Dropping from the watching crest on the afternoon of Day One Hundred and Thirty-Two, Kezra Venn led her small party onto the narrow, rock-cut ledges of the upkeep bypass above Windpit.
The trail was an ancient military gallery carved into the near-upright western face of the Spine by historical survey crews. To their left, the polished gray granite cliff rose three hundred feet like a blank wall. To their right, the ledge ended at a sheer drop of twelve hundred feet into the shadow-filled deep gap of the upper Windpit cirque. A rusted iron cable, strung between forged eyebolts driven into the cliff every twenty paces, provided a handhold against the updrafts that buffeted the rock face.
Kezra walked with her field route book open in her left hand. Her brass-shod measured cord looped over her shoulder, and Davren’s horn-handled knife ready in its belt sheath. Every thirty or forty paces. There, the trail passed a natural drainage cleft or an ancient distance mark cut into the wall, she stopped, dropped her weighted drop-line. Then she recorded the physical map points in her log.
Paxa followed three paces behind. Her eyes watched the placement of Kezra’s boots on the slick, frost-polished rock.
