Throughout Day One Hundred and Thirty-Five, Kezra Venn led her party down the long, dropping spine that separated the subalpine larch forests from the timberline ridges directly overlooking Stonewake Citadel.
The weather remained clear, dry, and cold. The forty-knot gale that had tested their signaling frames on Windpit had settled into a steady mountain draft from the north. They carried the scent of pine pitch and woodsmoke up from the lower valleys. Kezra paced every yard of the trail with her route book open, her measuring cord trailing behind her, overwriting the twelve-day-old ascent timestamps for the retired clearing of Circuit Thirty-Nine with fresh, dark ink.
By late afternoon, the path climbed onto a prominent, flat-topped granite crag that jutted out from the eastern flank of the mountain like a natural castle wall: Relay Station Three.
The crag was perched eight hundred feet directly above the northern approach road to Stonewake Citadel.
From this high, rocky shelf, the entire theater of the upcoming operation was laid out before them with breathtaking clarity. To the south, nestled into the rocky throat of the mountain pass, stood the dark, frowning towers and massive stone curtain walls of Stonewake Citadel. It was surrounded by its dry moats and outer barbicans. To the south-west, two miles beyond the castle, the green, terraced bowl of the Alderfast basin lay sheltered in its mountain cup, with the silver thread of its central creek glinting in the late sun.
