By the afternoon of Day 149, the escape column had dropped into the middle timberline. There, the bare limestone benches of the high pass gave way to dense stands of stunted subalpine larch and mountain fir.
The road here followed a series of steep, twisting switchbacks cut into the flank of the ridge, dropping twelve hundred upright feet across three miles of rough, cobblestone cart track. On these dropping grades, gravity was no longer an ally. It became an unrelenting enemy that pushed heavily loaded handcarts against the haulers’ heels and forced every traveler to brake their descent with every forward step.
For Davren Venn, the downhill march was an ordeal of grinding clockwork friction.
To protect his permanently crushed left knee from the crushing downward shear that occurred whenever his boot landed on a dropping flat stone slab, Paxa Sel had established a strict rotation. On the level terraces and gentle ascents, Davren walked beside the carts to keep his blood circulating and prevent the damaged joint from stiffening into immobility. On the steep switchbacks, he rode on the tailboard of the miners’ baggage wagon, resting his braced leg horizontally across a folded wool sack.
During the third switchback halt on a windy stone shelf, Davren slid down from the tailboard. His face pale and was tight with pain. His left boot touched the gravel. Then, a reflex wince pulled the corner of his mouth sideways, his fingers clamping hard around his ash walking stick.
