The gravel of the White Creek bed was not gray like the river-bed silt of Low Bellwether. It was a pale, blinding white, formed from tumbled limestone cobbles that clattered like dry knuckles under the iron rims of their boots.
For eight miles, the road followed the winding trench of the watercourse. Once, according to the faded ink on Nessa’s linen map, this channel had carried eighty thousand gallons a minute of ice-slow karst melt down to the wheat farms of the lower plateau. Now, weeds grew between the dry rocks. Stiff thistle, yellow spurge, and dwarf dock whose taproots bored down into the cracks searching for moisture that was no longer there.
Tomas paused on a shelf of hard caliche to reset his right shoulder strap. The hemp had worked half an inch toward his neck. There, the friction threatened to chafe raw through his woolen tunic. He pulled his leather mitt tight, wedged his boot against an exposed ledge of flint. Then he hauled the strap back into its notch. The seventy-eight pounds settled back onto his pelvis with a solid, reassuring thud. He took three deep breaths. It filled his lungs with air that was growing noticeably colder and thinner with every mile of ascent. His left wrist, locked in its stiff calfskin sheath, gave a quiet creak as he adjusted his grip upon his ash walking stave.
