Three hours of unrelenting alpine gale had transformed the upright throat of Mount Sunder into a screaming organ pipe. At the intermediate landing of Tier Two, ninety feet below the storm-swept Upper Arch, the limestone walls shook with a nonstop, low-hum that buzzed directly through the soles of Tomas Reed’s cart driver boots.
The intermediate platform was a narrow, ice-slicked shelf of chert barely six feet wide, wedged between the upright drop of the Upper Chimney and the twelve-degree dogleg that plunged into the deep Cauldron Vault. Tomas stood anchored to an iron piton driven into the back wall, his pack frame resting on the gravel beside him.
Over his nose and mouth he wore a triple-layered breathing mask fashioned from boiled raw, unwhitened linen, soaked in cold cider vinegar and tied behind his ears with waxed leather thongs. The acidic tang of the vinegar burned his nostrils. But it stopped the stray bitter-salt vapors that curled up from the depths like greasy yellow steam. His left forearm throbbed within its tight calfskin brace. The cold damp of the underground shaft had seeped through the wool of his tunic. That made the jagged scar tissue ache with a dull, marrow-deep grind. He bent his left hand. Each time, the ring and little fingers responded with that familiar thirty-five percent lag. Their tendons dragged through stiffened scar tissue.
