The road down into the gorge of Sunder-Foot was paved with crushed granite tailings that ground beneath the wagon tires like broken glass. The settlement had no defensive walls, no welcoming market square, and no church steeple. It was built like an open-air prison camp whose outer edge was defined by the sheer, unscalable cliffs of Mount Sunder and three heavily guarded checkpoint gates.
Rows of long, low barracks built from dry-stacked quarry rubble and roofed with tarred canvas stretched across the muddy valley floor. The alleys between them were deep in black slush, churned by the hooves of heavy cart horses and the boots of hundreds of laborers. Everywhere there was stone. Blocks of dressed granite awaiting transit, piles of rejected spalls, heaps of gray tailings. The everywhere, choking white dust that coated every windowpane, every horse’s mane. The shoulders of every man, woman, and child who walked the lanes.
Tomas steered the wagon toward the South Gatehouse—a massive two-story blockhouse of dark granite spanning the roadway. A heavy pine boom-gate, heavy with iron spikes and hung with lead weights, blocked the thoroughfare.
Three men stood beneath the gatehouse roof edges. They wore thick sheepskin coats dyed a dull slate-gray, the uniform of the Trade group Guards. Iron badges stamped with the crossed chisels of Mount Sunder were pinned to their chests, and heavy steel crossbows rested across their forearms, their quarrel-grooves loaded with short, thick iron-tipped bolts.
