The three cut padlocks lay scattered across the gravel in pieces of jagged, cold steel. Their internal brass tumblers shone in the yellow lantern light like spilled teeth. The heavy transverse iron locking bar had been forced through its brackets, resting six inches clear of the center latch. But the two massive wrought-iron leaves of the drop-gate remained shut, bonded to their granite frame by sixteen winters of rusted grease and stone dust.
Tomas Reed stepped up to the center seam of the gate. He set down his ash pack-frame on a dry boulder. He took his five-foot iron pinch-bar from the frame’s tool loops. It slid the narrowed chisel-end into the narrow gap between the two center uprights.
Beside him, Sile Rook planted the iron-bound corner of his oak tall body-shield into the ballast to serve as a pivot point. Sile wedged his own six-foot steel crowbar two feet above Tomas’s bar. It set his shoulder against the iron.
“Take the lower bite, Tomas,” Sile said, his breath whistling through his teeth in the freezing air. “On three. Don’t jerk the steel. Lean your dead weight into the lever.”
Mara Flint stepped to the left leaf of the gate. Her calloused hands gripped two of the upright charcoal-iron bars. Her broad shoulders bunched beneath her leather coat, her iron-spurred boots digging into the crushed gravel.
