The first flight of bolts spent its force. Then, Sile Rook rose from his knee with the unbending driving force of a high-pressure ram.
Sile held the four-foot oak tall body-shield tight against his chest. He charged down the narrow timber overhead frame passage that connected the engine house to the open quarry yard. The passage was scarcely four feet wide. It was flanked by heavy pine wooden props posts and iron haulage cables.
“Forward!” Sile bellowed, his voice shaking the frost from the rafters.
Behind the moving wall of heart-oak, Tomas, Nessa, Mara, and the six young splitters moved in tight formation, their boots pounding against the frozen deck boards. Tomas carried the seventy-five-pound slate pack frame with easy, grounded poise, his body angled to shield Jem Vance from any flanking fire.
Two mercenary guards armed with eight-foot iron-pointed boarding pikes stepped into the doorway to block the passage. “Halt!” the lead guard yelled, leveling his pike point at Sile’s chest.
Sile didn’t halt. He didn’t slow down. He lowered his balance point. He tucked his head behind the iron boss of the tall body-shield. Then he hit the mercenary pike points at a dead run.
CRUNCH!
The ash-wood pike shafts shattered against the iron rim of Sile’s shield, exploding into white splinters. The massive striking force of Sile’s two-hundred-and-forty-pound charge slammed the two guards backward through the doorway, throwing them sprawling across the snow-covered gravel apron of the open yard.
