The gray tongue of the Sunder Glacier didn’t melt cleanly. It groaned, cracked along ancient shear planes, and sloughed tons of wet gravel into the limestone gorge below Low Sunder. In midwinter, a sudden dry south wind—what the valley herders called the Corpse Breath—had driven heat levels thirty degrees higher for three days before freezing solid again under a sky the color of cold lead.
Tomas Reed adjusted the strap of his pack frame. He felt the iron ring bite against his left collarbone. The leather was stiff from frost, smelling of stale sheep fat and woodsmoke. His right forearm throbbed with a dull, familiar ache where the pale gristle of his old tendon jagged cut pulled taut beneath his wool sleeve. In the mountain air, the scar tissue turned rigid as ungreased harness leather. That forced him to keep his thumb tucked against his palm to prevent the fingers from curling inward against his will.
Beside him on the moraine rim, an old wagon driver named Corin spat dark tobacco onto the crust.
“He came out of the blue ice on Tuesday,” Corin said. He wiped his nose on the greasy cuff of his sheepskin coat. “Twenty feet above the gravel bed. The gravel gave way under the thaw, and out popped his boot. If the sun had stayed out another six hours, he would have rolled straight into the river wash and gone to the lake. But the wind snapped north at sunset. Froze him right back into…
