The wind on the chalk ridge carried none of the valley’s dampness. It was dry, cold, and sharp with powdered limestone that stung the eyelids like crushed glass.
Nessa Vale knelt on a flat shelf of pale limestone rock three hundred feet above the bitter salt basin. Her knees were protected by thick pads of cured oxhide lashed to her trousers with rawhide thongs. Before her, the heavy brass tripod of the long-distance brass surveying scope stood firmly planted, its iron-shod tips driven into natural fissures in the limestone shelf to prevent any shaking from the steppe wind.
Tomas Reed stood twenty paces to her left, holding the sighted leveling rod. A sixteen-foot staff of seasoned white ash, painted in alternating six-inch bands of vermilion and bone white, fitted with brass sliding targets and a plumb-bob on a silken cord.
Beside Tomas stood Sile Rook, his back turned against the eastern glare, his blackened oak tall body-shield resting against his thigh, his iron-wood hooked pruning blade planted firmly in the gravel. Sile was not watching the instruments. His eyes were fixed on the dusty ribbon of the western road where the riders of the Grand Merchant Trade group had vanished the evening before.
