Chapter 417: The Ridge They Held

Ren followed the narrower branch to the end of the bank.

Beyond it, fast, shallow water ran through a steep cut with no ledge. The channel disappeared around the projecting ridge. He could not see where it went.

He returned to the others. Across the basin, the broad course passed beneath the first wall. The shelf beside it offered a route for Anvil, and the water was deep enough for Bolt.

Ren intended to keep going inland. He would take the fort.

They followed the basin’s rim until a low outcrop hid them from the wall. Above the water opening, the climbing shelf widened at a turn before reaching an upper landing. Outlets faced down that approach. Dust stirred beneath them with each release.

Two workers carried a section of grown stone along the terrace above. A chain joined their cuffs. It caught on the parapet, pulling the rear worker short. An armed overseer jabbed his spear toward the load until they lifted it again.

Ren watched them carry it through a doorway in the rear wall. The entrance lay well to one side of the outlets.

Bolt went beneath the water arch and returned. Riptide followed the current farther before coming back. Through the bond, Ren received their willingness to proceed, but no picture of what lay beyond their reach.

He pointed to the landing visible through the arch, below the wide turn.

"You two take that. Keep the water route open."

Anvil faced the shelf.

"I’ll go first. Hold the wide turn when I’m clear. If I can’t come back, take them out."

He checked the cased chamber beside the carrier, then Balm’s tray. Both fastenings remained clear of Anvil’s legs. Its step was still short on the injured side.

Ren took his spear and left the outcrop.

— • —

A shout came from above as he reached the shelf.

The fighter beside the nearest outlet bent toward a stone lever. Below him, Anvil was approaching the exposed turn.

Ren raised a hand to stop the crab.

The fighter had bare masonry behind him. The workers’ doorway was clear of the line. Ren prepared Farcast at the lower tested setting and completed the transfer as his hand opened.

The spear struck through the man’s chest. He fell backward beside the fixture, and the head caught between two stones. His hand dropped away from the lever.

He waved Anvil on and climbed without the weapon.

Two guards met him at the landing. The first thrust down with a short spear. Ren caught it at an angle on his forearm guard, feeling the impact through his already sore arm, and stepped inside. Heavenpiercer drove beneath the raised weapon arm. The guard fell across the landing.

The second swept a hooked pole toward Ren’s ankle.

Ren lifted his foot before the hook caught, turned with the passing shaft, and stepped close. His hips followed his shoulders. He drove the man against the parapet, then struck the haft aside and moved toward his spear.

The pole scraped stone behind him.

Ren let go of the spear before the next thrust reached his back. He turned, caught the shaft against his guard and forced it downward. The man pulled hard, trying to free it.

Ren went with the pull, then drove him toward the shelf.

The guard stumbled onto the descent. Anvil had reached the turn below. A claw caught the man across the chest and dragged him down against the inner wall. The claw closed, and he went limp. His pole fell from his hands.

Ren returned to the outlet fixture.

He supported the dead fighter clear of the shaft and eased the spear back along its entry line. The head came free. He lowered the body beside the fixture.

Across the terrace, a broad-chested man stepped onto a band of pale fitted slabs. Ren had lost the chance to reach that ground before him.

The man carried a long stone spear. Openings lay beneath his ribs and along his flanks. Narrow slits crossed the fitted band at his feet.

Ren asked privately about him.

[ATTAINMENT: OUTER MANTLE.]

[DANGER TO HOST: SEVERE.]

The commander advanced.

Ren met his first thrust at the edge of the band. The slab beneath Ren’s lead foot lifted. Air struck upward from a slit beside his boot, catching his ribs, and the commander drove his point toward the opening beneath Ren’s chin.

Ren let his rear foot move with the tilt.

The point passed his neck and scraped along his guard. He turned out of its line, landed on the adjoining stone and stepped clear of the band before the next slit opened.

His side hurt when he drew breath.

The commander followed as far as the fitted stone extended. Ren thrust toward his shoulder. The man moved behind the low parapet and laid a hand against it.

Ren’s point struck the edge. Through the contact, he felt the stone resist; the spear glanced aside. He drew it back before the commander’s weapon came over the top.

A shout rose from below.

At the turn, Anvil held the descent. Another pole fighter was trying to draw it away from the inner wall. The crab shifted without following him.

Ren moved along the terrace edge.

The nearest fitted slab rocked as he approached. Where it lifted, a pale rib showed beneath it, joining that section to the next. The slits ran along the same band toward the parapet.

The commander kept his feet on it.

Ren drove three thrusts at his upper body, forcing the spear across to meet each one. On the third, he stepped toward the exposed edge and lowered himself beside the joint, keeping his shaft between them.

His free hand reached the rib.

The grown stone resisted his Earth. The commander was holding the connection from the other side. Ren pressed harder, his shoulder against the edge, while the man brought his spear down against Ren’s shaft.

Ren turned the blow aside and drove his working into the short join.

The rib broke.

The lifted slab settled under the commander’s foot. Air escaped from its slit without the directed blow Ren had felt before.

The commander turned toward the intact band.

Ren rose across his path.

Their spears met. A burst struck Ren high on the right, and another caught him lower while the first was still driving. He had expected the overlap. He let his first step carry him across the commander’s approach, then widened his stance against the second.

His ribs tightened with the impact. He kept the weapon engaged.

The commander tried to turn around him toward the live slabs. Ren moved with the shaft, forced it outward and drove him back onto the disconnected stretch.

The man’s body still had power. His next release swept grit across the terrace and pushed Ren’s heel toward the edge.

Ren gave the heel room to move. Once his boots were beneath him, he drove forward through the crossed weapons. The commander’s arm bent under the pressure.

He tried to wrench his spear free and step past.

Ren followed the turn. The stone point passed outside his shoulder; a gap opened beside the commander’s chest plate.

Ren shortened his grip and thrust through it.

The commander struck the paving on one knee. Ren withdrew before he fell. Air hissed from the flank openings as the spear rolled from his hands.

Ren took a breath that hurt and turned toward the shelf.

Anvil had stayed at the wide turn. The pole fighter above it jabbed toward the recovering rear leg, trying to make the crab turn away from the wall.

Anvil stepped inward. The point scraped along a plate, and its claw closed on the shaft.

The man braced to pull.

Anvil changed its angle and dragged him down onto the shelf. Its other claw caught his upper body. He struggled once, then went still.

The crab released him without leaving its position. Its injured leg remained close beneath the shell.

Two defenders were lifting a slab on a ledge overlooking the lower landing.

Ren moved until he could see thick ridge rock behind them. The climbing shelf lay well to the left. Below, Bolt and Riptide were inside the water arch, clear of the ledge.

Close Sever passed through both defenders and scored the backing rock.

The slab dropped onto their own ledge. One edge broke, scattering chips into the channel.

Ren crossed to a gap in the parapet.

Through it he could see the lower landing and the raised sluice inside the arch. A stone catch held the gate above the water. Its keeper stood on a submerged step beside the release bar. He reached for it.

Riptide turned beneath his feet.

The current took one leg out from under him before his hand reached the bar. He fell against the bank. Bolt’s jet struck his exposed neck, and he slid into the channel.

A second defender stepped off the landing into the shallows to thrust at Bolt.

Riptide pulled at his submerged footing. The man dropped to one knee, still trying to reach the jetmaw. Bolt turned below his spear and struck from the other side. The jet drove his head against the landing’s stone edge.

He fell into the water beside the keeper.

The gate remained raised.

Beyond the terrace, three fighters ran toward the farther ridge. Ren watched until the turn hid them, then looked back down the shelf.

Anvil was holding its position. Bolt circled beneath the landing, and Riptide remained beside the gate.

Ren called them together.

— • —

Some workers were still crouched behind their loads. Two had freed a snagged chain together and reached the rear doorway. A woman stood just inside it, watching Ren’s hands.

He found a ring of flat stone keys on the commander’s belt.

Ren held them up, set them on the parapet and backed away. The woman came forward to take them. She tried one in a cuff, then another. The fastening opened.

While she freed the others, Ren broke the plain-stone anchorage holding the common tether. He left the chain on the paving.

The rear doorway led into a short passage. A store opened on one side; beyond it, an outer door gave onto a descending path behind the ridge.

Workers began leaving through it, some supporting the ones who had stumbled during the fight. Ren kept the passage clear.

Ren moved the dead clear of the court and the climbing shelf. Riptide brought the two fallen water defenders to the bank for him to lift. He laid them with the others on dry stone and left their weapons beside them.

Then he entered the store with his lamp.

Worked sections of grown stone filled the vaulted room. Some stood loose on the floor. Others remained seated in long racks joined to the rear wall. Cut ends and dressed faces showed where they had been fitted.

Ren touched a loose section.

An organized working followed its curved inner surface and ended at the cut joins. In a seated section, he could follow a similar structure through its bearing and into the rack. He lost it inside the wall.

Marks had been scratched beside each group. One sign repeated across several sections; another appeared along the next row.

Ren copied them beside sketches of their positions.

The woman with the keys had started toward the outer door. She stopped beside a seated section, brushed dust from its mark and tried to shift it. The bottom edge held fast in the grown rack.

Ren saw the join when he came closer.

She put her palm over the mark and looked at him.

He copied that sign separately and wrote beneath it: claimed by the woman freed on the terrace. Then he moved aside.

She remained beside the section while he examined another row. When he next looked up, she was leaving with the last workers. The stone stayed in its rack.

Ren left the groups as he had found them. He wanted to study the workings, but taking the fort did not make everything inside it his.

They settled in the outer court near the climbing shelf, with the store behind its own door. Anvil rested against the inner wall. Ren loosened the dressing and brought Balm’s tray down beside the leg. The wound had held through the climb. The moss spread over the joint for a short treatment, then withdrew to its damp turf.

Ren replaced the dressing and secured the tray again. The intact chamber’s case stayed on the carrier. The cracked specimen remained in his pack.

Below, a side pool gave Bolt room to turn. Riptide moved between it and the water arch.

Ren went down to the gate. He fitted a plain-stone prop beneath its lower edge, outside the channel they used, then walked the bank back to the regulator basin. The return path remained open as far as the ledge they had descended.

Beyond that lay their known route through the basins and cavern to the entry ramp. The filled cradle waited in its notch below the arch.

When Ren returned, Anvil had lowered its shell onto the resting stone.

He ate beside it before taking the lamp into the store again.

The cut stretch on the terrace no longer answered his touch. The racks did. A change reached the nearest row through the rear wall and passed into the seated chambers. Ren followed the connection back to where the masonry entered the ridge, then lost it.

Outside, above that wall, a grown conduit crossed toward the next height. A narrow climbing ledge reached its lower face. Ren could see the connection leaving the fort, though not where it ended.

He could break the racks free by force. Doing so risked splitting the chambers along their joined edges. The cracked specimen in his pack still held a working, but only part of what had once been there.

He wanted these sections whole. That meant finding a place to separate the connection without breaking through them.

The upper conduit offered a place to begin. He had broken the commander’s local join under attack; with the fort held and room to work, he expected to find the next one.

The runners would bring others. Ren looked toward the ridge they had crossed, judging the approach by the ground his own group had covered. He believed he could isolate the store before a force reached them.

He left the chambers joined and marked the climb to the upper conduit.