Cutting the Line

The limestone horn sat three feet to Faris's left, blunt and gray and rooted deep in the canyon wall. Faris did not look at the drop or at the white clouds of caustic powder churning four hundred feet below in the gorge bed. They looked only at Nevan's hands.

Nevan was skidding forward on his stomach, his canvas trousers tearing against the sharp shale shelf as the crumbling edge gave way beneath his knees. The lead line had been ripped from his gloved grip when the beast flinched, leaving him clawing desperately at loose scree. Across the fractured gap, the outward forty-pound water bladder had already slipped over the lip, dragging the second bladder and the shifting pack frame toward the void. Behind the falling beast on the trailing ledge, Baraz was flat on his back, heels jammed into a crack in the rock, his forearms locked around the rear drag-rope as the dead weight dragged him inch by inch toward the abyss.

The shelf hummed. Through the soles of Faris's boots, the rock gave off a dry, high-pitched chatter like iron filings vibrating on a drum skin. If the ox kicked once more against the empty air, the shock load would shear the entire twenty-foot span of shale off the cliff.

Faris dropped their weight low, lunging forward on bent knees. They slammed their left arm around Nevan's chest, driving their shoulder into his ribs to pin him against the bedrock. With their right hand, they looped the spare bight of the five-beat guide line over the limestone horn, throwing a quick half-hitch around the stone spur to create an emergency brake.

The knife was already in Faris's grip. The seven-inch carbon-steel skinning blade had a curved belly and an edge honed on oilstone every dusk since they had left the eastern plains.

Faris did not waste seconds trying to haul the beast back by its harness. Under eight hundred pounds of falling dead weight, human muscle was useless against gravity. Faris leaned out over the edge, stomach pressed flat against the crumbling stone, and reached for the load stays.

The ox hung half-suspended over the drop, wedged for a second between two jutting ribs of dark basalt. Its muffled head strained upward, white foam bubbling through the weave of its grease-soaked canvas mask. The outward forty-pound hide bladder and two strapped crates of dried peas swung violently in open air, their dead weight dragging against the matching load on the inward flank and twisting the ash-wood pack-tree sideways.

Faris found the primary load stay, where three braided strands of four-ply hemp met the iron ring above the ox's shoulder.

They did not hesitate. Faris drove the curved blade across the first strand with a single, slicing pull.

The cord parted with a sharp pop that Faris felt in their teeth rather than heard. The pack frame tilted instantly. The second stay took the full rotational strain, groaning as the fibers turned white and began to shred under the sudden torque.

Nevan let out a smothered groan, his face buried in the scree as Faris's knee kept him pinned.

Faris laid the steel across the second stay, pressed down with both palms on the knife's horn handle, and drew it back.

The hemp sheared clean. The pack-tree split down its centerline with a dry crack. The outward load, five gallons of river water and two crates of dried peas lashed between the ash ribs, tore loose from the ox's flank and plunged straight down into the white fog of the canyon floor.

For half a heartbeat, the lightened animal scrambled for purchase, its cloven hooves scrabbling against the sheer limestone wall. But the shale shelf beneath its belly had already lost its structural integrity. A slab the size of a wagon gate broke free from the underside of the ledge with a hollow thud.

The beast slid. Across the gap, the heavy rear drag-rope went taut as iron wire, threatening to haul Baraz straight over the crumbling edge.

Faris lunged across the fractured rock and brought the knife blade down across the drag-rope, right above the iron swivel ring.

The hemp parted like parted silk.

Ox Nine dropped silently into the rising dust.

There was no scream, no roar of echoing stone. The grease mask muffled the animal's throat, and the thick layer of caustic marl carpeting the gorge bed swallowed the impact without a sound. Four hundred feet below, a pale ring of white alkaline dust puffed outward, drifted twenty yards across the ruined road, and vanished into the gray haze.

The vibration beneath Faris's boots ceased immediately. The high, nervous chatter in the bedrock died into a flat, dead silence.

Faris stayed on their belly for three slow breaths, their chest heaving against the sharp shale gravel, the knife still locked in their right fist. Cold grease from their protective mask ran down into the corner of their mouth, tasting of sheep tallow and bitter wood ash.

Beside them, Nevan stopped struggling. The teamster lay with his forehead pressed into the dust, his right arm trembling where the hemp had crushed the skin against the bone. Behind them, Baraz let out a long, ragged exhale, his boots still wedged deep into the safety crack.

Faris pushed up onto one elbow, turned their head, and looked back along the ledge.

The forty survivors were frozen in a jagged line against the inner cliff face, pressed so hard into the rock that their canvas coats blended with the gray limestone. Not a single person had cried out. Even the children had their faces buried in their mothers' skirts, their mouths sealed behind greasy linen pads. Five yards back, Roshan had both arms locked around the muzzle of Ox Ten, his thick fingers clamped tight across the beast's nostrils to keep it from lowing at the scent of blood and dust.

Further up the ridge, perched on a narrow spur of stable granite ten feet above the broken shelf, Kian-dar lowered his acoustic sounding rod. His pale eyes met Faris's through the slits of his dust wrap. He did not nod. He simply raised two fingers, indicating that the resonance had dispersed, then pointed his bronze rod toward the gap.

Faris sat back on their heels and inspected the damage.

Where the trail had once been thirty-six inches wide, a jagged bite had been taken out of the shale. Only an eighteen-inch strip of dark rock remained clinging to the wall, running for roughly eight feet before widening again into the solid limestone terrace of the upper ridge. The edge of the remaining stone looked friable, veined with hairline white cracks where the slab had sheared away.

Faris sheathed the knife, tapped Nevan's shoulder twice, and pointed to the limestone horn.

Nevan blinked through dust-caked eyelashes, nodded weakly, and pushed back from the fractured edge with his scraped hands. He did not speak. The discipline of the trail, hammered into them during the ascent, held firm. He crawled backward on his knees, staying low to keep his center of gravity below the wind, until he reached the wider shoulder of the upper trail where Kian-dar waited.

Faris stood slowly, keeping their spine aligned with the canyon wall, and examined the eight-foot gap.

An unladen human could step across an eighteen-inch ledge with care. An eight-hundred-pound draft ox, carrying eighty pounds of water and supplies on an improvised wooden pack-tree, could not. The animal's flank would brush the outward face of the mountain, kicking loose stone and shifting its balance over the abyss.

Faris looked up at Kian-dar.

The outlander reached into his shoulder pack, withdrew a fifteen-foot coil of braided horsehair cord, and dropped one weighted end down to Faris. Faris caught the brass plumb bob without letting it clatter against the stone.

Working quickly, Faris secured the line between the limestone horn on the near side and a deep iron piton Kian-dar had driven into the upper bench. They pulled the horsehair cord taut until it sang under the tension, creating a waist-high guide-rail along the inner wall.

Faris turned to Roshan and gave the hand signal for single-file transit: two open palms pressed together, then extended forward with fingers trailing.

Roshan nodded once. He stepped to the head of Ox Ten, took the lead-line short beneath the chin, and placed his own left shoulder against the beast's neck. He did not look down at the gap. He matched his stride to the ox's slow, ponderous rhythm, guiding the animal's inside hooves within an inch of the rock wall while Faris held the pack frame from the outer edge, taking half the outward lean onto their own arms.

The ox's muffled hooves tapped softly against the shale. A few loose pebbles trickled over the lip, bouncing silently into the white gulf below. The beast placed its right rear hoof on the narrowest point of the eighteen-inch span, hesitated as the stone flaked slightly beneath its weight, and then stepped firmly onto the solid limestone terrace where Kian-dar waited.

One by one, the remaining three oxen crossed the sheared section of the Devil's Rib.

Each crossing took four minutes of agonizing, silent labor. Faris stood anchored to the limestone horn, their boots braced on the edge of nothing, steadying each pack-tree as it passed. They felt the heat radiating from the beasts' ribs, the damp steam rising from their wool-wrapped hooves, and the trembling strain in the teamsters' forearms as they guided the heavy draft animals across a span narrower than a dining bench.

When the last ox cleared the gap, Baraz and the remaining rear teamsters followed.

Baraz moved with ginger, careful steps, his palms wrapped in shredded canvas where the drag-rope had scorched his skin. He kept his eyes fixed on Faris's belt, refusing to look down at the four-hundred-foot drop. Faris took his shoulder, guided his boots across the narrowest fracture, and handed him up to the stable ledge where Kian-dar waited.

From the wide terrace above, Soraya-shah watched the crossing in stony silence.

The aging merchant stood braced against her ironwood walking stick, having crossed the bridge just before the roan bull fell. Her silver-threaded braids were tucked tight beneath a three-layer dust mask, and her gray eyes were cold and clear above the linen. She did not look at Faris with fear or relief. She looked down at the empty air where Ox Nine had been, then shifted her gaze to the knife at Faris's belt. Her eyes narrowed slightly, a calculation running behind her brow, before she turned toward the sheltered alcove beneath the overhang.