The cold before dawn had a way of making even deliberate work look miserable, which was exactly why the cut below them read true.
From the ridge, Sable could see the handcart drawn up at the broken fence line with its planks, tar cloth, rope, and bell brace pieces stacked in a way that looked untidy enough to belong to a real repair crew. The older yard man had already knelt by the leaning post and was muttering at it under his breath while the younger store hand fought with a coil of rope that wanted to knot on itself in the frost. Mara stood with one hand braced against the cart and the other tucked into her wrap, her irritation visible even from the ridge. The armed escort had drifted a little too far toward the track, just enough to suggest divided attention and not enough to read as stupidity.
It looked thin.
Thin enough for a desperate line to believe there might be a way through it before the rest of Grimridge understood what it had lost.
