The cold had driven itself deeper into Tovi's shoulder by the third morning. It had sunk past the ache of the first two days and lodged itself right in the joint, where the rifle's recoil had been battering him since before dawn on the first day. Smoke had burned his throat raw after two days of shouting over musket fire, and every swallow scraped all the way down. He flexed his stiff fingers against the morning chill until they answered him again, then closed them around the trigger.
Ten men held this stretch of slope, the same narrow gap Marshal Col had given them when they first reached the pass.
Rand crouched at the front edge of the rocks, staring down the climbing path through the gray morning light. Beside him, Cuth knelt with a powder horn in one hand, forcing another charge down his barrel. His hands had stopped shaking sometime yesterday. Now they only moved with the dead weight of exhaustion.
