The quarry road narrowed into a thread between scrub and the broken ribs of old stone. The JLTV hummed steady, the cargo behind them murmuring with strap-creaks at every gentle sway. Lyra had her bow loose across her knees now, one arrow laid along the grip like a thought half-formed.
The dust behind them fattened.
"Three riders," she said, not guessing. "Fourth hanging back."
"Scout, vanguard, and a conscience," Inigo replied. He eased the wheel an inch to the right, just enough to put the sun at an angle that punished anyone who tried to pace them on the cliff side. "Let's see if they've done this before."
The first hint of the welcome committee came plain as a signboard: a dead tree dropped across the road at a bend where the downhill shoulder fell into scrub and the uphill shoulder rose to rotten shale. If you were on a horse, you stopped. If you stopped, you talked—or bled.
