The Dry Pass earned its name in the pale, weathered limestone that lined it, stone scrubbed clean of soil by centuries of runoff that had carried everything softer downhill and left behind a surface that the sun hit in shades of yellow and gray. The color of bone. The color of ground that had made its terms known to anyone who proposed to cross it and that expected those terms to be respected.
The gradient that made wheeled vehicles impossible made infantry laborious, and the warriors who entered the Pass in the predawn darkness found within the first mile that the word laborious was doing less work than it typically did.
