He stood before the great iron door.
The second week since they had driven the enemy back to their last refuge, their final cage of stone and steel.
For seven days there had been silence.
The prisoners thanked their god for that mercy, spared from being thrown like fodder into the grinder.
The Azanians had no shortage of blind points, places where they could work hidden from watchful eyes. Blake had given them a week, and in that time they dug like moles.
Many dismissed what his brother had found as babble. But they dug anyway, and after days of clawing through earth and stone, they found it.
By the abyss they did.
Iron bars sealed the chute, of course. But iron is only as strong as the dirt around it. A little undermining, a few strokes of pick and spade, and a final, vicious kick, and the way lay open to glory.
They had their entrance and now they simply waited.
