Night dropped over Trench Sector 9 with the arrival of a bitter northern frost.
The thick, yellow smog that had choked the dark rock fissure all afternoon settled into the low trenches, pinned down by freezing air. To counter the damp cold, the soldiers of the Fourth Battalion had rolled out five heavy cast-iron burn barrels along the central stone retaining wall. It filled them with scrap timber, pine resin, and discarded packing crates. Crimson sparks drifted upward into the starlit dark, lighting up the battered sandbags, the stacks of spent brass, and the towering bulk of the dead Empress lying twenty paces away.
Around the largest fire pit, the mood was warmer than it had been in six months.
Commoner cadets and grizzled infantrymen sat shoulder to shoulder on upturned ammunition boxes. He passed around tin canteens of bitter chicory tea and roasted root tubers. In the center of the circle sat Arthur Vance.
He had finally stripped off his heavy combat smock and high-speed rig, wearing only a patched woolen tunic with rolled-up sleeves. His forearms, scrubbed clean of scorpion beast-blood with antiseptic wash, were marked by faint spark burns from the razor knife recoil. But his hands were steady.
