The azure frost-rime didn’t crawl.
It surged across the gravel bank like a flash-flood of living, crystal-clear venom.
Within three breaths, the surrounding heat around the cart plummeted from thirty-two below zero to minus fifty-five degrees.
Moisture in the air crystal-hardened in a heartbeat into a blinding shroud of needle-hail.
The lead draft mule let out a shrill, strangled bray of pure animal panic.
A creeping sheet of glassy blue ice climbed its iron shoes, freezing the damp hair of its fetlocks solid against the frozen stones.
“Lu Chen! The wheels!” An Ni shouted, her voice muffled behind her wool scarf.
She swung her sixty-pound cold-iron forging hammer with both arms. It slammed the square head into the frozen shale between the cart wheels.
