Stretching before the Colossal Gates of Weeping Pass lay a graveyard of frozen carts and abandoned iron pots.
Along the wind-scoured dark rock raised stone road, dozens of broken wagons lay half-sunk in hardened snowdrifts.
Their wooden spokes were cracked by extreme sub-zero contraction, their draft horses dead and stripped to white ribcages by desperate scavengers.
Huddled against the windward base of the huge walls were several small clusters of border refugees and stranded fur-trappers.
They wrapped themselves in rotting sheepskins and patched coarse-felt blankets, their faces blackened by frostbite and wood soot.
Nobody spoke.
In the northern cold, opening one’s mouth needlessly wasted precious body heat and dried the wet inner skin of the throat until they cracked and bled.
Above them, the sheer dark rock wall of Weeping Pass blocked the northern sky like an artificial mountain range.
