From the central watchtower three levels above the dark rock vaults, the great frontier bell tolled three times.
CLANG—CLANG—CLANG.
The hollow iron shakes rolled down the air-flow chimney pipes like underground thunder. It shook loose showers of fine frost from the granite ceilings.
The sundown bell.
Beyond the three-hundred-foot frozen ground castle walls of Weeping Pass, the sun had plunged behind the jagged teeth of the Northern Glacier.
Darkness in the frontier was not merely the absence of light. It was an active, hungry weight.
Within ten minutes of the third chime, the surrounding heat inside Barracks Nine dropped eight degrees. It settled at forty degrees below zero.
The moisture in the air didn’t fall as snow. It formed razor-sharp ice needles that hovered suspended in the draft, stinging the eyes and freezing to eyelashes in brittle white fringes.
