A sub-zero gale screamed through the arrow slits of Weeping Pass. He drove needles of frozen grit against ancient granite stonework.
Inside the western wall barracks, three hundred border conscripts lay packed shoulder-to-shoulder on rotted straw pallets.
Their breath rose in sluggish, gray clouds toward frost-blackened roof beams.
Even fully dressed in boiled leather and rusted chainmail, their limbs trembled wildly against the killing draft.
At the center of the hall, two iron fire-pans held only cold gray ash.
Under the harsh frontier rationing imposed by the guard post command, coal was reserved only for the officers of the inner keep.
Suddenly, the surrounding heat in the barracks dropped ten degrees in a single second.
Then fifteen.
