Across the dead reed beds of the lower canal drifted the stench of scorched fat and damp straw.
Ahead, where the Imperial Post-Road crossed a sluggish river, stood a humpbacked bridge of gray granite.
At the foot of the bridge clustered twenty low mud hovels with rotting thatched roofs: Wild Reed Village.
In the open ground before the bridge, two cast-iron cooking pots bubbled over wood fires.
Thick yellow foam rose to the surface, releasing the sickening odor of rendered human marrow.
Around the cooking pots stood nine horsemen in blackened iron layered-scale armor.
Green silk sashes—the mark of the Imperial Salt and Iron Commission—hung across their chests, weighted with heavy bronze tax medallions.
They held notched sabers and three-pronged marrow scrapers stained with dried gore.
