Midnight fell across the Black Silt Marshes like a sodden woolen shroud.
The Imperial Post-Road here was nothing more than a raised stone road of packed gravel and rotting willow logs. It was flanked on both sides by endless expanses of black, stale swamp water.
Patches of rotten-egg marsh gas bubbled to the surface of the salty pools, bursting with soft, wet pops that released the stench of decayed vegetation and drowned carrion.
The two mountain mules hitched to the heavy supply wagon came to a halt on a wider section of the gravel embankment.
Their thick hide coats were slick with swamp dew, their breath jetting into the midnight damp in steady plumes of white vapor.
Beside the left rear wheel, Blacksmith An Ni knelt in the gravel, an iron oil can in her grease-stained hand.
She worked a thumb-lever, driving dark sheep fat into the iron wheel hub to displace the acid-burning marsh salt water.
“The salt water eats the iron fittings,” An Ni said, her voice steady and quiet. “If the axles rust, the wagon dies in the mud.”
