The wheel ruts in the yellow clay smelled of bile, copper, and warm lung tissue.
Lu Chen crouched thirty paces up the ravine wall, hidden behind the stone-hard roots of an ancient mountain cypress.
A cold eastern wind swept down from the ridges of the Dragon Spine Mountains. It whistled through the fractured limestone gullies like breath sucked through broken teeth.
Beneath him, the convoy crawled through the mud.
Six heavy freight wagons, their oak frames heavy with blackened iron bands, dragged through the sunken gorge road.
Each wagon was pulled by four blindfolded draft oxen. The beasts had been rendered fully mute. Their tongues had been excised at the root and their nostrils burned shut with white-hot iron to prevent them from bellowing at the scent of slaughter. Thick strings of yellow spit dripped from their muzzled jaws onto the stones.
Driving the teams were twelve corpse-faced draymen clad in oiled canvas robes stained with dark, greasy halos. Yellow beeswax plugged their ears, and their eyes stared blankly toward the muddy ruts ahead.
On the wagon beds rested the cargo.
