The folded road still looped before Dusk Ridge’s gate. From the aqueduct wall, the opening looked no wider than a cart track, then narrowed to nothing as the reflected stones shifted. The artillery crew kept its sightline on that one visible pass.
Yan stood beside Wei and watched the gun crews reload. His right forearm was wrapped where a stone fragment had cut it. The bandage tugged when he moved his hand, but it held. He would clean it when the assault gave him time.
“We feint at the lower road,” Wei said. “When their barrel turns, I pull the men back behind the aqueduct. That should give you the interval.”
“If the gunner waits?”
“Then we stay under cover until he fires or the bell changes. We don’t ask the team to draw a shot it can’t outrun.”
The plan used the same red cloth that had drawn the guns west before. This time the decoy team moved farther down the road, appearing for only a few moments between the scrub and the old marker. The gunners followed them. One barrel turned away from the gate.
Yan checked the manual inside his coat. He had read the sequence carefully in the command post. The art crossed a sealed interval by destroying the practitioner’s foundation. The diagram described the cost as complete. In him, the harm of his own technique would reverse into refinement before it injured him. The step itself remained a passage through space.
