Sect Year 4 · second month · day 4 · the Drum’s hill, Hesk Steppe
In the night the thaw reached the hill. Lin heard it before he saw it: the drip from the roof edges of the drum tent, quick and uneven, and under the drip a long soft sound as the frost let go of the ground. By grey light the slope below the cold store was dark and running, and the spades that had lain against the rock all winter could finally bite.
The gorge road had shut with snow the week after the ford. Lin, Su and Jiang had wintered in the herders’ houses at the lower bank, and when the road opened in the second month a herder rode down to say the thaw had reached the hill and the burial could be made.
The cold store was a cut in the hillside below the tent. There, the rock held the winter the way a well holds water. The tribe had carried Sorrin Tauk into it after the first frost, when they found him sitting on the bank of the new channel with the grey drumskin across his knees and one hand flat on the hide.
