Dawn over Eagle-Beak Ridge broke through a shroud of cooling charcoal smoke.
The fires in the lower bailey had burned up the wooden barracks and hay barns down to smoking heaps of grey ash and charred timbers. The snow had resumed falling, a gentle, silent flutter of white flakes that covered the butchered corpses and dead horses at the Main Gate in a merciful, cold blanket.
Cheng Shan had rounded up eighty surviving warhorses from the rear paddock. Sturdy, thick-chested mountain geldings that had escaped the fire. He had tethered them along the eastern stone retaining wall, feeding them handfuls of unburned barley from the supply shed.
Pei Jing walked down the granite steps leading into the underground vault beneath Chief Tie Mu’s keep.
The vault was excavated ten feet into the living bedrock. It was sealed behind a two-inch door of iron-plated oak. The heavy padlock had already been split in two by a single downward chop of the Cloud-Splitter Cleaver.
Pei Jing carried an iron oil lantern in his left hand, stepping into the underground cold.
The air inside was dry and chilled, smelling of stone dust, rusted copper, and aged beeswax.
Pei Jing conducted a rapid, careful inventory of the bandit treasury:
