Ten thousand spectators filled the tiered granite stands of the Grand Imperial Martial Arena under heavy, leaden clouds that smelled of impending sleet.
The arena was an ancient, circular colosseum built during the founding reign of Great Yan, its outer walls built from quarried grey dark rock blocks bound together with iron pins. Thirty-two raised stone rings, each sixty paces square, dominated the sunken central floor. Surrounding each ring was a five-foot-deep moat filled with coarse yellow river sand, designed to catch cut limbs and absorb spilled bright red blood before it could pool on the fighting flat stone slabs.
Along the upper low roof walls, royal heavy archers stood every twenty paces, their composite mulberry-wood recurve bows strung and notched with black-fletched armor-piercing iron bodkins.
On the north-facing grandstand, raised twenty feet above the common gallery, sat the silk-draped pavilions of the country patricians. Retainers carried steaming copper kettles of spiced wine, tending charcoal fire bowls of fragrant pear wood to keep the noble ladies warm. Down in the muddy lower stands, common laborers, off-duty wagon drivers, and betting-slip runners jostled and shouted. They waved wooden lottery chips as the morning gong struck.
Pei Jing stood in the staging tunnel beneath the western grandstand, his shoulder resting lightly against the damp stone vault.
