The liquid silver in Pei Jing’s brass heat gauge vial, salvaged from an apothecary in Cangzhou, tightened into a grey bead the size of a mustard seed.
Outside the timbered low roof wall, the heat plunged past thirty degrees below zero. At this threshold, the sky moisture crystal-hardened into needles of suspended ice that hung stationary in the dead air. Inhaling without a three-layer boiled linen mask seared the lung epithelium, causing micro-hemorrhages that filled the lung sacs with pink froth by dawn.
Pei Jing walked along the sunken wooden walkway planks of Trench Line Four. The soles of his calfskin boots were lined with felted wool and dried river moss, providing two inches of heat padding against the frozen clay.
Beneath the firing banquettes, thirty-two men of the third platoon lay huddled beneath grease-stiffened horse blankets. Their teeth clicked in spasmodic tremors that burned four hundred calories an hour in reflex shivering.
“Commander,” Sergeant Zhao rasped. Zhao was a thirty-four-year-old border veteran whose left earlobe had been lost to frostbite five winters ago. His beard was a solid mask of grey ice formed from his own breathing. “The supply depot in the inner keep turned our supply order team away. Commissary Officer Qian locked the coal sheds. He said the hard coal belongs to the central command bunker and the officers’ mess. He gave us four sacks of green birch twigs.”
