The night of the Blood Moon arrived with the shrieking flight path of burning pitch boulders.
From the barbarian siege lines two miles north, twenty heavy twisting force catapults mounted on hardwood skids opened fire at the same time. The flaming projectiles—two-hundred-pound sandstone spheres soaked in crude petroleum and horse animal fat—traced arching crimson trajectories across the bruised indigo sky. It looked like tumbling meteors before crashing into the lower bailey of Fort Ironpass.
Thooom! Thooom! Thooom!
The bone-shaking impacts shook the frozen ground foundation. Exploding pitch splashed across the dry spruce stables and stone barracks, throwing roaring sheets of orange fire into the freezing darkness.
Alarms clanged. Men shouted through wool scarves. They hauled wicker sandbags and wet hides to smother the chemical blazes.
In the center of the backup parade ground behind Trench Line Four, fully exposed to the falling embers, Pei Jing stood unmoving.
He wore no helmet. His charcoal-grey robe was cinched tight with the shark-skin belt. His bare hands hung loosely at his sides, two inches from his thighs. His black glass eyes were closed, his breathing tuned to a rigid four-second cycle. Four seconds of lung intake through the nostrils, four seconds of chest retention, four seconds of air-powered breath out through parted teeth.
