The fifth watch was passing. The red lunar eclipse had pulled back. That left the sky over Fort Ironpass a clean, freezing vault of indigo dusted with white starlight.
In Trench Line Two, sixty orderlies and pioneers worked under the yellow glare of pine torches. The wounded royal guards were carried on canvas litters to the central razor-sharp ward, their bloody footprints dusted over with dry wood ash to prevent slips on the glazed wooden walkway planks.
Pei Jing sat on an overturned timber ammunition crate in the center of the cleared hall.
On the pine planks before his boots lay the equipment, weapons, and provisions recovered from the corpses of the Three Steppe Titans.
Beside him, Sergeant Zhao stood with a grease-dipped reed brush and a sheepskin tally scroll. His hand still shook slightly as he recorded Pei Jing’s dictation.
“Item One,” Pei Jing spoke, his deep steady as an iron weighted drop-line. “The twin cleavers of Mountain-Crusher Tie Le.”
Pei Jing lifted one of the massive weapons with one hand, turning the dark steel toward the torchlight.
“Mass: eighty-two pounds per blade. Forged from high-grade crucible iron with an estimated carbon content of one point two percent. Hard dark metal alloy: zero point four percent. The cutting beards exhibit minor micro-fracturing along the serrations, but the core billets are structurally intact. At current royal foundry scrap values, these two blades represent one hundred and sixty-four pounds of weapons-grade crucible iron. Re-melting yields enough stock for two hundred and…
