Pei Jing spent the next week heading north. He walked through villages and past the remaining watch posts. On empty stretches after dark, Spirit Wind Stride carried him farther in an hour than a wagon could go all day. In the cold between stops, he put his strength into travel.
On the last morning, sleet began two hours before dawn. By noon wet gray snow had plastered itself against the birches. The road followed the Black Stone River through the foothills. Dark water ran slowly between shelves of dirty ice.
Freezing slush made Pei Jing’s cloak stiff. Gang Qi kept his chest and bones warm. Beyond the birches, steep ridges of shale rose under stunted firs.
This road had once been the line between the Great Yan fields and the northern steppes. Watchtowers and palisades had guarded it every five leagues. At the third ridge, Pei Jing came out at the gorge below Fort Ironpass.
He stopped in the frozen wagon ruts.
More than sixty winters had passed since he’d stood on those walls. He remembered thirty feet of dressed granite and twelve iron-banded watchtowers. Four thousand soldiers had drilled twice a day with spears and bows. Sword Saint Lu Tingxuan had spent his last days in a windbreak at a ruined turret. His old talisman wound had opened again after he taught Pei Jing the cut that outran its own sound. He’d died there as the Titans reached the outer ditch.
