The drainage tunnel ran north for six miles. The heat faded until Pei Jing could see his breath. He climbed through a broken grate near the far end and found himself in a trench under Mount Hanyuan. Sleet blew sideways above the timber retaining wall.
He crouched in the shelter of the timbers and checked his burned arm. The blisters had stopped leaking. A hard new layer of skin had begun to form. He could close his hand without pain, though he still felt the pull up to his elbow.
Over the trench, scarlet shells arced across the valley and broke against Cloud Mist’s blue ice ward. The impacts sounded like a glacier splitting. Wind shook the pines, and slush fell into the trench. Defenders shouted into rune horns, calling their flying skiffs into line to meet the next volley.
Pei Jing went along the lower supply trench while they watched the sky. He had covered the soles of his boots with wool to keep them quiet on the frozen ground. Two hundred paces on, he saw a white crane with a lotus in its claws painted over a pair of iron-banded doors. Bunker Nine belonged to Cloud Mist’s Northern Reserve. They kept frost medicines there, along with the fire they used to forge ice blades.
