Cold Pine Pass was two thousand feet above the valley. The old royal road squeezed between two black walls of rock. Where couriers and patrols had once ridden, goats now picked their way through thistles.
A round watchtower still stood at the bend. The gate had rusted down to flakes. Part of the roof had fallen inside. Pei Jing stepped through the arch and smelled pine resin and dry needles.
He looked up at the oak beam over the entrance. Near the old hinge, someone had carved two crossed bearded axes and four short marks. He reached up to touch them.
Cheng Shan’s mark. The scout had served up and down these passes before the border war. Pei Jing remembered his crooked teeth, the taste of his cheap sorghum wine, and the way he laid both axes across his knees before he sharpened them. Cheng had taught him to move over loose shale without announcing each step to the men on the other side of the ridge. He’d been willing to show Pei Jing the same thing five or six times, though he’d sworn at him by the third.
He thought of another man who had stayed on the ground. Sword Saint Lu Tingxuan had learned to split stone with the force of a wooden staff. He had died by the ruined turret at Raven Crag as the Titans reached Ironpass. After the battle, Pei Jing had buried him there under a cairn and set Lu’s bamboo staff beside the…
