Gray Ridge was a salt depot, built of fieldstone and yellow clay. In a good year three hundred families lived there, boiling brine into salt cakes and selling axle grease to the freight drivers. Now half the depot was burning. Purple smoke lay over the mud streets. It smelled of rotten eggs and hot metal.
Pei Jing crouched on an abandoned grain kiln outside the stockade. He laid the Nine-Fold Astral Bone Blade across his knees and watched the butcher’s yard behind the stable.
There were six of them. The largest stood nine feet high at the chest. Hard plates covered its back. It had no eyes, only three pits in its wedge-shaped head. Fine hairs stirred in the pits whenever something moved. Four hooked feet held it clear of the mud. The front two limbs were long scythes. A clear fluid dripped from them and hissed on the ground.
A wounded guard lay by the fence with a broken ash spear. He tried to put his weight on it. The nearest creature crossed the yard before he could stand. The scythe struck. The guard went down, and the creature lowered its head to feed.
Pei Jing kept watching until he could tell how its plates moved. The shell looked as hard as cold iron. The joints were open. When it raised its scythes, the bottom of the chest plate lifted too.
