The White River ran slate gray and fast through a canyon four hundred feet deep. There was only one crossing for eighty leagues. The Great Granite Arch had stood since the third reign of Great Yan. Eleven stone arches carried the road between heavy iron-banded rails.
By the time the people from Cloud-Crest Pass reached it, nearly four hundred thousand had used this road. Most had crossed in the days before the bridge was damaged. About thirty thousand were still on the western bank when Lu’s column reached it. Carts crowded the entrance. Mules brayed at the smell coming from the north. Children walked barefoot beside the wheels. The first wagons were already rattling across.
Six students in lilac robes stood on the eastern cliff. Purple Cloud Pavilion had given them Thunder-Splitting Earth-Breaker Talismans. Three bundles of paper runes shone at their feet. A line of yellow light ran from them into the stone of the bridge.
“Senior Brother Jiang, look at the wagons,” a younger student said. “If you drop the arch now, all those people will be trapped against the cliff.”
“The scouts counted twenty thousand of those things at Yellow Sand Ridge,” Jiang said. He raised a burning joss stick. “Elder Wu ordered this bridge down before the third hour of night. The throne has fallen. They aren’t our people now.”
