The walls at the Throat of Iron went up eight hundred feet. Water ran down the black rock where the veins met the cold air. The floor was thirty-two paces across. Four freight wagons could pass there if the drivers kept the wheels straight.
By the evening of the third day since Gray Ridge, Shi’s thirty hours of preparation were up. The first families had been moving through the gorge for eighteen hours. Pei Jing sat on a worn boulder just north of the gap. The Nine-Fold Astral Bone Blade lay across his legs. He had taken it out to check the edge near the hilt. Beside his knee, water from the eastern runoff shone on the face of the Black Mountain Whetstone.
Behind the wagon barrier, wheels ground over gravel. The sound went on as long as he listened. Closer by, he heard people coughing and a woman telling her child to keep a damp rag over his mouth.
Footsteps came from the barricade. A young scout in boiled leather stopped five paces away. An old frostbite scar marked his right cheek. The skin around his eyes was red from soot and lack of sleep.
“Senior. Captain Shi sent me. Duan Heng, third corporal of the Gray Ridge scouts.”
