The plateau below Mount Cangmang was twelve miles across. Beneath the purple sky, one million one hundred thousand people stood in square formations on the gravel.
These were the four assault formations. Another two million one hundred thousand drew rations at the sector depots. They included reserve fighters, crews moving supplies and patients, and families under the protection of the halls. The assault troops had come to the mountain from all three continents. They wore boiled leather and overlapping plates of cold iron. A whetstone hung from every belt. Their banners were rolled for the march, and the only sound from the ranks was their breathing. It rose and fell like water on a beach.
Pei Jing walked the front with his commanders. Iron Mountain Ba stood among the winches of the Northern Iron Division. He put one hand on a bronze axle and felt it turn.
“The carriages are ready,” he said. “All fourteen. If one fails, there’s another for the same spike.”
Cheng Bao had brought two hundred and fifty thousand people from the coast and islands. He showed Pei Jing the bone plugs his mariners wore against the sound of the sky arrays. They had tested them against the great horns at Pearl Port.
