Dawn broke across the Mist Peak Range not with light, but with a dull, leaden thinning of the darkness.
The wind from the northern ice fields had died down, leaving an oppressive, freezing stillness. Surrounding heat hovered at eighteen degrees below zero. On the rock ledge, every breath crystal-hardened into fine white dust that settled upon collar and cowl.
Pei Jing stood at the narrow throat of the scree chute, forty paces below the cave mouth.
His deer-hide boots were planted ten inches apart on the flat granite anchor stone he had cleared the last evening. His knees were slightly bent, the tendons of his calves and thighs coiled under a locked-muscle preload. The twenty-two-pound Cloud-Splitter Cleaver rested loosely in his right grip, the squared hard dark metal tip touching the frozen gravel at an angle of forty degrees. Before settling into the chute, he had pulled the Black Mountain Whetstone from his belt pouch to check the hollowed center with his thumb. He ran the cold dark rock twice over the cleaver’s tip to ensure no frost dulled the edge. The dark stone was tucked back into its oiled pouch with a quiet, satisfying rustle.
Above him, thirty paces up the western ridge, Cheng Shan lay flat against a shelf of jagged flaky rock. The scout was wrapped in a wolf pelt that blended seamlessly with the mottled grey stone. In his calloused hands, he held his recurve horn bow, an iron-tipped arrow already nocked on the hemp-wound string…
