At the foot of the northern cliff, the world was reduced to sheer black granite, howling sleet, and the smell of sulfur ash.
The base of the eighty-foot wall was buried under a twenty-foot bank of packed, wind-drifted snow. Pei Jing stood in the deep shadow cast by the rock stone support prop, his bare feet buried three inches in the icy crust. The heat sat at twenty-one degrees below zero. But his silvery-white bone marrow kept an easy heat-powered balance. That kept his outer breath flow warm and flexible.
Beside him, Cheng Shan unslung his pack, working with rapid, practiced movements to prepare the tactical reagents.
On a flat slate slab between them, the scout laid out three clay pots of wolf-bile paste—a thick, sticky, dark green ointment prepared from dried crag viper venom, boiled wolfsbane roots, and pine resin. Cheng Shan took a handful of broadhead needle-point arrow arrows from his quiver, dipping each three-sided iron tip into the paste until it was coated in a thick, sticky film.
“A scratch from this paste will paralyze the movement nerves of a grown bull inside five seconds,” Cheng Shan whispered, his breath catching in his wool cowl. “Even if a sentry gets a shout into his throat, the throat cords lock before the sound leaves his teeth.”
