The five mounted outlaws charged the eight-foot stone archway with the full charging driving force of galloping steppe horses.
Captain Tu Sen led the wedge, his heavy curved saber raised over his right ear, his iron stirrups clanking wildly against his horse’s flanks. The horse was a nine-hundred-pound roan gelding, galloping across the frozen flat stone slabs at twenty-five miles per hour. Behind Tu Sen rode four veteran raiders, their lances and sabers lowered to impale any footman who tried to evade the charge.
In an open field, five charging cavalrymen could scatter an entire company of light infantry.
In an eight-foot stone archway, however, the laws of shape and physical mass were total.
An eight-foot space allowed exactly one horse to pass at a time. The other four mounts were tightly packed behind the leader, unable to flank, unable to deploy their spears. Their forward speed was locked onto a single, narrow linear track.
Pei Jing didn’t evade.
He planted his left boot against the inner granite door post of the gate. He set his right heel into a natural depression in the stone doorstep.
His pelvis tucked. His neck bones lined up with his sacrum.
