Three days later, the warmth of the midday sun had begun to soften the thick hoarfrost encrusting the heavy granite castle walls of Iron Pass Fort.
The northern castle had returned to an orderly, disciplined routine. The poisoned pool at Outpost Seven had been treated with neutralizing lime minerals and thoroughly flushed with fresh ice-slow runoff. On the southern plateau overlooking the river gorge, all four thousand eight hundred and ninety fallen royal soldiers had been laid to rest with full military honors in the newly consecrated Cemetery of the Iron Vanguard, their names recorded in the castle ledger.
In the lower courtyard, Patriarch Gui was securely sealed inside a heavy star-iron prison carriage, guarded around the clock by twenty heavy crossbowmen, awaiting transport to the underground holding vaults of the Central Punishment Trial.
Inside the castle command hall, Commander Yan Ding poured two wide clay bowls of hot spiced rice wine, placing them carefully upon the scrubbed pine table before Lin Tao and Tie Shan.
“To the Court Clerk and the Grand Marshal,” Yan said solemnly. He lifted his own bowl with both hands and bowing deeply from the waist. “In forty years of holding the northern frontier against barbarian raiders and rogue demon beasts, I’ve never witnessed a campaign like the one you carried out in the Ashen Bottleneck. You didn’t merely save this guard post. You spared the entire northern province from being engulfed in ash.”
