They struck the Ice-Ridge Ford at the hour when the moon thinned to a wire and even the wolves paused to listen.
The river here was no longer a single vein but a braid—three channels split by gravel bars frozen into knife-back ridges.
The main current, black and slow, kept to the centre; the side channels wore skins of ice thick enough for scouts, questionable for wagons.
Beyond the far bank the land lifted in a long whale-back ridge crowned with dead pines—Wei Lian's chosen spine, white cloaks already ghosting among trunks.
Shen's column halted under the last fold of the flats.
Lan rode ahead with the pioneers, dismounting every hundred paces to auger the ice.
The drill came up each time with a core the colour of old bone—strong, but singing with hidden cracks.
She noted each measurement on a wax tablet, breath smoking over the numbers.
Thirty-two fingers at the edge, twenty in the middle, forty-five where the current slowed under the pines.
Enough for horse, enough for man, not enough for twenty-ton grain sleds.
The arithmetic of winter war: pounds per square inch against the patience of water.
While she worked the sky delivered its own report: snow on the wind, a day away, maybe less.
Fresh snow would hide weakness, but also weight it.
If they did not cross before the fall, they would camp on hostile ice under hostile eyes, and morning might find them swimming in plate-mail.
She rode back to Shen, offered the tablet.
He studied, thumb rubbing the scar that had grown darker each league.
"Time buys risk," he said. "We cross at first light. Tonight we dig."
Digging the River Beneath the River
The order rippled back: pioneers forward, shovels and saws, dig the river beneath the river.
They worked in four gangs.
First gang scraped snow off the chosen lane—two hundred paces long, three wagons wide—exposing the glassy skin to moonlight.
Second gang scored it with axes, cutting hand-length grooves that relieved tension; ice moaned like a whale, sighed, settled.
Third gang drilled holes every pace, poured in boiling water hauled from portable kettles; the water melted micro-channels, refroze fast, knitting grains into tougher crystal—a surgeon's stitch on a frozen patient.
Fourth gang laid reed mats soaked in salt-brine; the salt bit into the surface, knitting a crust that would bear iron-rim wheels.
All night the river rang with iron on crystal, a music that carried across the water to Wei Lian's sentries.
Lan moved among them, testing with a spear-butt, listening for the hollow thud that meant fracture.
Whenever she heard it she marked an X with charcoal, and pioneers sawed a plug, lifted it out, slid in a dowel of denser ice cut from the thicker upstream shelf—dental work on a titan's smile.
Her hands went numb despite double gloves; she borrowed a cavalryman's fur cap, traded her silk scarf for a length of wagon canvas to wrap her thighs.
Shen appeared at intervals, said little, watched the line the way a sailor watches horizon.
Once he handed her a cup of mare's-milk heated with pepper; she drank, felt fire crawl back into her lungs, returned the cup cracked from cold.
No words passed; the river spoke enough.
The Messenger from the Ridge
Near wolf-hour a single rider came from the enemy shore—white flag on a lance, helm removed, hair unbound in parley custom.
Pioneers lowered saws, archers drew.
Lan walked out onto the ice, bow relaxed but strung.
They met midway, moonlight between them thin as parchment.
The rider was young, cheeks raw, eyes older than his beard.
He offered a tube of ivory sealed with green wax—Wei Lian's personal colour.
"For General Shen," he said, voice carrying the nasal accent of the capital courts.
"Alone."
Lan took the tube, tucked it inside her coat; the warmth there softened the wax enough to blur the wolf-stamp.
She studied the rider's horse—barrel thick, feathered legs, breath regular.
It had waited uphill, not on the fragile ice.
A small courtesy, or a small taunt.
"Your message weighs little," she said. "Does it carry armour?"
The youth smiled without humour. "Words only. But words start wars heavier than catapults."
He glanced at the scored lane, the sweating pioneers. "Tell your general the river remembers who cut her first skin."
Then he wheeled, lance white flag fluttering, and rode back into the pines.
Lan watched until sound vanished; even then she waited thirty heartbeats, testing the ice for hidden tremor.
None came.
She returned, delivered the tube to Shen.
He broke the seal apart from fire, read by lantern behind a cloak-wall so no curious eye could see.
Lan stood close enough to watch his pupils—first contract, then widen, then settle into the flat calm she had learned meant decision, not relief.
He folded the parchment twice, tucked it into the wrist of his gauntlet, and said only: "We cross at dawn. No change."
Then he walked the full length of the lane, speaking to pioneers by name, praising a neat plug, adjusting a crooked mat.
Whatever Wei Lian had offered or threatened, Shen wore it like armour now.
The Ledger of Two Princes
Later, when the work gangs rotated to thaw fingers at kettles, Lan cornered Korin and two sergeants.
They scraped frost from a barrel-top and sketched what they knew:
Wei Lian held the ridge with five thousand—horse and mixed foot—numbers confirmed by cook-smoke counts and far-sight glints.His own pioneers had been seen felling pines on the far bank—either to build engines or to deny Shen cover.The river upstream narrowed to a gorge impossible for wagons; downstream spread into marsh where ice thinned to eggshell.
This ford was the only marriage of solid water and firm road for forty leagues.
Both armies had marched to the same altar; one would leave widowed.
They spoke of the message, guessing:
withdrawal offer?—unlikely.
duel challenge?—romantic, but winter killed romance faster than adultery.
ransom for grain?—possible, but Shen had already paid blood at the salt circle.
In the end speculation froze as fast as sweat; they returned to work.
Only Lan kept turning the rider's phrase: the river remembers who cut her first skin.
She had cut many skins tonight—plugs, dowels, score-lines.
She wondered whose ledger tallied the strokes, and whether ice kept memory longer than flesh.
The Night Before the Crossing
Dawn was still a rumor when the gangs finished.
They had carved a lane stronger than the original river, but every man knew man-made ice is a promise, not a fact.
Shen posted pickets on both banks, rotated half the column to sleep in shifts, boots on, horses bridled.
He himself walked the length one last time, lantern low, testing with the butt of a broken lance.
At the upstream end he paused, knelt, and from a pouch scattered a handful of black rice—funeral grain for drowned soldiers whose names he did not know.
Lan watched from the bank; the grains skittered across the scored surface, lodged in grooves, vanished under new frost.
A payment, or a plea.
She found a place between two wagons, wrapped in canvas and a borrowed wolfskin, yet sleep would not come.
Instead she listened: to the river ticking as it refroze, to the cough of sentries, to the creak of Shen's lantern returning.
When it passed she opened her eyes a slit—saw him stop outside her nest, stand a moment, then lay his ungloved hand on the wagon rail.
Ice smoked under his palm; when he lifted it the perfect print of his skin remained, already whitening.
He walked on, cloak blending with moon.
She closed her eyes, felt the print settle into dream—a hand that kept its own memory of warmth.
Counting the Interest
An hour before light she rose, walked to the river.
The lane gleamed like polished steel, her reflection blurred by new rime.
She drew the dagger Shen had returned after the salt circle, pricked her thumb, let one drop fall.
It hit, beaded, skated.
She whispered: "River, if you must take interest, take it from me, not from the column."
A superstition, maybe, but superstition was the only coin winter accepted without argument.
Behind her the camp stirred—horses blowing, harness jingling, men coughing blood-tinged phlegm.
She turned, saw Shen already mounted, visor up, watching her.
He said nothing of the blood on the ice; only lifted his unbandaged hand—a pact sealed twice.
Then he signalled form column, and the Black Banner began its slow descent onto the glass bridge they had carved from midnight.
As the first wagon rolled onto the lane the ice sang—a long low note like a cello string tightened by frost.
Lan rode point, lance reversed, listening for the change in pitch that meant fracture.
None came.
Wagon after wagon followed, horses snorting at their own reflection.
Midway she looked left—saw Wei Lian's pines silhouetted against a sky the colour of sword steel, saw the faint blink of helms, the glint of a far glass studying them.
She raised her bow in silent salute—a promise that the river beneath the river would remember who walked, and who fell.
The far bank approached, solid, welcoming, treacherous.
She touched her mare's flank, felt the tremor of her own pulse mirrored there.
One more length, one more breath, one more ledger entry waiting to be written in iron and water.
Then the front hooves hit snow on the enemy shore, and the Black Banner poured after like night crossing into day—a river beneath a river, a debt beneath a debt, flowing toward the ridge where Wei Lian waited to weigh the interest.