The whale-back ridge was not climbed—it was negotiated.
Pines grew so thick their needles interlaced like locked pikes, and the slope between them was a staircase of roots glazed in ice.
Shen's vanguard—Lan at the point—advanced in single file, each rider leading his mount by the rein, hooves wrapped in sack-cloth to hush iron on stone.
Every fifty paces they stopped, listened: wind combing needles, distant axe-bite, the river behind them groaning as daylight warmed its new skin.
No birds.
Crows had abandoned the ridge at dawn, a black ribbon wheeling east—rent collected, eviction served.
They gained the crest an hour after sun-up.
The trees ended as if beheaded by a single sword-stroke, giving way to a bare spine of slate forty paces wide, then a drop onto the next valley where Wei Lian's main camp smoked in disciplined squares.
But between slate and sky stood a palisade of fresh-cut pine trunks, chest high, sharpened outward, loopholes dark as missing teeth.
Behind it, white cloaks moved economical as ants—Wei had turned the ridge crown into a fortress overnight.
Lan lay belly-down behind a fallen log, glass to eye.
She counted: five hundred on the rampart, another five hundred in reserve trenches dug back-to-back, cook-fires for three thousand beyond the drop—a full brigade to hold a throat barely wide enough for ten horses.
Artillery: six portable ox-bows—recycled ship ballistae mounted on sled runners, spanned and ready.
Signal mast: one, black-and-white swallow-tail whipping.
Message: come, bleed.
She slid back, reported.
Shen listened without comment, cheek against cold stone, breath feathering.
Finally: "We take the spine before noon or we camp below and freeze. Choices?"
The pioneer captain—big man named Daro—offered the straight arithmetic: frontal rush, ladders, lose one in three, gain the valley.
The scout sergeant—wiry woman called Hessa—countered: flank west, descend cliff, ascend rear slope, hit camp from below—lose one in five, gain chaos, but dusk needed.
Shen's eyes flicked to Lan.
"Fourth option," she said. "We rent the ridge from the crows."
The Rent
An hour later the Black Banner withdrew two hundred paces downslope, out of ballista arc, and began to die—or so it seemed.
They dragged nine straw-stuffed horse hides, dressed them in captured White cloaks, soaked the cloth in pig's blood kept liquid by kettles, laid the bodies in a row across the only clear approach.
Then they retreated, leaving footprints exaggerated by wounded boots—a trail of defeat.
From the palisade watchers saw red on snow, saw black cloaks carrying "comrades" away, saw the column melting back into trees.
Signal flags questioned; no answer came.
Greed, or curiosity, opened the gate.
Fifty white-cloaks sallied—disciplined, but too few to be safe, too many to be cautious.
They advanced in two files, pikes ready, crossbows cranked.
When they reached the "corpses" the trap woke: hides split, releasing not vapour but a murder of live crows—two dozen birds netted in wicker cages since dawn, now flung skyward in a beating storm of black wings and indignant shrieks.
Crows carried small clay vials on their legs; vials cracked mid-air, sprinkling powdered resin that flashed when it met sunlight—harmless fire, blinding light.
White-cloaks flinched, shields rose, formation bulged.
From the trees on both sides came the real blow—not Shen's main force, but Lan's twenty scouts on rope swings.
They had climbed the outer pines at dawn, waited frozen to bark.
Now they dropped, feet first, bows already drawn.
First volley took rear-rank crossbowmen; second volley tangled pike heads with weighted nets soaked in water that froze on contact—brittle iron glued by ice.
Before the echo died scouts vanished upslope, leaving only feathers and swearing.
The sally party re-formed, angry, shamed, dragged nets, pursued—exactly where Lan wanted.
They passed between two boulders where the ridge narrowed; boulders already drilled by pioneers.
Daro waited with a lever; he hauled, released.
A dead pine—roots sawn three-quarters, trunk anchored by rope—whipped across the path like a giant's flail.
Impact scattered men like skittles; those still breathing crawled, tried to rise, met the second half of the bargain: Shen's heavy infantry rising from snow burrows—men buried alive since nightfall, breathing through reed tubes, shields laid atop, snow brushed thin.
They rose white as ghosts, slammed into the disordered files, pushed them back toward the palisade in a tangle of broken pikes and fear.
The Ledger Opens
From the palisade Wei's officers screamed orders—close gate, cover fire—but the gate had been wedged open by the first fleeing crow-scouts; the wedge—an iron picket hammered into frozen ground—was painted black, invisible against black mud.
Reserve trenches emptied, men ran to plug the breach; ballistae cranked, but the melee swirled too close—they could not loose without shredding their own.
Lan was already on the palisade flank.
She and six climbers had circled west under the distraction, ascended where cliff met timber, used the very ballista sleds as ladders—Wei's engines turned against their walls.
They gained the walkway, cut signal halyards, dropped ropes.
Up the ropes came Shen's elite—the Black Raven company, fifty men in lamellar lacquered night-blue, each feather-edged blade already inked with names of the dead they carried.
Shen himself followed, not waiting for courtesy.
He vaulted the parapet, cloak snapping like torn sky, and went straight for the ballista nearest the gate.
With three strokes he severed torsion cords—the engine exhaled like a dying ox, its arms sagging.
He turned, raised his unbandaged hand—blood had soaked through the linen again, a red lantern in morning light—and shouted: "The ridge is rented! Pay the landlord!"
The Interest
What followed was not battle but book-keeping.
White-cloaks fought stubborn, but every position had been pre-surveyed by Lan's scouts: loopholes measured, blind spots chalked with charcoal crosses now smeared by boots.
Black Ravens moved from mark to mark, killing economical—throat, armpit, back of knee—places mail gapped when men raised shields overhead.
Crossbows on the rampart never fired a second volley; Lan's scouts walked behind them, daggers quiet.
Within twenty minutes the crown of the ridge belonged to Shen.
Wei's survivors streamed down the reverse slope toward the main camp, carrying word: the spine is broken, the crow has evicted the wolf.
But Shen did not pursue—not yet.
He ordered the palisade reversed: pikes re-set outward, ballista frames dragged, re-strung with captured skeins.
Signal mast re-hoisted—black swallow-tail now, snapping derision across the valley.
Lan found him kneeling beside a dying White Banner lieutenant—boy no older than twenty, lungs bubbling pink foam.
Shen pressed the boy's hand around a coin—ferryman's fee, though no ferry ran here.
When the boy stilled Shen closed the eyes, rose, wiped his palm on slate until the blood print faded.
He looked at Lan. "Count?"
"Forty-eight dead, thirty-one wounded, twelve unwounded prisoners. We lost nine, seven wounded. Crows all released—some followed the retreat, may circle back."
He nodded once. "Nine for nine. The ridge accepts rent."
The Ledger Continues
They worked through noon, turning victory into fortress.
Pioneers hacked firing steps, scouts laid dead-man caltrops on the reverse slope—iron spikes tethered by trip cords painted white, invisible under trampled snow.
Lan walked the perimeter, testing joints, listening for the hollow thunk that meant sabotage.
She found none, but she found something else: a second ledger.
In the command dugout—a pit roofed with pine logs and turf—a field desk had been abandoned: ivory tube, green wax, Wei Lian's seal unbroken.
Inside, not orders, but accounts—a duplicate of the parchment from Black Candle Gorge, but extended: grain totals, powder tallies, pay schedules… and a new column:
"Ridge garrison—expendable. Shen's hunger—asset. Let him feed, then bill."
She carried it to Shen.
He read, face stone.
"So the salt circle, the grain, the nine kneeling corpses—all advance payment. Wei wants us fed, strong, confident—so the debt weighs heavier when called."
He looked west, down the long slope to where Wei's main camp now stirred like a kicked anthill—white squares reforming, ox-bows re-sited, trebuchets taking womb-shape behind screens of wicker.
"He'll offer terms before dusk," Shen said. "And the interest will be us."
Lan felt the ridge sway slightly—not earth, but certainty shifting.
She remembered her own blood on the ice at the ford, Shen's palm-print on the wagon, the woman who jumped from the cliff.
Each payment had been accepted, receipt stamped by wind or stone.
Soon the landlord would present the full bill.
Shen folded the new parchment, tucked it inside the same wrist that still bled.
"Then we keep the ridge," he said. "And when the bill comes, we pay in the only coin that never devalues—time and iron."
He turned to the valley, raised his bandaged hand.
From Wei's camp a single horn answered—low, mournful, patient.
The crows, expelled at dawn, wheeled overhead once more, undecided whose rent to collect.