The scouts rode out at wolf-hour—Lan at the wedge, twenty riders, cloaks lined with river-cold.
Their orders were simple on parchment: feel for the enemy's forward teeth; count them; come back before the moon sets.
Simple and lethal—like a blade wiped clean of fingerprints.
They followed the Ice-Ridge Fork under silence discipline: no iron that could clink, no songs that could echo.
Snow muffled hoofbeats; frost muffled breath.
Only the river spoke, muttering under a skin of new ice—thin as a lie, twice as treacherous.
Half a league short of the fork's bend Lan raised a gloved fist.
The column halted in a single sigh of steam.
Ahead, moonlight showed no ridge, only a black seam where the water had not frozen: the enemy had broken the ice to mask crossing points.
Fresh hoof-prints rimmed the gap—many, shod in the broad nail-pattern of Wei Lian's heavy cavalry.
But the prints led west, not east toward Stone-Coffin Pass where Wei Lian was supposed to be dying for the Empire.
They led toward Shen's own supply road.
Lan knelt, touched a print; the slush had set like wet clay—less than an hour old.
Her pulse matched the river's mutter.
Betrayal or desperation?
Either way, the mountain had moved while Shen slept.
She signed: spread fan, pairs, no tracks back.
Two scouts peeled left; two right; the rest waited, arrows already on strings of gut and frost.
She unclasped the white-jade arrowhead Wei Lian had pressed on her—still wrapped in silk, cold as regret.
A charm, a bribe, a beacon.
She buried it under river gravel, point down.
If his men came looking, they would find their own coin returned.
Then she heard it: the low creak of wagon-axle, not war-horse.
Supply sleds, maybe—yet sleds did not usually travel under guard of heavy cavalry.
She motioned; the scouts melted into reed-shadows.
The convoy emerged: twenty sleds, canvas lashed, each drawn by six mules steaming like kettles.
Beside them rode white-cloaked riders—Wei's colours—but their helms were blackened with soot, badges reversed.
Disguise half-done, like a woman who powders only one cheek.
Lan counted: forty riders, maybe forty-five.
Enough to gut a supply train, not enough to storm a fortress.
Their purpose must be to burn what Shen needed before the real battle began.
She drew breath, let it freeze in front of her eyes.
Regulation said: report first, strike later.
Instinct said: if these sleds carry fire-oil, the road dies tonight.
She whistled—three notes, river-tern's cry.
From both banks arrows whispered; not at riders, but at mules.
Animals screamed, sleds jack-knifed; the ice answered with spider-cracks.
Guards wheeled, forming ring.
Lan's scouts slid forward, ghost-white on white, loosing again—this time into torch-hands.
Fire dropped, sputtered on snow.
A rider broke the ring, galloping hard up-river—courier, probably, to warn whoever waited downstream.
Lan kicked her mare into the open, bow drawn.
The courier was faster; distance widened.
She reached instinctively for the pouch—empty of jade, full of ordinary heads.
Then she remembered Shen's last words: Bring her back whole; the river owes me interest.
She exhaled, let the arrow fly.
It kissed the courier's hood but did not bite—warning shot.
The rider swerved, lost rhythm; ice gave under the horse's hind hoof.
Both vanished in a crack like cannon-shot, water flashing black teeth.
Silence swallowed them; the river closed without echo.
On the road her scouts had finished the work: riders dismounted, sleds overturned.
Canvas slit—what spilled glowed red even in moonlight.
Not oil.
Iron shot.
Siege balls, small enough for catapults Shen had not yet positioned.
Wei Lian was not burning supplies; he was planting them—so Shen's own engines could turn and fire on his camp when the time came.
A trap wearing Shen's face.
She swore once, softly.
Time had thinned to ice itself.
They could not haul forty sleds back; they could not burn them here—smoke would summon more wolves than they could kill.
She signed: crack axles, dump loads, ride.
Scouts set wedges, split runners; iron shot rolled like apples onto the ice.
When the river refroze it would lock them deep—useless to either prince.
Small victory, but the only coin they could spend.
They turned homeward, hooves muffled.
Behind them the ruined convoy settled, groaning.
Somewhere beneath the ice the courier drifted, white banner tangled with river-weed—message undelivered, warning complete.
Dawn was still a rumor when Lan clattered into the fortress.
Shen met her on the lower stair, cloak half-buttoned, eyes storm-lit.
She poured the story out between breaths that smoked like fresh blood.
When she finished he simply nodded, once, and turned to the map wall.
With a stylus he scratched a new line—westward, then curling back like a noose.
The river had shown him Wei Lian's mirror-strategy: two princes chasing the same sky, reflections that might meet at the throat.
He spoke without looking at her.
"Good work. Rest two hours. Then we ride to Ice-Ridge Ford—before the river finishes freezing upside down."
She saluted, fatigue suddenly leaden in her bones.
As she stepped into the corridor she felt the white-jade arrowhead she had buried—its absence like a ghost weight.
Somewhere downstream Wei Lian would find it, point down, silk fluttering.
A coin returned, a message sent: I refused you once; the river refuses you now.
Outside, the first pale crack showed in the east—moon surrendering to a sun still hidden.
Between them the sky stayed iron-hard, waiting to see which prince would break first.