Chapter 16: The Pass

Ken buried the twelve dressed men himself, with his hands, and would not let Ren help.

"Somebody wanted the East to burn and the West to take the blame," he said. "Or the other way round."

"Either way, a column marches," Ren said.

They rode for the northern pass with the dead men's collars in a bundle, and the burned border behind them.

Ryu held the pass for four days with nine hundred wolves and one sentence.

The sentence was: wait for the paper.

The Western column camped below the pass in the cold, two hundred riders and a captain who kept looking at the ridges.

On the fifth morning a lone rider came up the road at a walk.

Ryu watched him come from the rocks.

Ren sat the horse badly, with his coat open, and a bundle of letters strapped across his chest.

Su Ming rode at his side in green, with a handful of Southern lancers behind them, and Ken came last, grim, with the bundle of collars on his saddle.

Ryu slid down from the ridge and stood in the road.

Ren saw him and pulled up so fast the horse sidestepped.

"You're thin," Ren said.

"I ate."

"You didn't."

"I ate a little."

Ren laughed, short and cracked, and then he got down from the horse and walked into him.

Ryu stood still for a moment, because he was not used to being held in daylight.

Then he put his arms around Ren's back.

The Western captain read the new order twice.

He held it beside his own, the one with the smooth wax, and he turned them in the light.

"The nick," he said. "I'd forgotten the nick. The old king used to joke about dropping it on the stairs."

"Will you stand down?" Ren asked.

"My lord, I have been standing in the cold for four days waiting to be told I was wrong." The captain took off his helmet. "We'll go home."

Behind him, two hundred horsemen began to turn their horses south.

Ryu said nothing.

He had said very little to anyone in three years, and the silence still sat heavy in his mouth.

That night, Su Ming found him on the ridge alone.

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