Dawn came thin as wire. Frost filmed the jar's lid, and for a moment Ziyan thought she could hear it hum—a trick of breath, or of memory trying to be useful. The river wore a skin where the current slowed, glass fragile as manners. Men ate because orders said so. Words were few. The horses steamed like small furnaces.
Feiyan sat with her leg stretched, stone under the thigh to keep the blood honest. Each pull of the whetstone along her knife sounded like a fact. Wei lay on his back and stared at the white sky, hands folded as if in prayer, mouth set as if in argument. Shuye erased and redrew a plan on a plank so many times that the grain began to look like the river it was meant to convince.
"The ice is not thick," Huo said, squatting at the bank. "A child could break it with a stick. A general will try with ten thousand boots."
"Then we will be the stick," Ziyan said.
Han came, armor buckled close, expression unfooled by hope. He studied the oil jars sunk in the shallows the night before—veins of pitch stitched to wicks hidden in reed mats. Shuye tapped one wick and smiled as if greeting a friend.
"At your signal," Han said, not asking for one.
"At the second wave," Ziyan said. "We let them believe. Then we argue."
They took their places. Huo's archers hunkered against the low ridge, arrows tipped in resin. Wei's line crouched behind a hummocked rise, spears grounded, eyes flat. Li Qiang stood at the west ford where the river shoaled; the light touched his cheek and found it had run out of ways to make him look different from the man who stood there yesterday and the day before that—stubborn, capable, unremarkable until men tried to move him.
The first drums from the far bank rolled out like thunder that had been taught how to pronounce each syllable. Engineers in thick coats moved, shields lifted above their heads in neat rectangles, the way men lift lies together. Sappers followed, laying out planks and latticed frames; behind them, ranks of infantry stepped onto the ice with the arrogance of those who had never fallen through anything important.
"Now?" Wei breathed.
"Not for faith," Ziyan said. "For proof."
Feiyan tilted her head, listening to the river with the same ear she used for enemies. "It has not decided," she murmured. "It is only being polite."
The first boots crossed the skin without complaint. A cheer studded with relief rose from the far bank. The second wave came on heavier—pontoons shouldered onto the ice and lashed together, each one a promise made to fear. Banners bobbed. The engineers gestured, pleased to see the world perform according to the instruments they had brought.
"Now," Ziyan said.
Huo's torch found the hidden line of oil as if it had always meant to; fire ran along the water like copper drawn across a plate. A trembling hiss, then a shout, then the crack and bellow of ice remembering it was not land. The nearest lattice sagged like manners in a tavern. Men went down, some under, some to their knees, boots vanishing in black mouths that had no intention of speaking again. The pontoon line bucked, twisted, tore itself. Pikes rattled. One shield wall fell all at once, perfect as choreography and twice as cruel.
Li Qiang's voice cut beside the west ford, shaping chaos into work. Wei's line surged to the crest and stood there, insolent as a proverb. Huo's archers delaminated their quivers and stitched the far bank where officers clustered to pretend they were not surprised.
"Hold," Ziyan said, to the men as much as to herself. "Hold and be seen."
It worked long enough to be called victory. Then the third wave came on with tarps soaked in silted ash and resin that spat at flame. Engineers shouldered new spans, thinner and more clever, learning the ice as they went—heavier where cracked, lighter where whole. From behind the pontoon train, a screen of shieldmen stepped in lockstep, their boots finding purchase as if obstinacy were a surface.
"They brought men who have met rivers before," Han said, displeased to be impressed. "Good. I have been bored."
The ice went to shards near the center channel and still the line pushed. Arrows slowed; men learned to hide behind a different geometry. Wei cursed in a style popular with craftsmen and thieves and charged out to break the rhythm, spear punching through a man's certainty mid-stride. The line held another ten breaths. On the west ford, the weight pressed and pressed until Li Qiang's heels carved grooves in gravel and his sword arm described ideas whose language had stopped bothering with adjectives.
"We can't keep them off here," Huo said, dry mouth honest. "Not for the time you want."
"Good," Ziyan said.
Han cut her a look. "Good?"
"We only needed them to believe the river was the argument," Ziyan said. "It isn't. It's the introduction."
She turned to Shuye. "Spread it."