Huailing woke to the sound of war.
Our lines had not moved in two days, but they had grown teeth. Earthworks ringed the city now, trenches and palisades closing like a slow fist. Fifteen thousand men stood in quiet readiness, each day closer, each night less human.
The dawn was gray, the kind that made men see ghosts at the edge of the palisades. The rams stood waiting under wet hides, glistening like beasts in rain. The trebuchets were already cranked back, ropes creaking like the joints of an old man refusing to die.
Inside the walls, the last of the oxen had been slaughtered. Smoke from the kitchens rose thin, acrid — boiling leather, millet husks, anything that could be turned into broth. In the hall of Huailing, Wu Kang sat propped against a lacquered chair, his left arm bound and spotted dark where the wound kept seeping. The physician had begged him to rest, but he refused.
"They are closer each morning," said his chief lieutenant, kneeling.
"Then build the walls higher," Wu Kang said, though his voice was hoarse.
"We have no stone left."
"Then take it from the houses. A wall still standing is worth more than a roof."
The lieutenant hesitated. "The men have begun to eat grass from the stables. Morale—"
"Morale is not a ration," Wu Kang snapped. "They can be hungry and fight. They cannot be fed and dead."
He stood despite the pain, walking to the map spread across the floor. The crack in the southern wall had grown even in the last day's sketch. His jaw tightened.
"Hold until the riverboats bring grain," he said, though he no longer believed they would come.
Outside the walls, we began.
The first stone from the trebuchet struck the western tower and took its roof with it. The second bit a corner from the curtain wall. The third turned a ballista crew into red fragments.
The city answered with fire-tubes and powder pots, the thunder of them rolling across the field, but most fell short. The few that struck set our mantlets ablaze, and men pushed them forward anyway, faces black with soot, coughing like old priests.
By noon, the field was a graveyard of splintered wood and shattered stone, but we had gained ten paces. Siege ladders moved forward under shields, not in a charge but a slow, terrible walk, as if every step carved another day off Huailing's life.
Shen Yue worked the flanks, cutting down sally parties before they could strike. His men no longer shouted victory when they killed; they simply turned and waited for the next order.
At dusk, we fired the first fire arrows. They hissed as they rose, arcing high and slow before falling into the city. One struck a granary roof, and flames climbed until the whole structure was a black torch. From the north tower, Wu Kang watched it burn. His good hand clenched the parapet until the nails split.
"Send word to every house," he told his lieutenant. "Collect every sack of rice, every jar. If they hide food, hang them."
That night, we did not rest. Trenches crept closer, zigzagging toward the wall like a script the city was being forced to read. Drums beat at intervals, not to encourage but to measure the work — one strike for the baskets filled, two for the stakes driven, three for the ladders moved forward another span.
By dawn, the southern wall showed new cracks. The gate beams groaned with each impact of the ram.
Wu Kang stood again on the north tower, wrapped in a cloak, pale from loss of blood and sleep. He could smell the dead horse pits from here. Below, his men tightened belts to fool their stomachs. He saw one kneeling with a scrap of charred leather between his teeth and looked away.
"Commander," the lieutenant said behind him, "if we do not act—"
"If we open the gates, they will butcher the city."
"And if we do not?"
Wu Kang said nothing.
Outside, the ram struck again, and again, until the gate sagged in its frame like a tooth waiting to fall.
At night, we lit no fires. Fifteen thousand men stood in the dark, waiting, the walls of Huailing outlined only by moonlight. From within the city came no sound except the coughing of its watchmen and the creak of ropes over empty wells.
At midnight, I placed my hand on the gate. It was warm — not from torches, but from the bodies pressed against it, praying to hold it shut.
"They will break," Shen Yue said beside me, his face drawn but calm.
"They will," I said.
"And if they do not?"
"Then tomorrow we go in and show them how."
The silence under my ribs stirred, heavy and cold. The night smelled of powder, hunger, and fear. Somewhere in the city, Wu Kang bled.
When I turned away, not even the wind dared to move the torches.