Ice-Ridge Ford lay under a moon so low it seemed to balance on the river's backbone.
Lan rode point, scouts strung behind like black beads.
Behind them the Black Banner's main column—three thousand horse, two thousand foot—moved under silence orders: no torches, no songs, no iron striking iron.
The river itself had become a drum; every hoofbeat cracked the skin of new frost.
Shen rode somewhere in the column's heart, cloak reversed to wolf-grey, visor drawn.
Lan had not seen his face since the fortress gate, only the tilt of his helmet when scouts reported: ice holds, enemy unseen, wind rising.
Three sentences, each a stone dropped in still water.
They reached the ford an hour before moonset.
The place was sacred in local tongue—Where the Moon is Weighed—because the river widened here, slowing, so that on midsummer nights the reflection hung perfect and round.
Tonight the moon lay broken into a thousand white shards, refreezing even as horses shattered it.
Lan signalled halt.
She dismounted, knelt, pressed bare palm to the ice.
Thickness: two fingers—enough for scouts, not for supply wagons.
Across the ford the opposite bank rose in a black wall of pines; between pines and water, a shelf of snow unmarked—no tracks, no patrol, too clean.
Her pulse quickened.
Unmarked could mean unwalked, or swept.
She whistled low—her second, Korin, crawled forward on belly, lantern shuttered.
Together they measured the shelf with a rope knotted every ten paces.
At the fourth knot the rope jerked taut, then slackened—something had moved beneath the snow, not on it.
Korin's eyes widened: pit cover?
Lan signed: probe.
They drew slim iron rods, slid them through the crust.
First rod met resistance—hard, flat—plank.
Second rod sank deeper, then struck void.
A pit, plank-roofed, snow-camouflaged.
Classic ambush geometry: let the vanguard cross, drop planks, fire from tree-line while rear stalls on thin ice.
Lan crawled back, mind racing.
Regulation said: report, await orders.
But moonset was a closing door; dawn would thin the ice further, trap the whole column in the open.
She looked south along the bank—an oxbow curved away, its ice thicker, banks lower.
A detour of half a league, but it would place them up-wind of the pine wall.
Risk trade: ice versus arrows.
She whistled three notes—call the captain of pioneers.
Minutes later a big man with a beard full of frost crawled beside her.
She sketched with her finger: pits here, unknown numbers, unknown bows. Option: sweep and clear, or detour south.
He studied the moonlit snow, grunted: detour faster, quieter, keeps wagons alive.
Decision made.
She sent Korin back along the column with the silent signal—south curl, single file, no horns.
Then she stayed, six scouts, to mask the move.
They would fake the first crossing: ride halfway, pound the ice, shout, even loose a few arrows into the pines—enough to keep ambushers crouched in their holes while the real column slipped downstream.
Timing became a blade without handle.
She heard the Black Banner begin its slow southward snake—hooves muffled in cloth, wagon wheels wrapped rawhide.
When the last tail vanished into dark she rose, drew her bow, and sent a flaming arrow across the ford.
It hissed into a pine, burst resin-bright.
From the tree-line came answering sparks—crossbows, strings released too soon, bolts thudding into ice around her.
Perfect.
They thought the vanguard was coming.
She kicked her mare forward, six scouts fanning.
Halfway across they halted, beat swords on shields, yelled taunts in two dialects.
More bolts answered; one clipped her shoulder-guard, whined away.
She counted the rhythm—twang…twang…pause…twang—at least thirty crossbows, maybe forty.
Enough to massacre a fording column, not enough to stop three thousand once unmasked.
But they still held the high ground and the pits.
She whistled retreat, wheeling back.
As they reached bank the moon touched horizon—blood-red through haze.
For one heartbeat the river turned crimson, ice floes like broken shields.
In that heartbeat the pines erupted—white-cloaked riders, Wei Lian's colours, but helms blacked out for night work.
They charged the ford, thinking prey fled.
Lan's heart slammed.
The ruse had worked too well; they were pursuing, and would cross straight onto the thinner ice her own column had abandoned.
If they broke through, Shen's rear would meet them blade-to-blade on the oxbow—chaos, wagons lost.
She had to close the door.
She yanked the last fire-arrow from her quiver, touched it to her tinder-box, and loosed not at men but at the plank-covered pit mid-stream.
Flame licked tarred rope; planks sagged, cracked, collapsed.
The lead horse plunged through, screaming; ice spider-webbed outward.
Behind it riders bunched, reined hard—too late.
Weight concentrated, ice gave in a chain of thunderclaps.
Horses flailed, men spilled into black water.
Crossbows on the far bank fired wildly, hitting their own.
Lan did not wait.
She signalled scatter, scouts melting into riverside willow.
Behind her the ford became a churn of white water and white cloaks, moonlight glinting on helmets like coins thrown after the dead.
She rode hard south, following the column's trail.
Two miles she found Shen at the oxbow tail, wagons already halfway across thicker ice.
He saw her blood-splashed shoulder, the empty quiver, the look she wore.
His gauntlet lifted—report.
She managed three words:
"Ambush broken. Ice swallowed them."
He studied the horizon where the moon had vanished, then the river carrying distant cries.
"Count?" he asked.
"Forty, maybe fifty. Enough."
He nodded once, as if closing a ledger.
"Good. Then we owe the river nothing tonight."
He turned to the column, signed forward, and rode on without looking back.
But as he passed her, his knee brushed her mare's flank—a touch no regulation covered, brief as frost joining skin.
Ahead, the eastern sky paled, iron turning to pewter.
Somewhere behind, Wei Lian's drowned riders drifted under refreezing skin, white cloaks billowing like lost banners.
The ford where the moon was weighed had taken its sacrifice; the scale had tipped, but no one yet knew which prince it favored.
Lan exhaled steam, straightened in the saddle, and followed the Black Banner west—toward a sun still hidden, toward a debt still counting interest.