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Frozen Blood on the Yarkand
Xiyu, 65 AD — Winter’s Black Breath
You crouch low in the snow, the sinew of your bow creaking in the cold, and your breath clawing out of your throat in ragged white bursts. The Yarkand River lies below, frozen to the bone, slick and wide like a stretched tendon across the land. Around you, nothing but wind, salt-frozen scrub, and the crunch of your boots over buried gravel.
You’re not alone. Two others — grim men with scars deeper than memory — fan out ahead of you, watching the ice, bows in hand, knives ready. You’re here to scout. Kill what’s worth killing. Strip what’s worth stripping. Let the riders behind you take care of whatever’s left.
Then you see her.
A lone figure crouched over a hole in the ice. Woman. Pale-skinned. Wrapped in rags. Her back is to you, spine bent like an old branch. A half-rotted fur cloak barely covers her shoulders. The kind of cloak a dead man leaves behind. She has a stick-spear in one hand, a crude thing, and beside her sits a wooden bucket half full of fish — bright silver, still twitching.
Your gut snarls before your mouth does. Seven fish. Enough to feed your blood brothers. Enough to stretch the next two days without biting raw sinew from dried horsehide.
You don’t speak. Words are a waste here.
You draw.
The bow moans under the strain. You feel the frostbite tug at your fingers, splitting the skin, blood drying against the cord. You breathe once.
And loose.
The arrow punches the wind and buries itself into the base of her neck. A thud, muffled. No scream — just a sharp twitch, a choking gasp, and then silence. Her hands scrabble at the ice for half a second before she collapses face-first. One fish flops beside her boot. The rest don’t move.
You walk up slow. One of the men flanks her body, arrow still nocked. No one trusts the dead anymore. Not out here.
She’s young. Younger than you’d guessed. Maybe sixteen. Her face is half-frozen, lips cracked, blood running thick down her throat into the ice hole, clouding the water below. Her fingers are blistered, nails black with cold and labor. You kick her body to make sure. No sound. Just the wet crunch of cartilage giving way under your boot.
You grab the bucket.
The fish slap against each other like meat in a butcher’s hands. Still warm. You don’t look at her again. You don’t bother closing her eyes.
One of the others crouches and slits her throat anyway. “In case she talks to ghosts,” he mutters. His voice is flat. Like cutting bark off a tree.
You smash the fishing hole with your heel. It’ll freeze over tonight. No one will find her for days, maybe weeks. If the wolves don’t get to her first.
Back up the bank, your horses wait. The air stinks of old blood, leather, and sweat. You sling the bucket over your shoulder and start the climb.
The wind sings like a blade through the stones. And you keep walking.
Because out here, the only law that matters is what you can take before someone takes it from you.
Xiyu, 65 AD — Winter’s Black Breath
You crouch low in the snow, the sinew of your bow creaking in the cold, and your breath clawing out of your throat in ragged white bursts. The Yarkand River lies below, frozen to the bone, slick and wide like a stretched tendon across the land. Around you, nothing but wind, salt-frozen scrub, and the crunch of your boots over buried gravel.
You’re not alone. Two others — grim men with scars deeper than memory — fan out ahead of you, watching the ice, bows in hand, knives ready. You’re here to scout. Kill what’s worth killing. Strip what’s worth stripping. Let the riders behind you take care of whatever’s left.
Then you see her.
A lone figure crouched over a hole in the ice. Woman. Pale-skinned. Wrapped in rags. Her back is to you, spine bent like an old branch. A half-rotted fur cloak barely covers her shoulders. The kind of cloak a dead man leaves behind. She has a stick-spear in one hand, a crude thing, and beside her sits a wooden bucket half full of fish — bright silver, still twitching.
Your gut snarls before your mouth does. Seven fish. Enough to feed your blood brothers. Enough to stretch the next two days without biting raw sinew from dried horsehide.
You don’t speak. Words are a waste here.
You draw.
The bow moans under the strain. You feel the frostbite tug at your fingers, splitting the skin, blood drying against the cord. You breathe once.
And loose.
The arrow punches the wind and buries itself into the base of her neck. A thud, muffled. No scream — just a sharp twitch, a choking gasp, and then silence. Her hands scrabble at the ice for half a second before she collapses face-first. One fish flops beside her boot. The rest don’t move.
You walk up slow. One of the men flanks her body, arrow still nocked. No one trusts the dead anymore. Not out here.
She’s young. Younger than you’d guessed. Maybe sixteen. Her face is half-frozen, lips cracked, blood running thick down her throat into the ice hole, clouding the water below. Her fingers are blistered, nails black with cold and labor. You kick her body to make sure. No sound. Just the wet crunch of cartilage giving way under your boot.
You grab the bucket.
The fish slap against each other like meat in a butcher’s hands. Still warm. You don’t look at her again. You don’t bother closing her eyes.
One of the others crouches and slits her throat anyway. “In case she talks to ghosts,” he mutters. His voice is flat. Like cutting bark off a tree.
You smash the fishing hole with your heel. It’ll freeze over tonight. No one will find her for days, maybe weeks. If the wolves don’t get to her first.
Back up the bank, your horses wait. The air stinks of old blood, leather, and sweat. You sling the bucket over your shoulder and start the climb.
The wind sings like a blade through the stones. And you keep walking.
Because out here, the only law that matters is what you can take before someone takes it from you.
