The night wind was like a blade wrapped in shards of ice, sweeping over the bare slope of Coal Hill and stirring up dust and an overwhelming smell of gunpowder. The stench seeped into my nostrils, metallic and bloody, shooting straight to my head. I clutched a length of cold, slick white silk in my hand, my knuckles whitening from the force, almost digging into the fine fabric. The other end of the silk was tied to the lowest branch of a crooked old locust tree, swaying faintly in the wind like a dying snake
