Forging Armor

On the day he was conscripted, Chen Tie memorized every face: five cavalrymen, with the leader missing half a little finger. His mother shoved a shoe sole into his arms and said, “Come back alive.” At the Mang Army’s new recruit camp, the drillmaster beat a deserter to death. The veterans spoke of the trenches: one zhang deep, with sharpened stakes, and the recruits were the quickest to fill them. Run and die, stay and die, fill the trench and die. But Chen Tie had eyes trained in the furrows and ears that could tell iron-shod boots from cloth soles. He made himself the least noticeable soldier in the camp, then climbed inch by inch through this man-eating age. He climbed out of the trenches, crossed the Wei River, and entered the snows of Yanmen Pass. His surname was Chen, his given name Tie. Wearing armor that gathered frost, he made this ravenous world afraid to look down on him.