The fourth day of siege began with silence.
No horns. No drums. Only the soft grind of sleet on stone and the small sounds of a city that had forgotten how to sleep and remembered how to wait.
Ziyan stood on the north wall and felt that silence like a hand on her throat. Noise meant the wolves were where you could see them. Quiet meant they were deciding a new way to bite.
"Too still," Wei muttered, rolling his shoulders. "I liked it better when they shouted first."
Feiyan shaded her eyes with one hand, the other resting on the hilt at her hip. "They're shifting," she said. "On the far right. Toward the river."
Ziyan followed her gaze. Xia's lines had thinned opposite the main gate. Banners there hung heavy, as if their bearers had been told to stand, not move. Farther east, though, near the dirty band of ice where the river pinched close to the wall, movement gathered: small units, bundles of what could be planks or ladders or something newer.
"Ren's done banging his head on the same stones," Ziyan said. "He's going to test the banks."
"The culverts again?" Wei asked.
Feiyan shook her head. "Deeper. Where the ice looks thick."
Ziyan glanced down the wall. Runners waited with messages tucked under belts. Archers flexed their fingers, breathed on bowstrings. Bucket lines shifted their weight from foot to foot.
"Han holds the river quarter today," Li Qiang said. "He knows the plan."
"He knows part of it," Ziyan replied. "He doesn't know what we learned last night."
Feiyan's mouth quirked. "You mean what Lin Tao's cousin told you when he realized we weren't going to cut his head off."
"Exactly," Ziyan said.
Lin Tao's cousin had been talkative once the fear of immediate execution had passed. The Xia scout who approached him hadn't only promised grain; he'd pointed out a weakness: an old gap in the ice where the current cut a deep channel under what looked like safe surface. The plan had been simple. Slip a dozen men across there at dawn, come up under the neglected east tower, open a sally gate while the main assault hit the north.
Now Ren was sending more than a dozen.
"Signal Han," Ziyan said. "Green flag, twice. And send Shuye."
Wei cupped his hands, bellowed down the line. Flags rose, dipped, rose again. On the far spur of wall above the river quarter, an answering strip of cloth fluttered, small but clear.
Below, in the courtyards, Shuye grabbed his pack and two jars that were almost as tall as his knee.
"You're late," Ren the scribe said, appearing with an armful of rolled law slips.
"I'm right on time," Shuye said. "Try not to die before I make the bridge angry."
He ran.
At the river, winter had done its work in fits. The main current ran black and fast, but wide skirts of ice lay thick at the edges, opaque, dulled by wind and ash. Han stood on the inner bank, cloak whipped by gusts, eyes narrow.
He saw Xia's move as soon as the wall did. Light infantry, rope-coils, planks in hand, edging down toward the water where the ground sloped gentler.
"Archers!" Han barked. "Aim for legs and hands. Make them regret walking."
A ragged volley answered. Men in Xia colors stumbled, some falling into the water and flailing as the current grabbed them. But more came, shields raised overhead, using bodies and wood and stubbornness to push out onto the ice at the bottleneck where the river bent.
The ice held.
"Too thick," one of Han's lieutenants muttered.
Shuye arrived then, breath smoking, jars thumping against his sides. "Not for long," he said.
Han arched one brow. "You're going to melt the river?"
"Break it," Shuye said. "Melting is for patient people."
They scrambled down to the lower ledge, slick with frozen spray. Han planted his boots, hands braced against the rock. Shuye set one jar at the lip where stone met ice, then another a pace away, fingers moving with potter's precision even in the cold.
"The current runs hardest here," he said, more to himself than to Han. "The water wants out. We just…remind it."
He lit both fuses with a single torch and flattened himself against the bank, hands over his head. Han hauled him back by the collar for good measure and bellowed up at his nearest men, "Mouths shut, eyes down!"
The jars went off with a double thump that they felt more than heard—sound choked by snow, swallowed by water. For a heartbeat nothing changed.
Then a crackline shot through the ice like a drawn character, swift and merciless. Another followed, intersecting. The whole sheet shivered. Where the current was strongest, a jagged mouth opened, swallowing cold and air.
The first ranks of Xia on the frozen surface had just enough time to realize the ground beneath their boots had become opinion, not fact.
Ice gave. Men shouted, shields clattered, planks skidded. Some managed to leap back to thicker footing. Others dropped straight through, armor turning from protection to weight in an instant. The river, given an excuse to be cruel, took it eagerly.
On the wall, a roar climbed.
Ziyan held it in with a raised hand. "Don't cheer too loud," she said. "They can still shoot."
But even she felt the small, hard satisfaction when Han's men pelted the retreating sappers with arrows and insult, and the icy mouth widened, hungrily erasing the path Xia had thought solid.
"That's one trick gone," Feiyan said. "Ren will try the next one soon enough."
"He's already trying," Ziyan said.
The main line at the north had begun to move.