The snow in the Land of Iron was hard.
The transport stopped on the outskirts of Frost Harbor. Farther north lay the sled trails, where wheels would sink into frozen ice ruts and refuse to budge. Serina wrapped herself in an old samurai cloak Kikyo had sent ahead to the border checkpoint. Its coarse fur collar scratched her face, but it kept out the wind. She tucked her medical bag inside the cloak against her chest. The Steel Ruler pressed into her ribs, reassuringly solid.
The sled driver was a young border-patrol samurai from the Land of Iron named Sanai. He said little, turning back only twice along the way to remind her, "Tuck your feet into the bearskin sack. Don't leave your toes exposed." The sled dogs ran fast, their footfalls brittle as ice chips. The wind scraped her face like someone rubbing it over and over with fine sandpaper. No chakra to ward off the cold, just physical insulation-the same principle as prying open the dispatch console with the Steel Ruler at Otogakure's old site: don't count on cheats; bundle yourself up first.
At noon on the third day, several gray-brown felt tents appeared at the end of the snow line. That was the Snow Valley outpost, the Land of Iron's northernmost seasonal station. They withdrew in summer and returned in winter, chiefly to watch the abandoned national road leading toward the old battlefield on the northern frontier. A stripped birch pole stood at the entrance, bearing a black flag of the Land of Iron frozen stiff. When the wind blew, the flag clattered like sheet metal.
Kikyo stood beneath the flagpole, waiting for her.
She was noticeably thinner than she had been at the martial lecture platform in Frost Harbor. The iron cover over her left eye