2.6 KiB
The wind scraped across the outpost ridge like a whetstone on steel, its scream thin and high. Marcas stood wrapped in his cloak of slate-gray wool, the Imperial clasp at his throat catching stray flecks of frost. Below, the city of Winter’s Edge hunched against the mountains like a beast awaiting slaughter—its walls patched, its banners threadbare.
He watched the small group wind their way up the pass. Four figures, bundled in black and brown, leaving through the southern gate with neither ceremony nor escort. No horses. No carts. Just resolve.
“Another refugee sortie?” one of the officers muttered beside him.
Marcas shook his head.
“No. They carry themselves differently.”
He adjusted the lens of his field-glass, training it on the smallest of the four. A boy, by the gait. Then a woman with a medic’s satchel. A scholar with a scroll-case strapped to his back. And the one who walked at their front—the one with a cloak unpinned but held in place by will alone.
Even at this distance, the way she moved arrested the eye.
“She’s the princess,” he said aloud, mostly to himself.
The officer beside him frowned. “But why leave the city now? They’ll find no sanctuary in those mountains. No settlements. No loyalist fort. Nothing but ice and bone.”
Marcas said nothing.
Because it didn’t make sense. Not by military logic, nor survival instinct. Winter’s Edge could hold—if only for a few days. It wasn’t wise to abandon it, not unless the city had already outlived its purpose. Or unless—
“Unless she’s not running,” he murmured.
From behind him, a figure approached without sound—Verrin, the Magister-Legate, clad in the austere grey robes of the Third Legion’s esoteric order. His face was pale, his eyes steady and unreadable.
“You feel it too,” Verrin said softly.
Marcas didn’t answer at once. His gaze lingered on the trail vanishing into the Mourning Peaks.
“She’s after something,” he finally said. “Not fleeing. Hunting.”
Verrin inclined his head. “Then the question becomes: what in those mountains could be worth a kingdom?”
Marcas turned.
“Ready a detachment,” he said. “Five riders. No more. Discreet. I want them close, but unseen.”
“A hunch?”
“A warning,” Marcas replied. “Like frost forming on dry stone. You can’t see the water—but it’s always been there.”
The blood sorcerer tilted his head slightly.
“You suspect sorcery?”
Marcas frowned. “I suspect purpose. And that… frightens me more.”
They stood in silence as the wind moaned across the pass. Far below, the last of the four vanished over the ridgeline.