5.4 KiB
The air was thin as glass. Cold enough to make breath brittle. Cold enough to hide the stink of death, but not the shape of it.
Snow blanketed the slope like a burial shroud, concealing shattered bodies beneath folds of white. Helmets jutted from the drifts like broken bells, spears like skeletal limbs. One had impaled a twisted standard—the Legion’s crescent rising from crimson silk, stiff with ice.
Legate Marcas stood at the perimeter, his boots half-buried, arms folded beneath his dark cloak. His breath misted and vanished. Around him, the surviving scouts moved like ghosts, digging slowly, methodically, in silence.
One turned. A lean man in a scale vest, his face dusted with frost.
“Fifteen confirmed, sir. At least ten more unaccounted for—likely under the ice.”
Marcas nodded once.
“Any survivors?”
The scout hesitated. “Just one.”
Marcas’s gaze flicked toward a shape being dragged from a cedar’s twisted shadow. Two soldiers carried the man between them like a ruined banner. He groaned, barely conscious, legs dangling—one clearly shattered, the other twisted at the thigh.
They laid him in the snow, propped on a folded cloak. His mouth moved before his eyes opened.
“Speak,” Marcas said, kneeling beside him.
The soldier stared at the sky. His pupils were pinpricks. Dried blood flaked from his nostrils, frozen at the corners of his mouth.
“They were ahead,” the man whispered. “Too far to see. We chased by sound… footprints… and then…” His breath hitched. “The slope broke. Snow came down like a wall. Not just snow—stone. The air screamed.”
Marcas studied him, expression flat. “Did they attack you?”
“No. No blades.” The man’s fingers clawed at the ice. “The mountain turned on us. It bled. Like it was angry.”
Behind them, a cry rang out. A soldier had uncovered a pale hand, curled in the snow, the fingers black with frostbite.
Then came the sound of hooves. Not steady. Limping. Wet.
The scout turned, hand going to his sidearm. But he froze.
A horse shambled from the trees. Gaunt. Blood around its flanks. One eye sealed shut with scar tissue. Its rider slumped forward, gripping the reins with hands burned black at the knuckles.
Verrin.
He did not speak as he dismounted. He fell, barely catching himself, robes torn and singed. His left arm hung dead at his side. His hair had been singed off in patches. His skin gleamed like wax—glassy and raw.
Marcas approached, unflinching.
“You live.”
Verrin looked up, his face the color of ash. “Not by much.”
Marcas’s gaze sharpened. “You were swept under.”
“I was buried,” Verrin hissed. “The spirits of the peaks clawed at me. Cold ones. Blind ones. I bound one. Bled into its lungs. It showed me a path.”
His words were slurred, but his eyes—one cloudy, the other red-veined and burning—were focused.
“I drained three,” he added, quieter. “Took just enough. They’ll crawl. Not walk. But they breathe.”
Behind them, a silence fell among the soldiers. No one moved.
Marcas did not blink.
“Did you see where she went?”
Verrin nodded. “Toward a black gate. Hidden in a throat of stone. The wind there doesn’t howl. There’s something old* watching from that valley.”
Marcas stepped back. Looked up toward the ridges, where fresh snow now covered the wound.
“She walks to find a relic,” Verrin said. “It sings in her blood.”
Marcas didn’t respond.
“Not a weapon alone,” Verrin murmured, half-mad with pain. “A covenant. It remembers who she was. What we broke.”
Marcas turned. His eyes were steady. “Can it be stopped?”
Verrin’s grin was a broken thing. “No. But it can be claimed. If you’re quick.”
The Legate paced once through the snow, crunching over shattered armor. He stopped at a shattered helm and knelt, brushing snow away with gloved fingers. The inside was slick with ice and red.
He rose.
“Burn the bodies,” he said. “No graves. I won’t give the spirits names to cling to.”
A scout saluted, but glanced warily at Verrin.
Marcas caught the hesitation. “He returns to the hunt.”
The scout frowned. “He’s half-dead.”
“He knows the shape of what we face,” Marcas said evenly. “And we do not have time to wait for miracles or reinforcements.”
He turned to Verrin, who was still kneeling, his burned hand pressed to the snow as if drawing strength from the cold itself.
“You’ll be on your feet by first light.”
Verrin’s voice rasped low. “I’ll need to drain.”
Marcas nodded. “Take what you need—from the men.”
A stir passed through the nearby soldiers.
“But no deaths,” Marcas added, eyes like granite. “No cripples. I need blades, not corpses. Leave them enough to fight.”
Verrin gave a long, slow smile. “I can be careful.”
“You will be,” Marcas said. His tone cut sharper than frost. “I don’t like using your kind. But I like failure less.”
Verrin rose shakily to his feet, his ruined mantle sloughing like wet parchment around his frame. “We’re not so different, you and I, Legate.”
Marcas’s eyes narrowed. “We are. But I don’t need to like a blade to use it.”
He stepped past Verrin, cloak snapping in the rising wind.
“Bind yourself however you must. Just be ready.”
Verrin’s laugh followed him, dry as old parchment. “I already am.”
Marcas didn’t turn.
“Then you leave at first frost.”