Mark’s eyes sprung open, and he shot upward, covered in sweat. Panting, he tried to calm himself from the horrid dreams that had assaulted him.

He had seen Erin attacked by the wargs.

They're only dreams. Be rational. Mark wiped the sweat from his brow. These dreams weren't the same as what he had felt when he saw the wargs. It was just his guilty conscience weighing on him. He had to remind himself that Henric was as capable as they came. His Master-At-Arms would do what was needed. He just needed to have a little faith.

Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Mark wondered if he should have just shot her in the leg when he had the chance and been done with it. If she died, he wasn’t sure he could forgive himself.

“She’s just a kid,” he mouthed. The sixteen-year-old girl was strong for her age but not strong enough for what he had seen. No one deserved that.

You’ve got to be strong. You made a decision for the betterment of the fort. Have conviction in your actions. He knew deep down this was the right way to think. Winter hadn’t even arrived, and if his visions of wargs were what was coming, then far more than just one girl would die. He had to accept that his decisions would lead to the deaths of others, even if Erin survived this ordeal.

Closing his eyes, he lay back down. The bed felt stiffer, somehow, and he restlessly rolled.

At least an hour passed before he sighed, threw his pillow across the cabin, and rose.

“Just let me sleep,” he groaned and climbed from his bed.

Walking across his cabin, Mark passed his fireplace, threw a log into the embers, and rubbed his hands together. He then added two spoonfuls of Mira’s mix to his metal cup, filled it with water, and placed it beside the glowing embers. It didn’t take long to boil.

Grimacing as he sipped on the bitter tea, Mark stared into the growing flames as they danced.

It wasn’t just the missing acolytes, Erin and Callum. He felt like he wasn’t doing enough. He considered the wall and the growing relationship with the ferals a success, but there had to be more.

His gaze drifted to the Imperator suit hung on a hook by his bed. Surely he could be doing more with its power.

Accepting that his decisions may lead to the deaths of others was one thing, but if he could do everything in his power to prevent the worst from happening, then he would feel justified. And make the most of the power entrusted to him in the process.

***Erin***

After an entire day, or maybe longer strapped to the back of a horse, every inch of Erin’s body ached.

The sun had long fallen, but they had continued. The snow reflected enough light from the stars to make navigating the forest easy.

Eventually, though, even her captors grew tired. No bedrolls were laid out. And they slept on their packs beneath the stars. Erin was tied to the horseman and lay beside him.

The man was out, snoring within minutes. Erin wasn’t so lucky.

She turned several times, trying to sleep, sighed, and opened her eyes. She stared at the silver blanket of stars briefly before raising her head.

Erin shrieked as she locked eyes with two sunken, beady, brown orbs.

“It’s sleepin’ time,” Jinghorn groggily grunted, tugging on her bindings as he rolled away.

“Shhh,” the man brought a finger to his lips. “Keep them pretty lips shut, girl. Me’s only watchin',” the feral smiled, his eyes tracing her form down to her legs.

Erin followed his eyes and realized her robes were pulled to her knees. Her boots and pale legs were displayed. Hastily, she pulled her robe down past her boots.

“Wah, you’re not a lot of fun, are ye?”

“Keep your eyes away from me. And your hands,” Erin sneered.

“Why the wargs got to have all the fun? I wanna taste,” he licked his lips and rubbed his hands as he rose from his spot and stepped closer. “Pretty, smooth, soft girl,” the feral shivered as he spoke.

As he stepped over Erin, she kicked out at him. Grabbing her boots, the man chuckled and ran his hands down them and onto her legs, eliciting another scream from Erin.

“What I say ‘bout quiet? If ye don’t shut ye gob, I’mma really make you feel it.”

The man lunged forward, grabbing hold of Erin’s wrists as he fell atop her. Erin squeezed her eyes shut.

“Ye gonna–” the feral coughed.

She felt splatter across her face and slowly opened her eyes. Blood spilled from the feral’s throat as he tried to stop its flow with his hands, streams of it squirting through his finger creases. Fingers laced through his hair from behind, and a hand grabbed his shoulder and yanked him to the side, sending the feral rolling off of Erin into the snow.

The man gargled as he cupped his neck, red quickly staining the snow around him.

Erin's gaze darted up. It was the noble-looking young man. He stood still, unfazed, looking down at Erin.

The man jerked and coughed as the blood flowing from his neck calmed to a trickle. A low groan came from the back of his throat as he leaned back, and his eyes stared aimlessly into the sky.

“You killed him.”

The young man nodded.

“Who are you?”

“It’s not important,” he said, walking over to the corpse. He went through the man’s pockets, picking at a few things, and took his knife. He eyed the knife under the moon for a moment and then dropped back down where he had been sleeping.

She looked at the dirty corpse beside her and back to Jinghorn, who groaned and pulled on her bindings again. The friction rubbed at the red sores forming on her wrists.

“Quit worming. I’m tryin’ ta sleep,” the rider grumbled in his sleep and tugged on the rope again.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He was only inches from her, and as she breathed out, she shuffled back from his putrid breath; Erin froze as she remembered the corpse and looked back over her shoulder at the body.

“Don’t even think about trying to escape,” the young man said as their eyes caught. He used his pack as a pillow, nodded at Erin, and pulled his cowl down over his face. “Even if that idiot sleeps through it, I won’t.”

***

Erin was woken with a rough shake of her shoulder and forced to stand. The two ferals argued a little. It seemed to be about the dead man, not that Erin could understand when they spoke their own language.

She was given a little mush to eat. Some kind of smoked version of rigar bark, she believed. And with that, they were off. Back to riding on the back of the saddle as they crossed forests and snowy plains and navigated around a ravine that plunged straight through the rock and into a shadowy abyss below.

She lost track of time. The further north they rode, the harder it was to track time by daylight.

The days were short, and the nights bright.

As they ventured further north, the forests thinned, and so did the barbarian settlements. And not just because of the migration. Few barbarians cared to live this far north.

The entire frontier suffered from a near-endless winter-like state. However, the further south you went, the warmer it got. Besides the miasmic fields that clung in the foothills that separated the Frontier from the Imperium, the south’s weather resembled a typical temperate climate. And the regions north of it were somewhere between Nordic and Arctic.

But all of that was south of where they were. In the north, permafrost covered the lands. Snow fell, and icy chills stung your flesh through your clothing and down to the bone. Nothing grew, and only the most hermit-inclined had any reason to try and brave this weather, except for the cultists.

She could see them in the far distance when they rested that night. Giant, pointed, and snow-capped mountains that disappeared into the clouds. They extended on like a natural fortress of rock as far as the eye could see. They were the Daggers. The greatest mountains in the world. Home of the warg.

A chill ran through her body and settled in her gut. Erin gritted her teeth. There was nothing she could do. She would be offered to the warg.

Her gaze fell on the two sleeping ferals. There was no way she could take them, even if her wrists weren’t bound. And she wasn’t sure the young one was even asleep.

***Callum***

Callum had found the tracks days ago. It was easy. Horses were already rare within the frontier, and with all the notable clans gone south, they were unheard of.

And the moment he spotted hooves, he took chase.

Panting, he fought through the increasingly thick snow, staggered toward a pine, and let himself slide against its trunk as he fell to the ground.

He had thought himself fully recovered, but the road quickly reminded him of his wounds. The strain on his body increased every day, but it wasn’t about to stop him. Nothing short of death would prevent him from going after Erin.

You’ll be fine. Stop being such a sook. That’s what Pa would say, right?

“Yes, Arms Master.” Callum chuckled at the memory of their exchanges. An old man whose shaky hands had no business wrapped around the hilt of a sword, forcing his son to remind him of his former glory.

Incoherent ramblings and the stench of ale on his breath were what he remembered of his father. Pathetic.

It was kind of funny thinking back on how proud he had been as a child of his father’s accomplishments. And he had looked up to him. But that had long changed. The man was weak and filled with self-pity. Daydreaming of his past. He wouldn’t let that become him. He touched the wound on his forehead again.

I’m not like him. It doesn’t matter what happens. I’ll find my own path. One way or another.

Callum forced himself to his feet and brushed off the snow. It was time to get moving again. He couldn’t sit around and rest if he wanted to catch them before the Daggers.

He could see the silhouettes of the giant mountains in the distance. They brought on uneasy thoughts, but not for himself.

Gritting his teeth, Callum stubbornly pushed on. If it wasn’t for the boot prints trailing the hooves, he likely would have given up by now. But if the horseman kept pace with someone on foot, he could catch up. He’d just have to push himself a little harder.

Grasping his side as pain twitched out across his body, he stumbled forward—falling into the snow.

“Curses,” he mouthed. Annoyed at his damaged body. But he felt something against his fingers through the snow.

He raised a brow and wrapped his hand around it. With a tug, he pulled the buried stick free. It was about as tall as his shoulders and solid. Tapping it against the ground, Callum curled his lip. The snow hadn’t thawed up here in months, and thanks to that, the wood hadn’t rotted.

It was a small win, but he felt like it was a sign. Just being able to take some of the weight off of his bruised body as he marched through the snow was a relief. And his pace quickened as he used the stick to lead him in pursuit of the tracks.

***Imperator***

The acolytes lined up in the fort as Mark patrolled them. It was time for another lesson. He had been surprised by how much they got into practicing the moves he taught in the first class. And even if it had mostly turned into a game where they competed to see how far they could throw each other, he didn’t see a problem as long as they were learning something.

As with the first lesson, the moves were simple. Mostly positioning. It would take them a while before everything became natural, but they now knew how to throw somebody. Now they needed to know how to manage being on the ground.

If they thought throwing each other was fun, Mark shuddered to think how they would react to learning how to choke each other out. But that was a lesson for another day. Today, they would just learn positioning and control.

In reality, it was all an attempt to distract. Keeping himself busy was the only way to keep his mind off things and make himself feel useful.

After lessons, he would head out with Elowen again for more trading.

Mark was quickly establishing Fort Winterclaw as the only place to trade in the region. And ferals outside of the fort had already begun gathering at the walls, asking to join in.

He hadn’t planned this but wouldn’t turn away an opportunity. So far, trade with ferals outside the wall had been minimal, but he was organizing a market day, and he intended to include them.

As many food stocks had exceeded what Elowen believed was needed for the winter, she suggested that they set a buy-and-sell price for all goods in a way that they could make a profit, even if they didn’t need the goods.

Mark hadn’t expected her idea to work as well as it did. But ferals weren’t particularly business savvy and had a habit of trading or buying whatever they needed as they needed it—except food, of course. It wasn’t their first winter, after all.

Unfortunately, there were two problems. The barbarians often ran out of goods they wanted to trade, and it was impossibly complicated to set trade values for dozens of goods in a way that would make every trade profitable.

What they needed was a currency. There lay another problem. The currency they already used—crowns—was in limited supply, and ferals had rarely seen one, let alone possessed any. Mark couldn’t just flood the market with the crowns he did have since he wanted to save their crowns in case he got the opportunity to hire mercenaries or buy high-quality products from Imperial traders.

In the end, they decided to mint their own iron coins. Iron was rare enough that they weren’t worried about any ferals knocking their fledgling economy out of whack but also common enough that the wild barbarians could get their hands on it.

The coins were basic, with no face. The only thing that mattered was that they weighed roughly the same amount.

The effect was immediate. Once the coins went into circulation, trade boomed. Suddenly, ferals could sell things that outvalued anything they needed. And once they had spare coins, they could buy the things they needed when they didn’t have goods to trade for them.

The best part about it all was that Fort Winterclaw had all the skills and equipment that were scarce.

Ferals would bring old, blunt knives and axes to trade and walk away with half their weight in iron coins, which allowed them to mint more coins. Even goods like rigar bark, which the fort had been buying at a deficit, soon turned a profit. With massive stockpiles of the goods, Fort Winterclaw could sell the excesses in retail quantities at good margins without raising a brow.

However, it also created more work. Which put a strain on their already strained manpower. The fort had gone from an acolyte occasionally banging out some nails or horseshoes to essentially needing a full-time smithy. And boys that were running it had barely a year or two of apprenticeship experience before being sent to work for the Imperium.

It wasn’t just smelting, either. The smithy was constantly at work minting coins, smithing nails, and axeheads—all of which were in high demand by the ferals. Demand that would only intensify as trade with ferals outside of the fort increased.