Winter came early and left late in the North. The plains at the feet of the Ramparts didn’t get as much snow as the mountains proper, but it fell deep enough that people didn’t stir out without good cause. The Collective and the Langpopo both reckoned they had plenty good cause. Rooks Nest Pass wasn't all that long- seventy miles or so, but almost none of it was in a straight line. The terrain was wildly varied- new growth forests of green pine, fir and larch stretched over steep mountains, then cut off as the mountains gave way to a sudden lake or river. The lakes were frozen, of course, and the rivers carried head-sized chunks of ice at speed along their course. And over everything, the snow. At least two and often as many as four meters deep, it covered everything. All wagons had long since stopped running. Nothing with wheels could move through it. Rooks Nest Pass became the nightmarish playground of the scouts.

The rules of the playground were simple- if you cross an open space, if you move without concealment, you die. If you get wet, you freeze, then die. Stay still too long? Better have shelter, or you will freeze and die. Snowshoe malfunction? You will become immobile, freeze, then die. Want to light a fire for warmth? Go right ahead. It’s an easy way to permanently quit the game. No way to warm yourself? Your enemies thank you for saving them the ammunition. And the calories.

All the survival wisdom of two competent armies showed. The Collective was more used to the deserts and swamps of the far south and southeast, but the Ramparts ran the length of the continent. They were no strangers to mountain warfare, and had been training for this war for years. The Langpopo were people of the high northern plains, knowing cold intimately and the mountains almost as well. They didn’t train for winter warfare, they lived it.

Both sides felt a formal declaration of war at this point was… redundant. Or at least untimely. So it was down to the scouts to decide who’s preparation was superior, and whose army would win the first positional battle for the war to control the Northwest.

Both side’s scouts had similar combat doctrines. They would ride in as close as they could into the pass, then snowshoe their way into the woods. The scouts moved singly, each wearing winter clothes, carrying a backpack and a long gun. But what counts as “winter clothes?” How long was the long gun? And how much was in the pack?

These were far from idle questions. Every gram of weight had to be balanced against questions of maneuverability and calorie cost to transport it through the snow. The weight of their clothes made a huge difference- the Collective relying on algae plastic outer shells to keep woolen inner layers dry. It worked, but it wasn’t exactly silent, and the forest green showed up nicely on the blinding white snow. It was, however, light. The Langpopo used sealskin from the far north. Silent. Blended with the snow well. But bulky and heavy.

The same thinking applied to what went into the packs. The Collective stuffed their packs with useful things, from tent pegs, to rubberized tarps, to handy folding tools that could be unfolded into a hoe, or unfolded completely into a spade. Each scout had dense rations of slabs of grain blended with fat and berries. It was bland, but the scouts ate a bar every hour or so on the move- they needed the energy.

The Lanpopo carried lighter packs. They used wool blankets, dense furs, and simple short handled spades. They also carried pemmican, a blend of meat, fat and berries. Incredibly energy dense, a few slabs of pemmican could last an entire day. They also carried more esoteric things like wax candles, whistles and the special “sacred” charging blankets used to power their heavy coil guns.

The guns carried by both sides were of particular interest to Cold Garden, as they desperately tried to modernize their weapons manufacturing system. Was it worth it to try and leapfrog directly to the more “advanced” coil guns? Or was it better to go with the comparatively simpler chemically propelled rifles?

The trade-offs, the experience free experts concluded, were pretty balanced. Coil guns had essentially no running costs. They never got dirty, you could put anything with an iron jacket through them, they were literally powered by the sun. They also hit like the fist of God, punching a huge hole in their targets with their heavy projectiles. Reasonably accurate too, within their range. On the other hand, they were functionally smooth bore weapons, so their range and accuracy was not impressive. A couple of hundred yards, perhaps, for reliable accuracy. “If you can’t see the face, you can’t hit the heart,” was a common refrain. They were also comparatively fragile, and if they broke, no one could fix them. Which, in a war, is not a small problem.

On the other hand, the rifles used by the Collective were comparatively simple to manufacture. There were more details to the construction than immediately met the eye, however. How the barrel was sat in the wooden stock could immensely affect both accuracy and durability. The action used to fire the bullets was conceptually simple but making it reliably, and in industrial quantities, was not. Even the bullets were a matter of serious debate, balancing the choice of propellant, the amount of propellant, the shape of the bullet, the weight of the bullet and its impact on ballistics, the weight of the entire round and its impact on the number of rounds carried, the use (or not) of cartridges, finding reliable primers for the cartridges, the cost of making each round and by the way, black powder rifles foul horribly quickly and put out a thunderhead of smoke.

All that and they still hadn't reached the question of barrel length, which will hugely impact accuracy and muzzle velocity. Both will be crucial elements in the lethality of the gun, with longer barrels producing more of both. Then you get to design a tactical doctrine around your weapon system, to make sure it is used effectively. Of course, longer barrels were heavier, less nimble to bring on target, and harder to move through forests and over mountains. They were an absolute hindrance in urban combat, or in cavalry actions.

So… no easy answers. The rifles could be made accurate out to five hundred meters with a little care, and a thousand meters with a bit more, and they could be lethal at that range. Crucially, you didn’t need to make batteries, or capacitors, or the systems needed to manage the coil gun effectively. They were a whole huge industrial and technological challenge in their own right, with attendant, horrifyingly complex, supply chains needed to support them.

All of this took place in a context where just the iron cost of the gun might bankrupt an ordinary family. Nobody, but nobody, was even considering trying to import melters. Even before Old Radler fell, they were strictly weapons for the absurdly rich and their most elite soldiers.

Xiatoktok was of the opinion that the rifles and their range advantage would let the Collective have it all their own way in the mountains. Stick someone up on the side of a mountain, and they could knock down targets on the other side of the valley, safe as could be. Xiatokmia gave him an absolutely filthy look and explained (correctly) why it wasn’t going to be that way:

Two scouts were in the field. One from the Collective, one from the Langpopo. The scout from the Collective is more visible in the snow, but has the range advantage. The Langpopo is harder to spot, but has to get closer to land hits. Who has the advantage?

Neither.

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They are fighting in a young evergreen forest, so their functional visibility is less than a hundred yards. The hypothetical sniper shooting down onto the road only matters if someone is insane enough to stand on the road. Scouts, being a notoriously paranoid and resourceful bunch, would sooner walk on fire than on an open road. What actually would be decisive would be if one scout caught another out of concealment. A flash of light on metal. A plume of smoke. Footprints. Snapped tree branches. First to be spotted by the other was the first to die. And speaking of plumes of smoke, the Collective hadn’t yet cracked smokeless powder. In fact, they seemed to be using black powder, which was not only highly visible, it smelled. Each shot would leave the scout covered in soot. On a battlefield, no one would notice. In a still evergreen forest, blanketed with snow? They stank.

In the end, it came down to comfort moving and fighting in the snow. The Collective had an effective combat doctrine for mountain and winter warfare, but it relied heavily on relatively sophisticated equipment. Trying to find a safe place to rest was an enormous, dangerous, matter for the Collective. Not for the Langpopo. They just dug into a snowbank, covered the hole with a few dense fir boughs, laid out their furs and had a nice sleep. Needed to warm up during the day? Sit down, cover yourself with a blanket, light the candle, and the blanket would trap enough heat to warm you up in no time. Then be on your way.

To cap it off, the light buff colored sealskin clothes provided enough camouflage to make the Langpopo that little bit harder to spot. No smoke from the coil guns, of course. Much quieter firing than the rifles too.

Slowly, one dead soldier at a time, the Langpopo pressed deeper and deeper into the pass. After the scouts came infantry bands. After the infantry came tough little ponies, snow shoes strapped to their feet. Made of woven birch and attached to the cheve’s hooves with leather straps, the cheves couldn’t move very fast. They could pull just as well though. The artillery was dragged across the snow on sleds. Firing positions were built up, the forty mile range on the guns guaranteeing that only a few firing positions were needed to dominate the pass. And the high arcs of the shells let them shoot over mountain ranges that might otherwise have provided perfect cover. The scouts now dug in as artillery spotters ensured it, relaying signals by heliograph or shuttered lanterns. The Collective held the southern end of Rook’s Nest Pass, but the Langpopo held the rest of it.

It was an… instructive time for Xiatoktok. It turned out that the actual practice of war was some distance away from the bland aphorisms in books on strategy. One thing was plainly true, though. War was a bonfire, fueled by money. And Xiatoktok knew all about money.

“President? You asked for the current revenue figures. This is accurate up to the day.” The duty secretary smiled proudly. As she should, those numbers were surprisingly hard to come by in a timely way, even in a bank.

Xiatoktok’s eyes flicked to the current revenue, then projected revenue, then current and projected expenses. He skipped to the bottom of the page. The total was small, but written in black ink.

“Remind me of your name?”

“Xiakinni, President!”

“Very well done, Xiakinni. Very well done indeed. One day’s paid holiday, to be used this month, and I will permit you, in private, to refer to me as Expert. No further familiarity may be presumed.”

She nearly fainted. “Thank you so much, Expert!”

“That is all. No, wait. Arrange a banquet for Vice President’s Xiatokte and Xiatokmia, as well as myself and our guests. Up to two guests each. I trust you know our usual spot?”

“The Golden Sparrow’s private room, Expert.” Xiakinni was clearly relishing her new privilege and explosive lead over the rest of the secretarial pool. Ah well. Happy times deserved to be spread around. Even if that happiness was sheer delusion.

“Quite right. Nothing further.”

“Comrades. It took years of planning and months of chaos, but we did it. We went and damn well did it. As of today, the Grand Redoubts Bank is in the black, and profits are rising fast. As of today, the Bank is finally, truly, in our pockets. A toast!” Xiatoktok raised his glass, and everyone rose with him.

“To Victory!” He cried, and they yelled it right back at him. They all drunk deep, happy in their cups.

“Alright, no big speech, you all know the score. Tonight, we eat well, drink well, and enjoy each other’s company.”

They cheered again, and broke into little clumps of happy chatting. ’Te brought his wife ’Tam and a concubine who’s name ’Tok struggled to recall, but whose company was easy and pleasant. ’Mia, as was her custom, brought her valet and her maidservant. ’Mia trusted terribly slowly, but the pair had been with her for decades. They were closer to her than her own family, which was either sad or sweet, depending on who was talking. ‘’Tok naturally brought ’Ja and Gentian, who even now carried her spear.

’Mia was on her best behavior tonight, making a focused effort to speak to the wives and concubines of her dear friends. It was the same old problem, lovely people, or at least decent people, who came into her life through something she found deeply unappealing. Like a vegan finding out their parents met through a shared interest in taxidermy.

’Mia knew ’Ja and ’Tam from ages back, of course. ’Ja was a delight, but a handful. ‘’Mia always thought she combined ’Te’s acerbic wit with ’Tok’s absolute inability to forget a slight. This combination of traits should make her a nightmare, but ’Mia actually found her fairly easy to talk to. Pay her a couple of complements, ask a leading question, then listen to the flow of astoundingly venomous, and frequently hilarious, commentary about the state of the world.

’Tam was, superficially, an inverted sort of ’Ja. A bubbly, effervescent sort of person, who was always declaring things “Wonderful!” and slight acquaintances were always referred to as “My very dear friend.” She had perfected the art of looking both vacant and rapturously interested in whatever was being said. A senior patron of the Clan creche and an active member of several beautification committees, she gave the distinct impression of being a rich man’s toy. ’Mia knew better.

The romance between ’Te and ’Tam was still a scandal fifty years on. ’Tam had collected a dozen heads and forty victories on the dueling sands to firm her claim on ’Te, while ’Te socially ruined anyone he thought made eyes at ’Tam. It was still debated who killed the most. They went at each other with a mad frenzy of seduction, deception, cruel posturing and tearful pleading. Sometimes all at once. And at the end of it all, safely wed (the officiant insisted on no less than thirty guards, twenty for himself, ten for the crowd,) they discovered a mutual hatred of monogamy. They loved each other madly, they just thrived on social drama, particularly of the romantic variety. It was absolute chaos, and neither would have it any other way.

To ’Mia, ’Tam was practically an alien species. But it was particularly difficult to dislike someone so vocally fond of you. Especially when said person respected boundaries to an extremely exact degree.

’Mai sighed and shrugged, then smiled and dove back into the conversation. She was determined to have a good night. She got about ninety minutes of her wish, when the “weather” changed.

All the Xia, save Gentian, stopped mid sentence and looked at the door. Then, in one voice, yelled “Guards!”

The door immediately opened, revealing the security detail.

“Have the carriages brought around. Have a sweep done, keep strangers from the building.” Said ’Mia.

“Blast it all, we were having such a lovely time. Someone will pay for this.” ’Ja muttered, receiving enthusiastic nods from ’Tam.

“Mistress?”

“Remember how I said we can feel the “weight” of time shift around? Just spiked, local to this area. Time to stand somewhere other than on the X. It’s not foolproof, or even necessarily something bad, but still.”

“I have a sudden craving for my own bed. Right now.” Gentian nodded.

Three carriages were brought around, all subtly armored, all protected by guards. The tavern keeper had been paid in advance, so they simply piled directly into the coaches and made ready to split up.

A half dozen incendiary bombs, two for each carriage, went off simultaneously. The guards were lit against a backdrop of flames, and were quickly cut down by crossbows. Someone had decided that history needed a nudge in the right direction.