“If you keep staring through that thing, you’ll hurt your eyes,” Barzom said with an idle scratch to his chin.

Amale blinked and lowered the optex. One of the scouts had handed him the device—an extendable cylinder with a glass lens—an hour ago and Amale had scarcely looked away from it since. It magnified distant objects, making them seem much closer, and Amale couldn’t help but think back to all the situations where such a tool would have proved immensely useful in the past.

The scouting team had been hiding behind a crag since midday, observing the southern orc camp. After they separated from Jo, Sakrattars, and Kaja early that morning, the team slipped through Forgeheart’s west gate and set to work tracking down the whereabouts of the missing cannons. Luckily, the orc’s camp hadn’t been difficult to find: the wheels on the cannon carriages left deep, fresh furrows in the damp soil that almost insulted Barzom with its blatancy.

Now, Amale, Leif, Dimitri, Barzom, and five ferix scouts were trying to get a sense of what they were up against. Amale would have liked to be closer, but the steppeland beyond the foothills, with its lichen, bare rock, and patchy grass, had hardly any cover. Their only possible camouflage was distance.

“How many are we looking at?” Dimitri asked.

“Twenty,” Amale answered. “More, maybe.”

“Are the Irkallu still there?”

Amale’s ear twitched. The scouts had spotted five hooded and cloaked figures riding into camp a sun movement ago and, ever since, Dimitri had been singularly focused on it. He already knew that the Irkallu were involved in the Steppes, with their priestess being one of Ironfang’s daughters, but actually seeing agents in camp was a new escalation.

Amale raised the optex to his eye. Though the image was distorted, he could still see the horses tied to a hitching post outside the warchief’s tent. “Still there,” he said grimly. He watched for a few moments longer, but just when he was going to lower the optex again, something caught his attention. His ear flicked and he squinted in a vain attempt to get a better look. “Wait. . . something’s happening.”

Instantly, the ferix scrambled to extend their own optexes and have a look. Even Leif—who up until that point had been idly chewing a long strand of grass and making himself useful by throwing pebbles at Dimitri and Barzom—perked up.

Though they looked like tiny ants, even through the magnifiers, the ferix confirmed the unmistakable shapes of the five cloaked figures. They appeared to be leading the warchief and his orcs to the stolen cannons at the edge of camp.

“Can you see who they are?” Dimitri whispered urgently.

“No.”

“Is Alistair there? Or Hester?”

Amale pinned his ears and Dimitri dropped it.

The crowd of orcs separated, gathering behind the cannons while the Irkallu stood amongst the carriages. After a minute or two, there was a bright flash of light and a burst of smoke from the center gun. The shell impacted a hundred yards away, sending a huge plume of mud into the air. After an eerily silent second, the booming report crashed into the scouting party like a wave. Amale yelped and nearly dropped the optex as the ground shook with the cannon’s thunder.

“Curse them!” Barzom snarled. “They’re teaching them how to fire the cannons. They’re doing it right now!” He grabbed his greatsword, ready to charge across the open fields.

“Hey, hey!” Dimitri said, grasping his arm. “What are you going to do—deliver yourself straight into their hands?”

Barzom whirled around, his characteristically laid-back attitude evaporated. “You don’t get it, do you?” he growled, jabbing Dimitri’s still-tender chest with a finger. “Our weapons are the only advantage we have. Numbers? They’ve got them. Position? They’ve surrounded us. Supplies? We’ll be starving within weeks. Once those curs learn how to use our weapons, it’s over.” He scowled and turned away sharply. “‘Course you don’t understand. You have your nice, cozy Empire to run back to. But Forgeheart is the last place we have left.”

Dimitri took a breath. He knew that Barzom didn’t mean it, that he was just afraid—afraid for his homeland, for his people, and, most of all, for his son. But Dimitri needed him to focus on their objective. He started to speak, but another deafening report shook the air. He cleared his throat and started again. “If we do this smartly, those cannons will be slag by the morning. If we do it hastily, they will be aimed at Forgeheart.”

Barzom flattened his small, round ears, but he knew logic when he heard it. “So. . . what’s the plan?” he finally said.

Dimitri turned to Amale, who had the optex pressed to his eye once more. A third blast reverberated over the hills. “You were a scout in the auxilia, right?” he asked.

Amale nodded once, the motion nearly imperceptible.

“Good.” Dimitri looked up. The sun was low, and the shadows were growing longer under the dusky orange sky. “They won’t break camp this late. They’ll probably leave in the morning.” He turned to Barzom and his scouts. “We go in at night. Amale, Leif, and I will take out the cannons. You have the charges?”

Barzom unclipped a hard satchel of stitched rhinoceros leather and handed it over. Dimitri pulled out a metal canister from inside. In typical ferix fashion, the charge was utilitarian and simple in design—a steel cylinder held together by a row of rivets along its length. There were two buttons on either side of the canister.

“We call it ‘starfire’,” Barzom explained. “To set it off, you push both buttons at the same time. That will break the glass vial inside and mix the chemicals. It’ll heat up quick so make sure you’re not holding it when it starts to melt. Stick it in the barrel of the cannon the moment you press the buttons. Even if it doesn’t ignite the black powder residue, it’ll melt a hole right through the firing chamber and render the whole gun useless.”

Dimitri held out the bag to Leif. “You got all that?”

“Huh?” Leif tossed away the blade of grass he was using to harass a flightless cricket and stood up. “Oh yeah, yep, got it.” He nodded. “Stick the thing in the thing, and it breaks the thing. We going yet?”

Dimitri sighed and handed the charges to Amale.

*

*

Nightfall brought plunging temperatures and sparse snow. The evening dew froze into white frost, giving the golden steppeland a ghostly hue. Though shivering and miserable, Amale was focused as he crept closer to the camp, the grass crunching softly beneath his paws.

Considering how huge they were, the ferix could move surprisingly quietly and had a keen mindfulness for stealth. They wore no metal armor that could reflect the moonlight and any equipment was wrapped in oilcloth to muffle noise.

The same could not be said for Leif. Most of the evening had been spent smearing mud on his chainmail and wrapping Oxhiminn’s unfortunate glowing axehead, while Leif made off-color jokes about “muddy paws”. Leif was quickly demoted from the infiltration team to the backup team, which would enter the camp only if something went wrong, but Amale still felt better knowing his old friend was there with him.

It was long after midnight and the camp was still and quiet. Amale was at home in the darkness, despite the frigid chill. Back in Balthissica, the dark had been his trusted ally. One time he was concealed in the bushes, observing a bandit fort for an entire night to count their numbers. During his stake out, an unsuspecting sentry had come so close that Amale could hear his quiet breathing. He was depending on the same luck tonight.

When they got closer to the camp, Amale, Dimitri, and Barzom—who replaced Leif—dropped to their bellies in the snowy mud and crawled along the bottom of the shallow gully that bordered the west side. If they followed it to a certain point, they’d come within striking distance. But first they had to avoid getting caught.

Though the orcs had been harassing Forgeheart for weeks, they were living out of little more than a collection of simple, round tents designed to be light-weight and collapsible. The communal fire pit hissed and smoked nearby, the coals dark. A pile of sleeping wargs, chained to posts outside their riders’ tent, snuffled and kicked, occasionally stirring to growl and snap at an offending neighbor before flopping back down. On the far side of camp, a few steppeland rhinoceroses were kept in a crude pen.

Amale’s large ears swiveled constantly. He picked up muffled voices from inside the tents, and a few less-muffled voices from sentries outside. The voices never changed location—likely meaning the guards were being lazy about their patrol. They were probably sitting in one spot, grumbling about the cold, rather than keeping a good watch. Amale didn’t hold out hope that the Irkallu agents would be so careless. In fact, he hadn’t heard any voices he could attribute to the Irkallu at all, and that made him very uneasy for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate.

Emerging from the gully, Dimitri, Barzom, and Amale waited for a bored sentry to pass them by, then darted into camp. Staying low, they split up and hustled from tent to tent, moving both quickly and silently. There wasn’t much time—the longer they stayed, the more likely it was that they’d be spotted.

Suddenly, Dimitri halted his advance. A sentry just ahead of him took an unexpected break from her patrol. Dimitri pressed himself against a weapons rack, breathlessly praying that she’d move on. She idly braced an arm against a tent post and stretched out her chilly, tired muscles. With a yawn and a scratch, she shuffled along. Waiting just long enough for her to turn out of view, Dimitri dashed through the clearing, crouched low to the ground—

—and stopped cold.

His instincts noticed the danger before his conscious mind did. Sprawled out on a hide mat near the makeshift rhinoceros pen, an orc, apparently the animal attendant, was snoring softly despite the thin blanket of snow coating his body. If Dimitri had taken another step, his foot would have come down right on the orc’s face.

Dimitri slowly tiptoed around the orc, intending to head for the darkness between two closely-clustered tents, but his ears pricked when he heard a cough. The sentry was on her way back. A litany of curses in every language he knew cycled through Dimitri’s mind. “Slow” wasn’t an option anymore. He made a run for it, but the muddy toe of his boot bumped the sleeping orc’s cheek.

The attendant snorted awake, thrashing at the unknown assailant. “Huh? Wha? Whossere?” He sat bolt upright, blinking sleepily as he peered into the darkness. Finding the alley empty, he checked on his charges, but the rhinoceroses were sipping from their water trough, quite unconcerned. It was then he noticed the sentry, who had one hand on the pen and the other holding her foot to her rump. “‘ey!” he cried. “Careful with your stretching. You knocked me in the chops!”

“I did not!” the sentry replied indignantly. “You were dreaming.”

He wiped the mud from his cheek. “Did I dream this? This is mud from your filthy boots.”

The sentry rolled her eyes. “It’s just a little mud. You whine like an elf.”

“Well you. . . watch it,” he grumbled, too tired to start a fight. A moment later, he was asleep again. The sentry shrugged and moved on.

Lifting himself quietly out of the rhinoceroses’ trough, Dimitri finally let out a gasping breath. One of the beasts nibbled curiously at his head, its pointed lip curling around his dark, wet hair. Dimitri tried to wave away the creature unsuccessfully, before giving up and just letting it do what it wanted. The water already stunk like rhino spit, what harm was there in getting more directly from the source?

*

*

Amale lost track of Barzom and Dimitri as he glided through camp like a shadow, his cloth-wrapped hindpaws flitting through the snow-frosted grass. Aside from a brief quarrel between two orcs, the camp had been silent. Something about the normalcy of the night and the ease with which he was able to move behind enemy lines gnawed at the edge of Amale’s mind and frayed his nerves. But there was no going back now, he had to see the mission through to the end. He crouched low and paused.

Just ahead, a lone orc was looking the cannons over, clearly as fascinated by the strange and magical technology as the Imperials were. The cannons glinted and shimmered as the surface frost caught the moonlight, a beautiful effect that belied their violent purpose. The orc tugged the rope lanyard that fired the device, and Amale tensed, bracing for the explosion.

Nothing happened.

Grumbling, the orc bent over to take a look at the place where the lanyard connected to the cannon.

Metal flashed, and the orc gurgled and collapsed face-first into the mud. Amale flicked the blood off his kukri and knelt onto the orc’s back. He knew that orcs were notoriously resilient, and he didn’t want to take any chances that this one wasn’t quite dead. Ears on a swivel, Amale glanced up to take stock of his surroundings and froze.

An Irkallu agent was watching him.

The agent must have been supervising the orc, making sure he didn’t do anything foolish with the cannons. Though his face was mostly covered in black cloth, Amale could see the man’s wide, staring eyes.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The agent took a deep breath to sound the alarm, but before he could, a great paw closed around the back of his head and forced him forward into the mud. Barzom brought a knee down on the man in an attempt to control his thrashing but, even as he suffocated, the agent had the presence of mind to slip a knife from a sheath at his hip. Maintaining a firm grip on the man’s head, Barzom shifted to the side to avoid the desperate stabbing attacks. A minute later, it was over.

Barzom locked eyes with Amale, whose ears drooped in embarrassment. He made a careless mistake and it was lucky Barzom had been there to fix it. However, Amale didn’t have time to dwell. Another shadow emerged from camp and the two started, turning defensively towards it. But it was only Dimitri, crouch-running their way. He was soaking wet and shivering from the cold, but was thankfully unhurt.

Amale reached for the starfire canisters. The alchemical liquid sloshed in the inner vial, and the canister’s weight shifted in his paw as the sand-like ignition powder moved from side to side. He wordlessly handed out the charges. Barzom clenched a fist around his, the action followed by the soft, hollow crunch of glass in metal. In contrast, Amale and Dimitri had to use both their hands to push the buttons.

There was a soft hissing as bubbles burst against the sides of the canisters. In the silence of the camp, it was deafening. They quickly slid the canisters into the barrels of the cannons and made a run for it without waiting for the results of their handiwork. Amale risked a glance back and saw the dark metal barrels begin to glow a fiery reddish-orange. Alarmed shouts rose from camp as the black powder residue popped and exploded, but it didn’t matter. By the time they figured out what had happened, the three saboteurs would be long gone.

“Peepers forward,” Barzom said. “You’ll be sorry if you trip now.”

Amale snapped back to attention, but something didn’t feel quite right. His paws hit the ground once, then twice. By the third time, he found himself suddenly alone. The frosty grass beneath his paws had changed into familiar orange scrubland and a pleasant warmth enveloped his frigid body. Shocked and confused, Amale lifted his gaze and was swallowed by the sight of fire.

*

*

Amale fell to his knees, clutching his chest. Tears streamed down his face, freezing in his fur despite the blazing heat of the vision before him.

His village was burning.

It couldn’t be real, but every detail was perfect—from the construction of the huts to the way they were arranged around the ancient, gnarled tree that was their village center. Memories flooded Amale’s mind: of dancing and feasting, of meeting with family and friends, of hearing the elders tell stories beneath the tree’s boughs. He had his first kiss under that tree, and each new birth was welcomed there. The new pups were given a name and every adult collectively adopted them as an honorary child, vowing to love and support them throughout their lives.

These memories turned to poison as Amale watched the flames climb up the twisted bark. There was wailing from within the village in voices that were far too familiar, but Amale couldn’t move. He couldn’t help them, and he couldn’t turn away or close his eyes. He could only kneel and watch and remind himself that it wasn’t real.

*

*

Barzom’s world was wreathed in fire as well. Forgeheart was crumbling. The impregnable walls glowed red as they melted, liquid steel running like water down the ruined sides. Impossibly huge monsters clawed their way in through the opened gaps.

The last place we have left.

He felt a weight in his arms. It hadn’t been there before. He couldn’t look at it; he could already feel what it was—the familiar texture of the fur, the exact size and shape of the body. It was someone Barzom had hugged and held each and every day since they were born. He had watched him grow, watched him play. He had bandaged his scuffed knees and read him stories before bedtime.

Barzom couldn’t look down. He would never get the image out of his mind if he did.

*

*

Dimitri’s wide eyes stared forward, not into the orc camp as expected, but into the living space of the tiny home he had grown up in.

It was not the way he remembered it. The cozy hearth that had kept the long Volgarian winters at bay was cold and dark. Cobwebs covered every surface, stretching from the rafters to the floor like gossamer curtains. There, in the bed they had shared for decades, lay his parents, still holding each other tight even in death. Their taut bodies were rimed with frost, grief and pain permanently frozen onto their faces.

Dimitri had planned to bring them to Aurelia one day. . . was he too late? Was this a vision of the future? His breaths came shallow and gasping as the fear set in.

Somehow, despite his best efforts, he had failed.

*

*

“Well. . . you almost got away. . .” a familiar voice said, breathless from the quick dash through the village. Malevolent energy radiated from Gorza’s staff as she circled closer to the now aware but still paralyzed companions. She looked into their anguished faces and smiled. “Exquisite, isn’t it? And that’s only a fraction of the pain the dark ones can feel. Relish it while you can.” She perked at the sound of a commotion behind them and called out, “over here! I’ve got them.”

A troop of orcs surrounded the three, most of them still buckling on their armor, or wearing only the hides they slept in.

“Those little rats! I’ll run them through!” one said, drawing a blade.

“Not yet,” said a deep voice from somewhere in the crowd. It, too, sounded dreadfully familiar.

As the orcs parted, Alistair stepped into view. He was clad in blackened steel, a fur cloak wrapped about his shoulders. A dark hood and thick beard framed his pale face. Behind him were two others. One was Jax Aster, whom Amale remembered from Operation Black Cloud in the depths below Aurea. By his side was his wife, Yvette. She stood stoically, cradling a crossbow. Her black wolf companion lowered her head and growled menacingly.

“You want us to lock them up, Alistair?” one of the orcs, who appeared to be the warchief, asked.

“You had your chance at that,” Alistair said smoothly. “No, their story ends here, right now. Hold them.”

Gorza nodded. “They’re not going anywhere.”

Alistair drew his sword. It gleamed in the silver moonlight as he raised it high above his head. Still immobilized by Gorza’s spell, Amale could only move his eyes to look up at the blade that was about to take his life. At that moment, he only had one regret: that he wouldn’t get to see Kisha or his friends ever again.

Alistair paused.

Amale’s nose twitched.

“Fire!”

All heads snapped towards camp, where pillars of flame were billowing from a cluster of tents. The warg pack was awake, snarling and jumping and tugging on their chains. Some of the orcs were already rushing to put out the flames before their supplies were destroyed.

Feeling the spell loosen as Gorza’s concentration cracked, Amale leapt into the air and struck out with both feet. Gorza grunted as the kick caught her in the chest and sent her flying backwards. She dropped her staff and Barzom flung it as hard as he could out into the darkness.

“Forget the fire!” Alistair ordered, his composure unraveling as his men scattered. “Kill them!”

“For Stielheim!”

Amale’s ears pricked up at Leif’s battle cry, his tail wagging as the ferix scouts charged into the chaos with a roar. Sharp cracks and puffs of acrid smoke filled the air as the two gunners stopped and fired into the enemy line. The rest barreled forward, swinging their shields into the orcs and sending them sailing into the smoldering tents.

Frustrated, Alistair swung his longsword at Amale, intending to finish the job himself. But his blade caught and sparks flew as Dimitri’s rapier deflected the blow. The two men separated and Alistair lashed out again. Dimitri ducked to the side and the sword chopped uselessly into a tent post. Regaining his footing, Dimitri thrust the rapier forward but Alistair grabbed the blade in a mailed fist and directed it away, narrowly missing the tips of Amale’s ears.

Amale twisted out of dodge, whirling around and drawing both kukris from his waist in one fluid motion. But before he could back Dimitri up, Jax charged. With a gladius in one hand and a dagger in the other, Jax drove Amale back with quick, jabbing blows, effectively cutting him off from Alistair and Dimitri.

Nearby, Gorza had recovered from her fall and was desperately avoiding Barzom’s greatsword. She had managed to draw her own sword but she wasn’t very well-practiced with the weapon. “My staff! Someone find my staff!” she cried.

Yvette pulled the trigger of her crossbow, hardly reacting to the pained snarl as it sank into the shoulder of an attacking ferix. “Busy here, Gorza,” she said, a hint of irritation in her muffled voice. She sidestepped away from the ferix’s revenge blow, took the bolt clenched in her teeth, loaded it, and fired again. This time her aim was true and the scout fell, clutching his neck. Instantly, her wolf was on him.

Heedless of the flying bolts and exploding shells, Leif smashed his ferix-forged shield against an orc’s face with a sweeping blow, sending her reeling backwards into a burning tent. “Hah!” he bellowed, turning to deflect another enemy’s sword. “You’ll have to break out your best liquor after this!” he declared to Barzom.

“Don’t have any,” Barzom replied with a grin.

Leif groaned. “No food I get, but no liquor? There’s got to be at least one blasted grass around here that you could—” With its wielder thoroughly distracted, Leif’s shield caught a teeth-chattering blow on happenstance. Roaring in triumph, as if he planned it all, and drunk on his own heroism, Leif pivoted and brought Oxhiminn down hard on the attacking orc’s exposed chest. The orc staggered but there was no bloodshed. Oxhiminn’s blade was still wrapped in cloth. Leif grit his teeth. “Gods damn it all!”

Despite the camp’s best efforts to put them out, the flames began leaping from tent to tent, bathing the entire battle in choking smoke. Alistair coughed, his eyes watering, and pulled a corner of his hood over his nose and mouth. He had lost track of Dimitri in the poisonous air. He tried to issue a command, but his burning throat couldn’t form words. Then he spotted a group of blurry gray shapes fleeing in tandem, and a glint of metal in the firelight—far too thin to have come from an orc sword. . .

Dimitri, arms pumping, was sprinting away from the battle, his rapier clanging against his hip. By his side were Barzom, Amale, and the remaining scouts, the latter turning to fire back into the smoke as they ran. They passed Leif, who was crouched down beside an unconscious orc, swearing and grumbling as he fumbled with the cloth wrapped around his axe. Amale smacked him on the helmet as he dashed by. After a brief moment of confusion, Leif shouldered his shield and ran to catch up.

Out of the smoke, the four Irkallu agents were hot on their heels. Dimitri led his team on a wild chase through the burning camp, ducking and dodging in a desperate bid to lose their pursuers. As they rocketed past a supply tent, Barzom smelled something through the turbid haze. Breaking away from the others, he grabbed a burning shard of wood from the ground and loped into the tent.

It was filled with barrels of black powder, the familiar scent ubiquitous to anyone living in Forgeheart. Not knowing any better, the fool orcs had stashed it all in one place. Barzom grinned, his lips pulling back over his long fangs, and he plunged the burning brand into one of the barrels. “Go, go, go!” he yelled, bursting out of the tent and wildly waving his companions onwards and away.

Recognizing the danger, Alistair swept out an arm to stop his team. Without any exchange of words, they swiftly turned tail and ran back the way they came as fast as they could. Most of the orcs following them didn’t need to be told to flee the scene. The couple who did were instantly swallowed by a massive explosion. Alistair and the others were lifted into the air as the blast wave hit, sending them flying as if cast from a mighty hand.

*

*

“Six dead, including your agent. Almost twice that number wounded,” the warchief said, wincing as someone bandaged his arm. The skin beneath was black and crisp from the powder blast.

Alistair said nothing. His ears were still ringing, and his immaculate armor was smeared with blood and mud from his hard landing on the rocky soil. Pale dawn light filtered into the ruined camp, illuminating Gorza’s medallions as she searched through the scorched remains for her missing staff. The night’s raid had been nothing short of a disaster. Their horses were gone. The rhinoceroses were gone. Each of the three cannons had a huge, ragged hole melted right through the barrel. None of them would ever fire again. Alistair pressed the tip of his sword’s sheath into the frozen ground and rested both hands on the grip. He tried to hide the fact that he needed to lean on it just to stand up straight.

A lycaeon and a Stjornugaardian. . . They had to be the very same pair from the Castrum Ustarius incident, and from the lot of prisoners that Ironfang had captured then subsequently lost. Alistar didn’t think it likely that there were two sets of the strange fellows allied against him. But where were the rest of their companions—the striped natiuhan, the elven wizard, and, most importantly, the zmaj girl? Were they hiding behind Forgeheart’s walls? Alistair kneaded his temple. The thrice-damned little zmaj had gone and gotten herself some very irritating friends, indeed. . .

“What are you going to tell Ironfang?” the warchief asked, disturbing Alistair from his thoughts. In the distance, Gorza cried with delight as she finally located her staff. She picked it up and cast a quick spell to make sure it was undamaged.

“That you and your warband failed. Completely, totally, and utterly,” Alistair said venomously. “And that our support for the warlord’s little adventure is now withdrawn, unless we start seeing some results.”

The warchief paled at the mere thought of saying such a thing to Ironfang. “You can’t back out!” he sputtered impotently. “We need you now more than ever!” After Ironfang’s humiliation in the arena at the hands of a wounded human, more than a few warbands had slipped away in the dead of night, returning to their homelands. If the Irkallu left the Steppes, and took their strange magic with them, that would be yet another blow to Ironfang’s ambitions. “Priestess.” The warchief turned to Gorza, who had rejoined Alistair’s side. “Surely you won’t be leaving your father—”

“My father knew the price of Irkallu assistance,” Gorza said coldly. She had received a sound scolding for losing the zmaj girl and she wasn’t about to get back on Alistair’s bad side. “If he is unable to pay it, it’s of no concern to me.”

“Priestess!” the warchief stammered. “He’s your blood. . .”

“And so was my sister,” Gorza said bitterly. “Yet she has abandoned me too.”

Tired of the conversation, Alistair grabbed his sword sheath by the blade and stalked towards the warchief. The orc winced, convinced he was about to be struck or worse, but Alistair just squatted down by his side.

“Destroy Forgeheart,” he said with soft lethality. “And their weapons. Then we’ll talk.”

*

*

The lookout stationed at Forgeheart’s western watchtower couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. He blinked and peered through the large, rampart-mounted optex. After a confused moment, he leaned over the railing and shouted down, “open it up!”

Gears grumbled, pulleys creaked, and the great steel gates scraped open. Hearing the puzzlement in the lookout’s voice, the other guards gathered to watch.

Shivering, stained with soot, and with most of their clothing covered in ice, Barzom’s scouting party ambled through the gate upon the back of a rhinoceros. Barzom was at the “reins”, which in this case involved hanging onto the animal’s thick hair and trying to guide it as best he could. It had taken most of the day, as the beast was stubborn and dim, but they had made it back to Forgeheart with their wounded in tow.

Shaking off their disbelief, the guards moved to keep the rhinoceros steady with an offering of hay cakes and, one by one, the ragged companions slid down from its back. Leif and Amale stretched their sore muscles as Tullius and Leo asked them eager questions about what had happened. Apparently Sakrattars, Jo, and Kaja had yet to return. Dimitri groaned as he landed, his stiff legs screaming from riding the armored beast all day. Still, he gave the rhinoceros’s hairy flank an appreciative pat.

In the small crowd was Vyrkad Gleamgear, his bewilderment no less than his soldiers’. Barzom gave him a nod when their eyes met.

“It’s done?” Vyrkad asked.

Dimitri nodded. “It’s done.”

Vyrkad’s gaze shifted from the rhinoceros, to the victorious scouts, to the soldiers and onlookers. “. . . huh,” he chuffed. Then he ordered the soldiers to tend to the returning scouts and took his leave. The ferix scrambled to obey, helping their wounded comrades to the medical tents. Unlike last time, the medics examined Dimitri, Leif, and Amale without prompting.

Seeing Leif was uninjured, one medic tried to move on to Dimitri but Leif grabbed her arm. “So. . .” he began sheepishly, “I don’t suppose you found any food while we were gone. . ?”