League upon league of snowy fields and rolling hills disappeared behind them over the next two days. Despite the looming threat the warbands posed, the soilborn remained to tend to the land, watching over hardy vegetables like spinach, collards, and leeks. Aspyr even spotted a kindly looking grandfather singing a song to the crops while children willed the snow into men with a crude application of magic.

Perhaps they simply do not know the danger has come early this time? Aspyr thought.

Defended by a simple stakewall, untrained in magic, and armed with axes more fit for chopping wood than heads, a village of soilborn would stand no chance against a Tuskar warband. If misfortune struck, a few would die to the Tuskar’s touch, but even more to winter’s kiss. It was difficult enough for farmers to survive the winter in a good year, nevermind if their stores of food were pillaged or if their sheep were butchered by others.

If the warband were led by a hungry mythuselah, an offering in kind would not suffice. A blood sacrifice of kin might be necessary…

It falls on me to prevent that, Aspyr thought grimly.

As they neared the Tuskar warbands, the winged knights switched from riding steeds to their pegasi in preparation. Lord Andras was invited to join Aspyr’s personal lance when they took to the skies, leaving his own lance in the hands of his son.

“It’ll be good practice for when he succeeds me,” Andras shared as they waited to ascend. It took the pegasi a great deal of strength to keep a knight in the air, even when they opted for less armor. As such, they would not take flight a moment before it was necessary, lest their strength be utterly spent at a critical moment. “Alkaios had never had the chance to lead whilst in the Thalassian Athenaeum.”

Among the Six Schools, the Athenaeum by the Sea was an oddity. Save for the Aelisian Athenaeum in the Imperial City, all the others mostly educated those of their region—though stoneborn houses near the border might send a son or daughter over if their lands had no school to speak of. Unlike them, the Thalassian Athenaeum serviced both the Deeplands and Nysia.

Neighboring Nysia was the smallest of the eminent regions, and had the fewest lordly houses, but it still left the Thalassian Athenaeum with more stoneborn students than usual. In such a situation, the heir of a poor and lowly house nominal could be easily overlooked if he were not an exceptional talent in fighting, flying, or friendship.

In our case, it did not help that Mydea and I entered the athenaeum as pariahs and left with superiors and subjects, but no friends, Aspyr thought. It was good that their younger sister Chalsi had found trusted companions at least, if her last letter was to be believed.

“It is good that we give Alkaios a chance to prove himself then,” Aspyr said at last. “Good steel must be tempered.”

“He will not disappoint,” Andras said with a nod.

The wind blew from behind them, delivering Hystor Adryan’s words to Aspyr’s ear. “The Tuskar are nearby. The warbands remain near each other.”

Aspyr raised a mailed fist to acknowledge the hystor’s words. The sun was now at its highest, when the mythuselah would be at their weakest. “Skyward!” he barked, amplifying his voice.

“For Aigis! For the Lord External!” his oathsworn sorcerers cried out in unison, led by Captain Alexios.

Five lances shot forward at a gallop, spaced just enough for their wings to unfold. With three powerful flaps, Steelwing brought Aspyr skyward, while the rest of his winged lance took a moment longer to join him. Many days of hard drills showed as they formed up like migrating birds with Aspyr at the tip.

Mere moments later, Aspyr could make out the Tuskar warbands moving below on steeds crowned with antlers of sharpened bone. They numbered nearly six hundred by his count, clustered into four distinct groupings. Beyond that, there was no means for him to tell them apart for they carried no sigils like all civilized peoples ought to.

Hystor Adryan mentioned there were at least eight warbands though, Aspyr thought. Had the other half gone their own way already?

“Make ready!” Aspyr ordered, retrieving a javelin from his back and channeling magic into its bronze head. With luck, the Tuskar would panic from the first sudden strike and scatter. Victory would certainly follow, granting him the right to enroll into the Order of the Stone Shield with his head held high.

“Ready!” his lance mages answered.

“Ready!” answered the lords who led their own lances in turn, voices unhindered by the wind thanks to witchery.

“Loose at will!” Aspyr roared, and the javelins were thrown like the thundering rods of a storm god. Before the first volley struck, a cry of alarm was raised and a thick mist blanketed the ground, obscuring the Tuskar from view. Seconds later, the javelins struck, red tongues of fire exploding from each impact, though weaker than he thought they ought to be. It was as if the fog was smothering the flames before they even hit.

They continued to circle around the expanding, protective fog, raining down javelins upon it blindly. Minutes passed like this, until the area the mist covered was too great for them to hope to hit anything.

They could not keep trying to burn them out blindly without torching every farm and field from here to the Pass of Perasma. If they tried, they’d cause more harm than just letting the Tuskar do as they pleased.

Though the Tuskar had no athenaeums, they had magic all the same. Each tribe cultivated different tricks which they guarded jealously even from each other—spells to see in the dark, to feel with wind, to smell beyond scent… They were not stupid, and they knew of ways to match Kolchis’ own measures in the pegasi and familiars and scrying.

“Thrice-damned mistmakers,” Andras said. “They’re pushing the fog north.”

Retreating in good order, Aspyr understood immediately. Stalling for time, for the sun to set? His frown deepened. They had not scattered like he’d expected. The tribes were working so closely together … were they distant kin, or bound by marriage perhaps? Were they not the enemy, Aspyr would’ve praised their commander for keeping the various warbands moving together despite the terror of death from above.

“My lord, Marshal Perdiccas is signaling us for orders,” Captain Alexios said, tilting his head towards the bursts of light appearing over their mass of cavalry.

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“We pursue,” Aspyr said. The enemy host was not yet broken, and so remained a threat to his people. His victory had to be beyond question in the eyes of his sworn vassals, to stiffen their loyalty to his house. Only with them fully behind him could Lord Eminent Pleonexia be forced to accept that Kolchis was a house external not by his writ, but by right and acclaim.

Perhaps more importantly, the Tuskar could not be allowed to taste success in any form if they were learning to come together as a unified whole once more, like they had during Grandfather’s time. Their sum would be far greater than the parts, and from the Frostlands might emerge a people who could truly threaten the Deeplands.

As Alexios signaled back to the main host, Aspyr considered the situation. The mist had to be dispelled or their heavy horse might run themselves into a hedgehog of dismounted shields and spears, or be countercharged by the mounted Tuskar. Yet, to be sufficiently close for their winds and witchery to dispel it would put them within range of a trained mage’s bowshot.

Was there a tribe among them that learned the ways of the wind well enough to replicate such a feat? He had not spotted a great number of bows among their weapons…

His frown deepened. When each tribe acted alone, it was simple enough to know their limits after a spectacle or two.

“They’re headed for the river!” Andras said, pointing at the direction the shrouding fog was moving towards.

Aspyr’s brows furrowed. “They cannot think to escape us by crossing it?” Even if they had a tribe skilled in fording by freezing, such maneuvers were delicate in the best of conditions. With winged and mounted mages on their heels … well, there were less painful ways to die than drowning in winter.

“We dispel the mist now!” Aspyr ordered, leading his lance into a dive—

Steelwing swerved sharply to the side—

The space they left behind was peppered by a barrage of small, smooth ovals.

Rocks, Aspyr realized. “Slingers! Scatter!” he cried out, reinforcing his bronze helmet and armor with the essence of earth, while winds picked up violently around him to throw off their aim. Only when they had reached a safe height again did Aspyr take a moment to assess his lance. Sir Edgar looked uncomfortable with pieces of his armor dented, but he seemed to be in no immediate danger.

A deep horn resounded across the plains, and the lances below massed together for a charge. Aspyr glanced down and saw the figure of his father riding forward alone, a storm brewing within his raised palm. Even from so far away he could feel the monstrous capacity gathering in Father’s fingertips, doing so casually what would usually take scores of men working in concert to accomplish and without a medium to bind the spell to either.

“Ready your javelins!” Aspyr said. Though he’d left his command of the reserves, Father was creating an opportunity for them, and Aspyr could only make use of that.

Father brought his hand down, and the winter wind howled like warhounds, surging forward eagerly to tear away the protective fog.

Aspyr breathed in deep and imbued his weapon with fire and the essence of wind to carry it further and farther. The bronze tip of his javelin turned a bright white as more magic poured into it, and the wooden shaft closest to the tip blackened to hold its integrity. “Loose at will!” Aspyr said, projecting his voice as he aimed at a great clumping of Tuskar below.

In plain sight now, and without their magic to soften the blow, the explosive volleys melted the Tuskar lines, leaving their formation like a mouth with missing teeth. It was into this broken formation that his heavy horse smashed into not a minute later.

“They really tried to fight us on our terms,” Aspyr said, shaking his head. The Tuskar were learning some lessons to be sure, but the steelborn had been waging war amongst each other for centuries now. A great massing of men was a prime target for tactics like his, which was why cavalry was split into independent lances and rarely massed before the final charge. If the Tuskar had fought on foot and anchored defensive spells—assuming they knew any—to one area, they could have weathered the volley better.

The fight below was progressing well as they descended. The steelborn were armored in chainmail hauberk and armed with bronze or steel spears and kite shields, while most of the Tuskar relied on small rectangular plates of crude iron and rawhide sewn together.

The advantages of his warriors were not limited to just equipment either—the steelborn were taller than average, while the Tuskar had short and lithe forms, a little shorter than his Monsi subjects.

Their reindeer are quite fierce though, Aspyr thought as he witnessed a man in the distance nearly get skewered by the steed’s sharpened antlers.

“A great victory, my lord!” Andras declared, judging the battle won as the first of the Tuskar warbands began to break away from each other.

“The first of many,” Aspyr said to the acclaim of his mages.

Aspyr led his lance into the dying fray, where the last hints of resistance remained. To his surprise, his knights formed a ring around a pale girl armed with a bone dagger and a dying man barely staying on his feet. I didn’t realize the Tuskar let their young ride to war, he thought with distaste. Even he and his sisters were not urged to fight despite House Kolchis falling into their hands as children. It was, he supposed, the difference between civilized peoples and their lessers.

Aspyr dismounted and strode forward, drawing his bronze sword. “Lay down your weapon,” he said, switching to the Monsi tongue. It was, as he understood it, a cousin of the Tuskar language and shared enough words for something passing a conversation.

She hissed at him, curved fangs extending past her lower lip, and the sight of it gave him pause. It was a surer sign of danger than the first flakes of winter. Her hair was the shade of moonlight the mythuselah so loved, and flowed down her shoulders in a cascade. Yet, for some reason Aspyr did not think they would be so easy to grab. He was willing to wager if one tried, they would find it slipping through their grip.

“You’re mythuselah,” Aspyr said. And so was the dying man he realized belatedly as he did not bleed out from his wounds. That must be why they’re called the Bloodless Ones.

The dying man said something in that guttural tongue of theirs—something of inheritance, blood? The girl looked troubled, eyes watering as she glared at Aspyr, before she plunged her fangs into the man’s neck. In an instant the corpse withered into dust, leaving nothing of himself to burn or bury but his fangs.

With his passing would be decades, if not centuries, of accumulated knowledge lost to his tribe.

The girl knelt down, carefully placing the pair of fangs in a pouch tied to her waist, before standing back up.

Suddenly, the girl’s eyes turned blood red and Aspyr could not move his feet. His knights cried out in that instant as she lunged at him, leaving deep gouges in the snow with her passing. Aspyr could only bring his shield up to defend, and his senses screamed out at him as the dagger tore through his shield and its layered enchantments like it was cheap cloth.

Her eyes turned back to a dazzling shade of deep blue as she pulled her dagger back to strike between his throat, but Alexios smashed into her shield first, knocking her backwards.

She was back on her feet in a second, licking his blood off her fang of a dagger, but the motions were sluggish compared to her first strike. When she faced them again, a whole row of spears and shields stood between her and Aspyr as the rest of his vassals and knights shook themselves out of their surprise.

Captain Alexios and Lord Andras led the fight against her along with three others, while the rest of his host returned to running down what Tuskar they could catch. Strong as the mythuselah was, she was no match for five trained mages working in concert. Her eyes continued to flicker between blood red and blue, but with each cut and blow she took, her strength was ground to dust until she could barely stay on her feet.

“Wait,” Aspyr said, cognizant that his arm was still bleeding out—and painfully at that—despite coating it with a minor healing spell. “Take her prisoner. I want her alive.” The Tuskar were behaving strangely, and he would need to know more of their plans.

For sparing her life, she paid him back with eyes of deep hatred and a mouthful of curses.