Kai put a horn to her cold, stiff mouth and blew, her heart a steady but powerful drum. The call echoed through the frosty air, deep and resonant like the rumble of distant thunder. The sound seemed to come from the very bones of the mountain before rising to a long, echoing note that made the snow tremble from tree branches.
The call wasn’t just a sound; it was a warning, a summons, and a promise. The time for battle was near.
The shadows of at least a dozen men sprinted out of hiding and moved for the mountain’s entrance.
Kai dug her heels into her oxbeast’s flank. “Home, Dryja. Go!”
The beast whirled, her great head and horns carving the frozen air, and tore across the terrain. Dryja’s powerful body, honed by years of training, brought them well ahead of the invaders.
A mile from the entrance, her Stormguard came together on their beasts, riding alongside each other with weapons at the ready. They asked no questions—there would be time for answers later.
Soon, the massive, weather-beaten columns of the ancient ruins rose from the snow, half-buried or shattered, their once-ornate carvings worn smooth by wind and ice. Kai sent a second horn call ahead to where her warrior sisters guarded the mountain from the crumbling floors.
Kai drew an arrow and notched it to her bow.
To her right and left, her warriors prepared for the battle ahead. The Broken Axe sisters, Tiponi and Pamuy, twirled battle axes out of their sheaths. Poloma Quiet Rock spun her poison-tipped spear through the mistabove her head before tucking it beneath her arm. Otekah Silver Wolf, bow and arrow drawn, faced the world with her most feral smile, while Niabi White Spirit pulled ahead on her oxbeast, taking a path to their left as if a single entity.
Kai’s subtle presses of the knee against Dryja led the beast onto a massive staircase that was uneven and coated with ice. They climbed toward the ridges leading into the mountain’s embrace.
In minutes, her Stormguard Legion stood at the ready from different levels of the ruins, facing the misted path below. The Silver Wolf females who’d already been stationed within left no space unguarded, arrows drawn back by steady arms. They wore the silvery-gray pelts of mountain wolves fastened by bone clasps, and every cloud of breath came in regulated intervals.
Snow blanketed the pass below, and a dense fog hung low in the air. The lines of soldiers appeared like wraiths, their formations uneven as they trampled through the foreign terrain, some areas several feet deep with snow.
They want to close us in,but this isn’t their land.
It’s ours.
Kai smiled. These men might have stood a chance in another land with a more seasonable climate. Iron breastplates sat over layers of leather and wool, and the harsh wind blew the horsehair atop their helmets across the narrow eye openings in its closed-face design. Their tunics stopped at their knees, and their leather boots only came up to the tops of their calves. Worse yet, there was a visible tremble in the sword arms.
By contrast, her warriors held steady and calm. They wore toughened leather lined with fur and sturdy boots made to cross ice. Thick belts cinched their waists, holding all manner of weapons and tools. The toughened leather bracers along their wrists were adorned with swirling, flowing designs.
“By your leave, Commander,” Otekah said to her left, drawing back her bowstring. She had her first target already picked out.
Kai pulled back her own string, her muscles at home with the tension. “Make these males regret ever looking upon our mountain.”
Arrows pierced the fabric of low clouds and through the vulnerable leather of the targeted men.
Niabi and her beast raced along the steep mountainside, the White Spirit female raining arrows down on the exposed soldiers.
Otekah dismounted and used columns and walls for concealment as she delivered deadly shots one by one. Her oxbeast leapt the two stories into the snow, causing a massive cloud of white to erupt, all but making her invisible, then appeared as if from nowhere before the line of soldiers. Her enormous horns swiped in great swaths through the formation, sending bodies flying.
“Shields!”
Kai laughed at the male’s order from below. His men were too frozen to hold the weight of their only defense against the arrows. He never should have brought them up to this stronghold so ill-prepared.
“Stormguard!” Kai shouted. “With me!”
The oxbeasts jumped?—
Kai’s stomach bottomed out in the fall. She bent into the rush of icy wind, blind in the snow’s dust cloud. Dryja’s hooves pounded forward, and the beast loosed a howling cry meant to draw fear.
The broken phalanx formation of men appeared, and they began staggering back.
Dryja reared back with a roar, her barbed horns catching a man mid-charge and hurtling him into a pillar.
Kai swept her leg up and around, then slid down Dryja’s massive side. She landed in a crouch, vibrations shooting up her bones, her sword already arcing up and around. Her steel slid up a soldier’s short sword?—
She hooked it down hard, slashing deep into his side. His body resisted the extraction of her blade, spraying blood. The man dropped hard—knee, hip, shoulder—then lay splayed and still. Eyes staring into the sky.
