The first light of dawn is a thief in the Tengr Mountains, stealing the deep black of night but offering no warmth, only a cruel, grey clarity. The blizzard has exhausted itself, leaving behind a world sculpted in brutal, wind-whipped snowdrifts and an air so cold it cracks like glass in the lungs. High on the slopes above the Ruturk Stream bend, the Tepr coalition waits. They are ghosts woven into the frozen landscape – fur-clad shapes huddled behind ice-encrusted boulders, buried under snowdrifts near precarious cornices, their breath pluming silently. The cold is a silent enemy. A young Haikam archer shivers violently, his fingers numb on his bowstring. Beside him, an Orogol veteran curses under his frost-rimed beard, "Sky's frozen balls... rather face a thousand Moukopl than this..." before slumping forward, eyes glazed. He doesn't rise. The mountain claims its price before the battle even begins.

Below, a dark serpent winds its way up the treacherous path beside the frozen stream – the Tiger Guard. Kirzeh rides at its head, a black iron monument atop his massive stallion. They move with disciplined silence, hooves muffled by deep snow, breath steaming like dragons in the frigid air.

"Steady..." Horohan whispers, her voice a thread of sound carried away by the mountain wind. She crouches beside Naci behind a jagged outcrop, Khanai a silent white shadow at her side. Naci's eyes, amber and fierce, track the approaching column. "Wait for the narrows..."

The Tiger Guard enters the kill zone – a steep-sided gully where the path hugs the mountainside. Kirzeh scans the silent slopes, senses screaming. Too quiet.

"Now!" Naci's command is a whip-crack.

The mountainside erupts with the groan of shifting rock and the deadly hiss of arrows. Boulders, pried loose during the night, tumble down the slopes. Arrows, fletched with eagle feathers, streak from hidden perches. The Tiger Guard, elite reflexes honed by countless battles, reacts with astonishing speed. Horses rear, men duck, shields rise with a unified crunch. Rocks smash harmlessly into drifts or shatter against shields. Arrows thud into wood and ice, finding few gaps in the expert defense.

"Ambush! Push through!" Kirzeh roars, his voice echoing in the gully. "Forward! Crush them!"

The Tepr warriors don't hold the high ground. They abandon it. Like grey wolves pouring from a den, they surge down the slopes, not to engage, but to stream past the stalled column. Jabliu spearmen, Nedai axemen, Alinkar swordsmen – they flow through the snow with reckless speed, dodging between the confused guards, slashing at exposed legs, hamstringing horses, then disappearing down the path behind the Yohazatz force.

Kirzeh snarls, splitting his force. "Hüran! Take half! Clear those vermin off the slope! The rest, with me! After the runners!"

Captain Hüran, a bear of a man with a frost-burned face, bellows orders. A contingent peels off, starting to scramble up the treacherous incline after the retreating Tepr skirmishers. The slope is steep, the snow deep. Progress is agonizingly slow.

Then, the sky screams.

From a high ledge, Khatan, Horohan's dark eagle, lets loose an ear-shattering shriek of pure, predatory fury. Instantly, Uamopak answers, his golden cry echoing Khatan's. Then, a dozen more, then two dozen – every Alinkar eagle handler has released their birds. A tempest of shrieking raptors dives and wheels above the Tigers. A wave of sonic terror that vibrates the air, rattles teeth, and pierces the brain. Horses panic, bucking wildly. Men clap hands over ears, momentarily disoriented, their disciplined ranks faltering.

"Archers! Loose!" Horohan commands from her new position further down.

From concealed ledges above the scrambling Hüran and his men, another volley of arrows rains down. Rocks, smaller this time but still deadly, follow. The eagles shriek again, diving close, talons outstretched, adding to the disorienting chaos. A guard screams as an eagle's talon rakes his helmet. Another stumbles, an arrow sprouting from his shoulder.

Hüran, halfway up the slope, shielding his face from a diving eagle, looks up. Not at the birds, not at the arrows. He looks at the vast, overhanging cornice of snow and ice high above them, gleaming ominously in the weak dawn light. He feels the vibrations under his boots – the pounding hooves of Kirzeh's contingent further down, the impacts of the falling rocks, the relentless, piercing shrieks of the eagles hammering the unstable mountain face.

His blood runs colder than the snow. "NO!" he bellows, the sound raw with dawning horror. "AVALA—"

The mountain answers. The massive cornice fractures. A wall of snow, hundreds of tons of it, peels away from the rock face. It flows, accelerating with terrifying speed, a churning, thundering tsunami of white death descending directly towards Hüran's men and the rear of Kirzeh's column trapped in the gully below.

"RUN! DOWN! GET OUT!" Hüran screams, abandoning his ascent, scrambling, sliding, falling back down the slope towards the main path. His men follow in panicked disarray.

They are almost to the relative safety of the wider path when figures erupt from the snowdrifts beneath the mountain's lip, right at the avalanche's threshold. Warriors buried for hours, coated in ice, shaking off their frozen shrouds like vengeful spirits.

Naci is a whirlwind of death, her curved blade a silver flash, meeting a Tiger Guard captain's desperate lunge with a clash that sparks in the gloom. Horohan moves beside her, economical and lethal, her spear a darting viper finding the gap in a guard's defenses. Khanai, a white demon, lunges from the powder, dragging a screaming man from his saddle. Pomogr, wide-eyed and shrieking almost as loudly as the eagles, nevertheless hurls a weighted net with surprising accuracy, tangling two horses together.

The world is reduced to white noise and crimson spray. The avalanche's thunderous passage leaves behind a churning hellscape of fractured ice, buried men, and panicked horses struggling in suffocating snow.

In the eye of this frozen storm, two duels unfold like lethal dances.

Hüran, coated in snow, roars in fury as he disentangles himself from panicked horses and fallen men. His eyes, bloodshot and insane, lock onto Naci and Horohan, who stand shoulder-to-shoulder amidst the swirling white haze, Khanai beside them. Kirzeh, further down but miraculously unburied, kicks his stallion forward, his face a mask of cold, vengeful fury beneath his wolfskin cap. His surviving Tiger Guards, elite even in disarray, form a grim crescent behind him, black blades dripping crimson onto the snow.

"KILL THEM!" Hüran bellows, hefting a massive, spiked war-hammer. "SKIN THE BITCHES FOR THE KHAN!"

Kirzeh doesn't shout. He spurs his mount, a juggernaut of black lacquer and murderous intent, his long, straight cavalry sword gleaming dully. "For Yohazatz! Crush the serpent's head!"

They attack as one – Hüran a raging blizzard on foot, hammer swinging in bone-shattering arcs, Kirzeh a silent avalanche on horseback, sword aimed like a lance at Horohan's heart. It should be overwhelming. It is terrifying.

Naci and Horohan don't flinch. They flow.

Naci sidesteps Kirzeh's thunderous charge not backwards, but inwards, towards the horse's flank. Her long musket, slung across her back, is forgotten for the lethal dance of her curved Tepr blade. She meets Kirzeh's descending sword not with a block, but with a deflecting scrape that sends sparks flying and throws the horse slightly off-balance. Simultaneously, Horohan isn't where Kirzeh expected. She's pivoted, not away from Hüran's hammer, but towards Naci's movement, her sword licking out like a serpent's tongue at the tendons above Kirzeh's horse's rear fetlock.

The stallion screams, stumbling. Kirzeh curses, wrenching the reins, his sword swinging wildly to regain control. Hüran's hammer whistles through the space Horohan occupied a heartbeat before, smashing a crater into the frozen earth.

No words. Just the shared breath, the flicker of an eye, the subtle shift of weight. Naci uses the horse's stumble to dart under Kirzeh's guard, her blade aiming for his thigh. Horohan, having drawn Hüran's wild swing, spins, her bow – miraculously strung and ready – already drawn. Not at Hüran, who's recovering his balance, but at Kirzeh's exposed back as he leans to control his horse.

Thwack!

The arrow strikes Kirzeh's black-lacquered shoulder pauldron, not piercing the thick armor but staggering him with the force. He snarls, turning his fury back towards Horohan.

Hüran, enraged by the near miss, tries to use his reach. He backs up, swinging the hammer in wide, intimidating sweeps, trying to force Horohan to break formation, to give him a clean shot. "Stand still, witch!"

Naci sees the tactic. "Horo!" she barks a signal. Horohan understands. Instead of backing away from Hüran's intimidating sweeps, she rushes him, ducking under a whistling hammer blow with impossible agility. Hüran, expecting retreat, overcommits. Naci doesn't follow Horohan; she breaks away, sprinting towards the scrambling chaos where the avalanche debris meets the path.

Kirzeh, seeing Naci apparently fleeing, spurs his wounded horse after her. "Running, Khan?!" he roars.

Naci doesn't run far. She ducks behind a massive, avalanche-tossed boulder, yanking her musket from her back. Kirzeh rounds the rock, sword raised for a killing stroke.

BAM!

The sound is monstrous, echoing off the mountains like thunder. A plume of acrid white smoke erupts from behind the boulder. Kirzeh's horse shrieks, a fist-sized hole blossoming crimson in its chest. It collapses, hurling Kirzeh headfirst into a snowdrift. He emerges sputtering, half-blinded by snow and gunsmoke, his left arm hanging uselessly where the musket ball grazed it.

Meanwhile, Hüran presses Horohan. She's a blur, dodging, parrying his heavy blows with her sword, but the sheer force drives her back. Khanai lunges, but Hüran kicks out savagely, catching the tiger in the ribs with a sickening thud. Khanai yelps, rolling away.

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"NOW!" Horohan gasps, not to Naci, but to the sky.

Two shadows plummet. Khatan and Uamopak, shrieking vengeance, dive-bomb Hüran. Talons rake his helmet, wings buffet his head, beaks snap near his eyes. He roars, flailing blindly with his hammer, momentarily overwhelmed by the feathered fury.

It's the opening Horohan needs. She drops her sword. In one fluid motion, she draws an arrow from her quiver, nocks, draws, and looses it at the back of Hüran's knee, where thick furs meet leather greaves.

Thunk.

Hüran bellows, more in shock than pain, staggering as the arrow punches deep into the joint. He stumbles, his mighty hammer dropping from suddenly nerveless fingers.

Naci emerges from the gunsmoke, her curved blade slick with horse blood. She sees Kirzeh struggling to rise from the snowdrift, his sword lost. She sees Hüran crippled, roaring in agony. She sees Horohan, breathing hard, already nocking another arrow, her eyes cold fire.

The surviving Tiger Guards, witnessing their captains fall – one unhorsed and disarmed, the other hamstrung and blinded by eagles – hesitate. The terrifying synchrony of the two women, the eagles, the tiger, the avalanche, the gunshot… it feels less like battle, more like standing against vengeful spirits.

Naci raises her bloody sword, pointing it at the wavering Tigers. Her voice, amplified by the mountain bowl, rings out, clear and terrible:

"Tepr stands! Who else seeks to feel its wrath?!"

…

Lanau moves like a shadow between yurts, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. Every creak of felt, every muffled cough from within a dwelling, sends jolts of terror through her. The image of Bora's blood soaking into priceless carpets is seared behind her eyes. She needs to find Temej quickly. But the camp stirs. Smoke begins to curl from smoke holes. Guards stretch stiff limbs. Time is a noose tightening.

She rounds a supply sled piled high with frozen carcasses and freezes. Leaning against it, casually picking ice from under his fingernails with a borrowed dagger, is a Yohazatz stablehand. Utterly ordinary. Except for the eyes. When they lift and meet hers, they hold the ancient, glacial amusement of a winter that has seen empires rise and fall. Konir.

"Looking for your lost eagle-boy?" Konir's voice is the stablehand's, but the inflection, the weary knowing, is unmistakably him. He flicks the ice shard away. "Stop. He's… otherwise engaged. Probably arguing morality with a landslide or something tedious. Run. Now. While the camp still yawns."

Lanau's hand flies to her dagger hilt. "I can't leave him! He's–"

"–a complication you can't afford," Konir cuts in, his borrowed face hardening into uncharacteristic severity. The fading light weakens the blizzard's residue clinging to him; his spectral form seems less substantial within the stablehand's body. "Worry about your own skin, little sparrow. The huntress wakes."

As if summoned by the thought, a guttural, earth-shaking shriek splits the morning calm. "FOX!" Dolma stands at the end of the aisle between yurts, her ragged robes crusted with snow, her wild hair a storm cloud around her furious face. She points a gnarled finger, tipped with a yellowed marmot skull lashed to her staff, directly at Konir-in-the-stablehand. "I FOUND YOU, TRAMÖRYGDEL!"

Konir sighs, a sound like wind through barren branches. "Oh, bother. The pest perseveres." He steps smoothly in front of Lanau, placing himself between her and the advancing shaman. He turns his head slightly, his borrowed eyes locking onto Lanau's. When he speaks, it's no longer a voice, but a command etched directly onto her soul, resonating with the fading power of the storm he'd harnessed: "FLEE. SOUTH. NOW. GO."

The compulsion is absolute, physical. Lanau's legs tense, her body pivoting, ready to sprint. It feels like gravity itself demands her obedience.

Dolma's counter-command hits like a physical blow. "DISCIPLE LANAU!" The shaman's voice is a thunderclap of raw, earthly power, rooting Lanau to the spot. "YOU DO NOT LEAVE! YOU DO NOT HEED THE WHISPERING FROST! STAND!"

Lanau gasps, a strangled sound. Her muscles scream in rebellion, torn between the irresistible push south and the immovable anchor of Dolma's command. She trembles violently, caught in the invisible crossfire, a puppet with two masters yanking her strings in opposite directions. Sweat beads on her forehead.

Konir chuckles, a low, icy sound that seems to make the very air crystals shiver. "Impressive, Auntie. Truly. To hold her against my nudge… even weakened… your well is deep. Deeper than I credited."

Dolma spits on the snow, the spittle sizzling faintly. "Saw you, frost-licker. In the smoke, the day the Prince boasted of crushing Tepr. Saw your sly shadow slithering towards the bloodshed. Knew you'd come to feast on the chaos. Dolma waits." She raises her staff, the marmot skull rattling. "Waited to cleanse the world of your lies."

Konir inclines the stablehand's head with mocking respect. "Flattered. Truly. To occupy your visions for so long." His borrowed lips curl into a smile both beautiful and terrible. "Shall we dance, then, before the sun burns off the last of my power?"

Dolma stamps her staff. The frozen ground beneath Konir's feet boils with thick, viscous blood that surges upwards, grasping at the stablehand's legs like crimson, coagulating hands. The metallic stench of a slaughterhouse floods the air.

Konir flicks his fingers. The blood freezes instantly into grotesque, ruby-red sculptures – grasping hands become frozen claws mid-reach, waves of gore solidify into jagged crimson ice. But the ice doesn't hold. It screams, a high-pitched, crystalline shattering as Dolma's raw earth-power crushes it back into steaming liquid filth.

Konir raises a hand. The weak dawn light fractures. A thousand shimmering copies of Konir-in-the-stablehand, each slightly blurred, each moving out of sync, erupt around Dolma. They whisper insidious nothings in a hundred voices – doubts about her power, warnings about Noga's cruelty, temptations of eternal sleep. The air hums with dissonant lies.

Dolma roars, a sound like a mountain splitting. She slams her staff down again. A wave of pure, concussive force, visible only as a distortion in the air, ripples outwards. The shimmering illusions shatter like glass hit by a hammer, bursting into showers of frost that evaporate before they hit the ground.

Konir retaliates. He breathes out. A swarm of intricate, razor-sharp snowflakes, each shaped like a tiny, screaming skull. They swirl towards Dolma, howling with a thousand tiny, icy voices promising oblivion.

Dolma doesn't dodge. The air before her thickens, warps. The skull-flakes hit this barrier and… unravel. They turn into harmless water droplets that patter onto the snow.

A Yohazatz guard, drawn by the commotion, rounds a yurt. He takes one look at the scene and vomits violently before scrambling away, gibbering in terror.

Konir laughs, the sound echoing strangely, as if coming from everywhere and nowhere. "Oh, this is delightful! More potent than I dared hope!" He gestures, and the shadows around Dolma deepen, coalescing into tendrils of absolute cold that reach for her heart.

Dolma spits a wad of chewed herbs. The spittle ignites mid-air, becoming a miniature sun that flares with blinding, purifying light. The shadow tendrils recoil, hissing like steam, dissolving into nothingness. "Your winter weakens, fox!" she snarls. "The sun rises! Your time to slink back to your frozen hole is NOW!"

Then Lanau breaks from her stance.

…

The echo of Naci's challenge hangs like frozen breath over the ruined gully.

Then, a voice, raw and ragged with fury, rips through the stunned silence.

"I DO!"

A Tiger Guard near the front wrenches off his black-lacquered helmet. The face beneath is a ruin of scar tissue – Akun. Recognition slams into Horohan like a physical blow. A snarl rips from her throat, primal and terrifying.

Naci's eyes narrow, calculating. "Akun, the Traitor." Her voice is ice. "Promoted for surviving his treachery. How fitting."

Akun ignores her. His burning eyes are locked solely on Horohan. He throws the helmet aside, the clatter loud in the stillness. His Tiger Guard armor sits awkwardly on his frame. "FIGHT ME, HOROHAN!" he screams, spittle flying. "Face me, coward! Or are you only brave when hiding behind your precious wife and her tricks?!"

Horohan takes a single, deliberate step forward. Her spear, slick with Guard blood, lowers slightly. Her voice, when it comes, is low, vibrating with a contained fury. "Naci. Pomogr. Hold the line. This one is mine."

Naci nods curtly, shifting her stance to cover Horohan's advance. "Feed him to the mountain."

Akun draws a heavy, single-edged Yohazatz cavalry sword, the blade scarred and nicked. He circles Horohan, his movements stiff from old wounds but fueled by pure, venomous hate. "Look at you," he spits. "Playing Khatun. Pretending you belong. You're just a lie!"

Horohan matches his circling, her movements fluid, predatory. Her spear tip traces small, deadly circles in the air. "I wear the truth of Tepr. You wear the stink of betrayal. We are not the same."

"Betrayal?!" Akun laughs, a harsh, broken sound. "I see the world as it is! You cling to dead tribes and dead ideas! Like that poor boy! He cried your name when my boot hit his teeth! I couldn't stand it, so I beat him until he could no longer breathe! Did you feel pain when you saw his severed head in a bag?"

Horohan flinches. The image flashes: Tovak's earnest face, his loyalty, the sickening thud of his head hitting the ground. The contained fury ignites. "It was not Noga, it was you!" The roar tears from her throat, raw and guttural, echoing off the scarred mountainside. "For what?! Saying my name?! You sick son of a whore!"

"Death is just death!" Akun snarls, lunging suddenly. His blade whistles towards her neck. "Yours will taste sweeter!"

Horohan doesn't parry. She flows under the swing, her spear lashing out, scoring a deep gash across Akun's sword arm. He bellows, more in rage than pain, stumbling back. "Stand still, witch!"

Above, a familiar, piercing shriek cuts through the din. A dark shape plummets – Akun's eagle. Akun grins. "NOW!" he screams, pointing at Khatan perched on a nearby rock.

The eagle banks sharply, ignoring Horohan, and dives towards Khatan with talons outstretched, a feathered missile aimed at Horohan's bonded companion.

Horohan sees the betrayal – not just of Tepr, but of the sacred bond between Alinkar and eagle. It shatters the last vestige of her patience. With a cry of pure, feral rage that echoes Khatan's own shriek, Horohan doesn't wait for the eagles to clash. She launches herself at Akun.

Akun meets her charge, his heavy sword swinging in a brutal arc meant to split her skull. Horohan drops low, the blade whistling over her head. Her spear thrusts upwards at the inside of his lead knee. Thunk. The point sinks deep into the joint. Akun screams, buckling.

He pivots on his good leg, swinging wildly, desperately. Horohan dances back, her shorter sword flashing from its sheath. She parries a clumsy blow, the force numbing her arm, but she presses. She's a whirlwind of controlled fury, every movement economical, brutal. A slash opens Akun's cheek. A thrust deflects off his breastplate, staggering him.

Khatan, seeing her bonded one attacked, meets Akun's eagle mid-dive. Talons clash, feathers explode. They tumble in a shrieking, snapping ball of fury onto the snow nearby, a secondary battle of savagery mirroring their handlers.

Akun, bleeding, limping, driven mad by pain and hate, fights like a cornered wolverine. He feints a thrust, then swings his heavy blade in a backhanded arc aimed at Horohan's ribs. She anticipates, leaning back, but the tip catches the edge of her fur-lined pauldron, tearing leather and drawing a line of fire across her shoulder. She gasps, more in surprise than agony.

Seeing her momentary stumble, Akun roars in triumph, raising his sword for a final, two-handed overhead blow. "DIE, TRAITOR!"

Horohan doesn't try to dodge. She steps into the blow, inside its killing arc. Her left hand shoots up, not to block the blade, but to grab Akun's descending wrist with impossible strength, halting the sword inches from her skull. His eyes widen in shock at her ferocity.

Her right hand, holding her short sword, doesn't thrust. She reverses her grip and smashes the heavy pommel into Akun's already wounded knee with a sickening crunch of shattering bone.

Akun's scream is cut short as Horohan, still gripping his sword wrist, yanks him off balance. As he falls forward, she brings her knee up with devastating force into his face. Blood and teeth spray onto the snow. He collapses onto his back, groaning, blinded, his sword clattering from his nerveless fingers.

Horohan stands over him, breathing hard, blood dripping from her shoulder, her knuckles white on her sword hilt. Khatan, with a final, victorious shriek, pins Akun's eagle beneath his talons, his powerful beak poised for the killing strike.

"I loved you." The voice that comes out of Akun's mouth is distorted and pitiful.

"I know." Horohan says. Her blade plunges into his head, brain matter scattering around the scene. "Too bad you never knew how to love, Akun."

She pulls the blade out with finality.

"And with your death, Tepr is unified."

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