Snow, ash-grey in the dawn, eddies around the three figures locked in the centre of the waking camp. Konir lounges against a meat sled as though the blizzard were a polite dinner guest. Dolma, robes scorched by her own incantations and crusted with rime, plants her staff in the churned snow like a banner of war. Between them stands Lanau, every muscle trembling as if unseen chains have just snapped.

For a heartbeat she merely breathes: in-draw, out-steam. Then realisation cracks across her face. I can move. She pivots toward Konir. "We should—"

"Run? Yes, yes, delightful plan," he says, brushing a phantom flake from his borrowed sleeve. "I am, alas, busy pretending to duel Saint Grandma here so you may depart unskewered. Do hurry."

Dolma's staff thumps once, the marmot skull at its tip bobbing like a censorious judge. "Stay, girl. You've promise. The land itself whispers your name. I'll not have you squandered following a frost-tongued trickster."

Konir's laugh clinks like icicles snapping. "Promise? What can you have crammed into her skull in—what, a couple days?"

Lanau opens her mouth, something defiant ready on her tongue— A scream rings from Noga's great yurt. Then another. High, spiralling, raw. A sound that yanks marrow from bone.

Sarangerel's voice follows, ragged with horror. "Bora—Sky above, she's bleeding—"

Altantsetseg answers with a belling shriek fit to rattle glaciers. Felt walls flap. Men shout. Torches blossom across the encampment like feverish fireflies.

Konir clicks his tongue. "Well, timetable just shrank. Hold still." He lifts a hand. The air around them ripples—snowflakes hang, mid-whirl, like pearls on invisible strings; torches smear into orange comets; footsteps warp into deep, slow thunder.

Dolma snarls, jams two fingers into her own nostril, and blows. Blood spatters the snow, bright as fresh berries. A syllable rips from her throat. Reality snaps back like overstretched sinew. The torches re-solidify, flakes tumble in frantic haste, soldiers stumble as momentum returns. Konir staggers, genuinely winded.

"Must decide," Dolma hisses, closing the gap in an eye-blink. Her hand clamps Konir's throat—not the stablehand's flesh, but the intangible shape beneath it. Frost blossoms across her knuckles where his skin touches hers. "Spirit or worm, you remain small."

Konir's borrowed eyes bulge; amusement flickers even through strangulation. "You are one of a kind..."

Around them the camp has gathered—a ragged circle of lamellar, quilted coats, half-donned helmets. Blankets still drag from shoulders; swords glint, half-drawn. Fear spreads quicker than the cold.

Sarangerel, silk night-robe now splashed crimson, pushes to the front. Altantsetseg flanks her, dagger reversed in her palm. Tears freeze on their cheeks, but fury keeps their blades steady. "You," Sarangerel rasps, pointing at Lanau as if indexing a page in an execution ledger. "She loved you. She would have spoken to you. You answered with blood."

"I answer to Tepr," Lanau replies, voice low, every word a flake of iron. "And Tepr bleeds."

Altantsetseg lunges, grief-strength and dancer's speed combined. She crosses the invisible threshold of Konir's hastily spun ward—and staggers as cramps seize her gut. Vomit spatters the snow, steaming. She does not stop; willpower drives her through the convulsions. Sarangerel follows, knife held like a surgeon's scalpel, jaw clenched against the nauseous shudder rippling up her spine.

Konir, still throttled, croaks, "Powers… ebbing. Quite inconvenient." With his free hand he flicks two fingers; the ward condenses into a thin haze that forces back the encroaching soldiers but leaves the wives unaffected. "That's the best I can do now."

Lanau's dagger whispers free. She sets feet in a wide stance learned on windy ridges, eyes never leaving the grieving pair. "I mourn her too," she says—not apology, not plea, simply a tide-flat truth.

Sarangerel's response is a slash aimed at Lanau's throat. Steel hisses; Lanau tilts, the blade skimming a dark coil of hair. Altantsetseg, swallowing bile, spins behind her partner and drives low for Lanau's kidney. Lanau twists; the dagger scores leather, draws a shallow burn of blood.

Then a shadow unspools beneath Konir's boots—longer, deeper than any dawn angle allows. Meicong steps out as though exiting a curtain, eyes hard as tumbled glass. Twin daggers glint in her fists.

Meicong smiles, all thin edges. "Don't worry, Sis Lanau. I won't let them hurt you." She lunges, daggers like sewing needles. One kisses Sarangerel's forearm, splitting silk and skin; the other forces Altantsetseg back with a hiss.

Lanau exhales—two beats in, one beat out—and joins Meicong. They move in ragged concert: Lanau a broad slash, Meicong a needle thrust; Altantsetseg counters high, Sarangerel low. Snow churns into red-flecked slurry beneath their boots.

All around, soldiers hover at the ward's fuzzing rim, unsure whether to intervene or vomit again. Konir and Dolma remain locked: her nails bite spectral flesh, his essence sparks frost down her wrist. Blood courses from Dolma's nostril, black in torchlight. She growls a word older than steel—wind knifes across camp, snuffing torches, staggering men. Konir coughs mist, lips blue, yet smiles.

"Magnificent, crone," he wheezes. "But your disciple chooses blades, not beads."

Lanau proves him right. She parries Sarangerel's overhand stab, steps inside, and head-butts the taller woman. Cartilage crunches; hot red spatters the snow. Sarangerel folds, moaning, dagger lost. Altantsetseg screams, fury trumping nausea, and charges Lanau in a whirl of silver.

Meicong intercepts— her dagger catches Altantsetseg's wrist, flipping the knife into the air. Altantsetseg's momentum barrels her into Lanau's waiting elbow. She sprawls, gasping, in the red-shadowed snow, both hands empty. She skids across the churned snow, palms groping for the dagger Meicong flicked away. Her breath rasps; beads of red glitter in each exhale like garnets caught in the sunlight that never warms this place.

Sarangerel, nose a crooked ruin, surges up with a cry that is equal parts grief and rage. She snatches Altantsetseg's fallen blade and wheels back into the fray, robes snapping behind her like torn battle-flags. Lanau meets her head-on—steel kisses steel, then slides away to taste bone. Sparks hiss into the rising mist.

Mist: it thickens with every syllable Konir weaves. His voice, throttled yet musical, pours frost into the air. Crystals form on lamellar, on eyelashes, on Dolma's tangled braid. The shaman's grip tightens around his throat; frostbite blooms black along her knuckles, but she does not release.

"Temper your focus, old oak," Konir warns, a cough of vapour puffing from blue lips. "Shift your eyes from me and I drift away on the wind—then who guards your bright fledgling?"

Dolma spits a clot of dark blood onto his boots. "Try," she growls, "and I will bind you in goat entrails and hang you over a dung fire. The smell alone will tame you."

Konir's grin shows icicle-sharp teeth. "You forget: foxes love rot."

He twists subtle fingers in the air. The ground beneath the wives and their opponents flashes white—instant rime forms, slick as oiled glass. Sarangerel slips; Meicong darts in, daggers low. A red ribbon appears across Sarangerel's thigh; she staggers but does not fall.

Lanau steps onto the treacherous sheen as though born to ice. Her boots know these angles—she once herded goats on slopes where a single mis-step meant a thousand-foot tumble. She pivots, hip checking Sarangerel sideways, and lashes out in the same breath. Her dagger's hilt crunches into the torn bridge of Sarangerel's nose, snapping what little cartilage remained. The wife reels, vision swimming scarlet.

"Altán!" Sarangerel gurgles, hand outstretched.

Altantsetseg answers with a warble of breath and rises, one knee trembling. Her empty hands knot into fists; she charges Meicong. Meicong's eyes harden to polished obsidian. She sidesteps, catches Altantsetseg's braid, and yanks. The woman arches backward in pain.

A silver dart—Meicong's second dagger—flashes. Altantsetseg sees it, wide-eyed, impossibly bright. Time splinters.

She does not feel the steel slide between ribs. She feels falling—no, floating—into a hush where torches wink out one by one. The camp dissolves into white silence. Snow becomes downy petals. She lands softly on an endless field of winter bloom. Ahead waits Noga as he was the day they wed: armour polished, hair braided with silver rings, eyes unclouded by conquest. He offers a single snow-flower cupped in those terrible, gentle hands.

Tears burn lines down her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she whispers, though for what, she cannot name. She steps into his arms and the world tilts, sweet and bitter.

The hush cracks. Petals become torches once more; Noga's face becomes sky; her ears fill with Sarangerel's keening. Altantsetseg sees her own body crumpled on the snow, Meicong's dagger lodged to the hilt. She tries to speak—air escapes soundless. Darkness folds her like a cloak.

Sarangerel drops to her knees, blood and tears mingling, knife forgotten. She drapes herself over Altantsetseg's stillness, shoulders heaving. Her wail spirals into the night, a raw thread that snags even veteran soldiers' hearts.

Meicong yanks her blade free with an assassin's economy. She spins, eyes on Dolma—calculating, lethal.

"Back," Konir rasps, thrusting an elbow into Meicong's path. The mist wreathing him shivers with the movement. "Touch the crone now and your mind unspools like rotten yarn."

Meicong hesitates; the point of her dagger lowers a hair's breadth. The moment frays.

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Lanau steps forward, voice low but carrying. "Enough!"

She lifts her free hand. Konir's eyes widen; Dolma's pupils contract to pin-points.

Storm-air yawns. A lash of pressure snaps Konir and Dolma apart as if invisible hands have seized their collars. Frost explodes into steam. Konir's borrowed body slumps—a marionette with strings cut—while a swirl of silver fog tears free, streaking skyward before any charm can snag it.

Dolma stumbles two steps, breaths ragged. She wipes her arm across her face; the smear of blood looks unsettlingly like war-paint. "Girl," she croaks, "you pluck sun-fire with bare fingers."

Lanau lowers her hand, the glow fading. "I had no clue I was so full of surprises," she answers, breathing hard. "Thank you for seeing them for me." She flicks blood from her dagger. "Leave Tepr, Grandmother, or next time I do worse than untangle you."

Dolma laughs. "I heal the wounded and curse the arrogant. That is all. Hardly a crime in this land."

"Then heal." Lanau sheathes her blade. "Guide those who'll listen."

Men surge as Konir's ward gutters out—dozens of broad-shouldered Yohazatz, blades eager to avenge the dead. Dolma lifts a weary palm. "Hold." Her voice is a cracked reed yet it carries. The nearest soldiers hesitate.

She crouches beside Sarangerel, whose sobs now gutter in her throat like embers starved of air. Gently, Dolma prises stiff fingers from Altantsetseg's cooling hand. "Come," she murmurs, voice suddenly soft, almost maternal. "Stand. We'll bury her and Bora in Qixi-Lo, next to your husband's ancestors." Sarangerel allows herself to be gathered up, eyes vacant.

Dolma casts Lanau a look equal parts blessing and burden. "The fox runs. My chase resumes another dawn." She lifts Sarangerel and turns away, steps slow but certain.

The ward is gone; spears lower. Meicong curses in Moukopl, grabs Lanau's wrist, and bolts for the horse line. "Time to leave, Sis!"

They sprint through chaotic lanes where bleary guards collide with half-dressed officers. Konir's ex-host lies twitching, eyes white. A stableboy shrieks as Meicong vaults a feed-trough. Lanau swings into the saddle behind her; the horse—one of Noga's prized greys—dances sideways, sensing murder on the air.

A lieutenant lunges, sword raised. Meicong heels the mare; it surges. Lanau twists, palm out, and whispers a word Dolma once used in front of her. Wind punches the lieutenant's chest—he flies backward into two comrades, weapons pin-wheeling.

Hooves drum. Frost-hard snow shatters beneath iron shoes. Tents whip past in a blur of felt and torch-glow. Behind, Dolma's voice chants a funerary cadence while soldiers bellow for vengeance.

…

The blizzard has blown itself ragged; now only a hard, pewter light falls across the steppe. In that iron hush Prince Noga and Temej face each other, horses snorting frost between them. For a moment nothing moves—not a stir of wind, not a twitch of rein—only the raw, suffocating pressure of Noga's killing intent, dense as a winter cliff poised to avalanche.

Temej inhales—and chokes on silence. Move.

He jerks his borrowed Yohazatz pony around and drives heels to ribs. The little bay bolts, hooves hammering the crusted snow. Noga lingers half a heartbeat, as though tasting the thrill of the chase, then nudges his midnight stallion. The larger horse flows after the pony with the relaxed certainty of a river catching a leaf.

Wind screams in Temej's ears, but another sound rides beneath it: the stallion's stride, a deep relentless drum closing in yard by yard. He twists in the saddle, looses an arrow. The shaft whistles back along the line of pursuit—Noga merely leans a fraction and the arrow passes as though repelled by orbit.

Temej nocks again, fires—again—three—four—five shots. The fifth would skewer any mortal man between the eyes. Noga's hand flicks out, snatches the shaft mid-flight. He snaps the cedar cleanly, keeps the point. Then he hurls it, under-arm, a silver blur.

CRACK. The jagged head buries in the pony's haunch. Pain shrieks through the animal; it stumbles, pitches forward. Temej flings himself sideways as 200 kilos of horse and inertia plough into the snow. Hoof, girth, and flesh make a sound like a house collapsing. Noga's stallion roars past, rears high—black forelegs thrash down. Bone crunches; the pony's scream still echoes when it stops moving.

Temej rolls, tasting blood, fumbling for purchase on hardpack. Noga is on him before he rises—silent, inexorable, the weight of empire in one body. A gauntleted hand knots in Temej's hair and wrenches back. Snow, sky, and the Prince's obsidian gaze wheel into terrifying focus.

"Run farther," Noga whispers, breath steady as a prayer, "make me forget my patience."

He slams Temej's face into the drift. Once—twice. White glare explodes behind Temej's eyes; he hears rather than feels his jaw grind like wet gravel. Fingers find his right arm. With methodical precision Noga bends fingers where they should not bend—

Snap.

"Tepr shows me obstacles," Noga mutters, almost conversational, twisting another joint. "Always something fragile wearing courage."

Snap.

"Sick of its lessons."

Snap.

The ulna goes last, a brittle, muffled pop that jerks a ragged howl from Temej's throat. Darkness claws his vision.

Desperation claws harder. "Kill me," he gasps through broken teeth, "and Sartak whistles for Lanau. She butchers your wives before nightfall."

The words hang. Blood drips from Temej's chin, melts neat holes in the snow. Noga's grip slackens—not in mercy, but in calculated pause. He glances sky-ward.

High above, the eagle wheels, a bronze gyre against hard blue.

Noga releases Temej, rises with predatory grace, draws his war-bow. Arrow nocked, string groaning. "Whistle now," he states. "Watch me erase your sky." He looses.

Feathered death streaks upward—yet Sartak tilts one primar, lifts on an unseen gust; the arrow whistles beneath talons, lost. Noga fires again. Again. Three, four, five shafts—they hiss past pinions, tumble end-over-end to earth. Each miss rings louder than trumpet-blasts.

Temej watches through half-lidded eyes, consciousness flickering. Even gods can't clip the sky. A hysterical grin ghosts his mouth.

Noga lowers the useless bow, nostrils flaring. Frostbite creeps pale across his arrow fingers, but fury grants him indifference. He turns, seizes what remains of Temej's tunic, drags him across the frozen steppe toward the low, white shimmer of a lake. Every metre smears a red trail where the broken arm scrapes ice.

At the shore he flings Temej onto the glassy surface. The ice rings, a deep mournful note. Spider-web cracks vein outward beneath Temej's weight. Noga plants a boot on the man's ribs.

"Call the bird," he orders, voice flat as iron left in snow. "Or listen to the ice swallow your lungs and the wolves pick them clean."

Temej tries to laugh; it leaks out as a wet cough. "Hand…too broken to whistle."

"Tongue still works," Noga counters, pressing down. The ice groans.

Time bleeds. The sun climbs; lake light dazzles. Noga stands unmoving, silhouette cut from obsidian. Beneath him Temej trembles, heat seeping into ice. Cracks widen with soft pings. The wind carries the scent of distant carrion—wolves will follow.

At last the noon glare blinds eagle and man alike. Sartak, perhaps sensing a faltering heartbeat, stoops. Air sings around bronze feathers; the great bird alights beside Temej, talons scrabbling for grip.

Noga's bow is empty; his numbed fingers fumble an arrow from the ground. He tries to set nock to string—his skin sticks to frozen wood; blood smears the fletching. Snarling, he casts the bow aside, and draws his sword. Steel hums, mirror-bright.

He steps—crack. The frozen sheet sighs. Another step—crack-crack. Water weeps through seams. Noga raises the blade, ready to sever the eagle's neck—

The lake decides.

Ice shatters beneath both men. Frigid black water gulps them down. Temej's broken body plunges like a stone; Sartak flares wings, shrieks, shoots sky-ward in a curtain of spray. Noga submerges, shock knifing his lungs; armour drags him down. Through the murk he sees Temej sinking, eyes half-closed, smile somehow calm.

If he dies, the eagle will...

Noga kicks, curses, hauls forward. His gauntlet closes on Temej's collar. With a roar that boils bubbles, the Prince powers upward, iron muscles wrenching both bodies toward shivering daylight.

They break the surface amid plates of disintegrating ice. Noga seizes a floating slab, heaves Temej across it like a netted fish, then claws himself up. Water explodes from cuirass rivets; breaths heave from his chest. Frost instantly blooms over wet lamellar.

Temej sputters, still alive; his grin has frozen, literally, lips blue against his teeth. "Told…you," he whispers, voice like cracked reeds, "Tepr…fights dirty."

Noga glares, black eyes rimed in ice. Steam ghosts from his shoulders. "Tepr will burn," he answers, each word a hammer on an anvil. He drags Temej by the leg to thicker ice, then to shore, relentless as a tide.

Granite shoulders blunt the gale; scrawny winter sage huddles brown beneath the crusted snow. It is the closest thing to shelter on this naked stretch of steppe.

The prince wastes no breath. Greaves, vambraces, soaked silk under-robes—everything sodden and metal—he strips in curt, economical jerks. Water hisses where it spatters the coals he rakes together from a travel-brazier lashed to his saddle. Sparks leap, frantic insects in the pewter noon.

Temej, one arm ruined, tries to shrug out of his frozen coat. The fabric crackles like breaking bark; pain lashes him dizzy. Noga curses under his breath—whether at the cold or at Temej's incompetence, it is impossible to tell—and kneels, slicing the coat free with a boot-knife. He flings it aside, then rolls the Tepr man none too gently onto a length of oiled hide.

"Stay," he orders. As though Temej might suddenly feel the urge to jog a victory lap.

From the stallion's packs Noga drags a bundle of pitch-soaked shavings, a twist of lamp-wick, and a striking wheel. Sparks bloom; flame bites the shavings, curls greedy tongues round splintered pine. The prince's hands tremble.

He hauls Temej upright against the stone, hooks the man's good arm around his own broad shoulders, and wedges him as near to the fire as flesh dares. Crude splints—stripped arrow-shafts bound with stirrup-leather—brace the shattered limb. A strip of cambric torn from Noga's inner tunic becomes sling and tourniquet at once.

From another pack comes a cavalry blanket: felt on one face, shaggy yak-wool on the other, still redolent of horse sweat. Noga throws it over both of them, then—without ceremony—presses his bare back to Temej's, sealing the heat. Two adversaries cinched together like brothers in a tale.

Minutes slide by, measured by the crack of ice on their boots as it dries and flakes. Temej's teeth chatter; Noga's lungs rasp like a file on steel.

Temej finally speaks, voice ragged as torn vellum. "You… going to rethink? Diplomacy?"

Noga does not turn. "No." Embers glow in his eyes' reflection. "Arrow first, knife second. Head on a stake before dusk."

"Good plan," Temej wheezes, almost cheerful. "Small flaw."

"Which."

"You can't kill my eagle. Physically impossible. You couldn't reach one with just your hands. All this time."

Noga's shoulders rise, fall. Steam drifts off him in lazy pennons. "Then your signal murders my wives. Burn this land until bedrock bleeds glass—that is the price."

Temej snorts; it gurgles red. "Naive, Prince. Tepr won't spare them even if Lanau never lifts a blade."

The tiger-shadow of a frown crosses Noga's brow. "Where," he asks, "does a half-frozen eagle boy find humour, facing death twice in one morning?"

Temej's reply is a thin laugh. "Because you're not the scariest nightmare I know. She is." He works saliva round split lips. "The Khan of Tepr—she chose the wolf inside. You?" He shrugs with one functioning shoulder. "Life hammered the blade; you just learned to swing it. She is the one behind all of this."

A muscle ticks in Noga's jaw. Frost glitters along the hard line of his cheek.

But reply, he does not. The only sound is fire popping sap.

The wind shifts. Both men lift their heads. A low vibration passes through the moraine, through the ice, into their bones: the drumbeat of many boots over frozen earth.

On the far rim of the horizon a grey tide appears—rank after rank of Moukopl infantry, banners stiff as iron, spears pricking the sky like winter grass. Ten thousand at least, grinding east under Sartak's circling beacon.

Temej's laugh returns, richer, painful. "Hear that? Reinforcements. I bet your warriors are quite hungry after such a long siege in scorched earth tundra. But they come for me. Sartak has been flying in circles to attract them here."

Noga is on his feet before the last syllable cools. Armour half-buckled, hair stiff with ice, he looks like a revenant king conjured from a saga. He strides to the stallion, swings astride with a fluid power that makes the great horse grunt. Snow explodes beneath hooves as he wheels toward the marching horde.

He halts long enough to glare back at Temej—a black statue against the pallid land. "Live for now," he states. "My wives are mine. Your comrade dies by sunset, and then—" The promise is left hanging, sharp as hoar-glass.

He heels the stallion; the beast breaks into a ground-devouring gallop, mane whipping storm-spray.

Temej sags against the stone, the blanket a limp banner round his shoulders. He watches Sartak wheel wider, guiding the Moukopl like a shepherd's dog. Pain lances with every breath, but satisfaction glows warm as the coals at his feet.

"I can't believe we won against the Khanzadeh... Good bird," he murmurs, eyelids fluttering shut while the horizon fills with marching doom. "Very… good… bird."

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