Cold dawn pours through the jade-latticed windows of Qixi-Lo's western observatory, limning the dust motes in imperial gold. Third Prince Nemeh stands alone amid a drift of opened dispatch tubes, his breath fogging against marble polished thin.

…last sighting near the Tengr foothills. Escort devoured—so say survivors—by a white tiger with eyes the colour of glaciers…

Nemeh's jaw flexes. "A tiger," he repeats. "First Brother lets beasts answer his couriers now." With a flick of the wrist he snaps the bamboo tube in two; splinters skitter across the floor like startled crickets.

He turns on his heel, robes of midnight wool swirling, and strides through echoing corridors where every pillar is wrapped in silk scrolls of ancestral virtue. Incense pools in the rafters; caged mynahs trill courtly gossip to whoever cares to listen. None of it placates the pulse hammering behind his temples.

Within the cavernous hall the great Qaloron Khan kneels before a brazier of cedar, eyes closed, spine straight as an unstrung bow. Meditation has carved calm lines along his weather-beaten face; the fire's glow flickers across the obsidian steps of a throne once dragged here from the nomad plains.

Nemeh's boots click a staccato pattern as he circles the dais. "Father, don't you think it is shameful," he begins without preamble, voice clipped. "We sit on stone while the wind will no longer remember our names. We forsake the saddle to mimic Moukopl scum."

One knotted eyebrow of the Khan twitches, though his eyes remain closed. "Demoz the Conqueror adopted roofs so rain would not drown scrolls," he answers. "His blood runs in your own veins."

Nemeh snorts. "A conquest should warp the conquered—not the conqueror. Our yurts bred men like ironwood. These corridors breed only intrigue." He holds up the torn dispatch. "Noga is silent. Supplies vanish. Messengers swallowed by fable beasts. The land itself devours the heir, and your court scribes argue about tea grades."

Qaloron inhales cedar smoke. "Would you prefer the fate of sibling feuds? How many sons must a khan bury beneath the steppe stars?"

The younger prince stops pacing, shoulders tense. "There is nothing worse than a traitor sibling," he mutters, voice low as storm-thunder. The scroll shards crumple in his fist. With deliberate disrespect he scatters them onto the polished floor and strides for the doors, heavy braid snapping behind him. "Let the false walls rot," he throws over his shoulder. "When I wear the wolveshead crown we ride again."

Bronze doors slam, leaving Qaloron alone with the hush of embers. The old khan exhales a breath that sounds suspiciously like grief. "Puripal," he murmurs to the shadows, "why has it come to this? Is it your mother's doing, or mine?"

The brazier pops; the smoke coils into shapes before unraveling on an unfelt wind.

...

Sunset bleeds vermilion across an ocean of sand ripples. Atop the tallest dune stands Prince Puripal of Yohazatz, cloak snapping crimson against the desert wind. Below him spreads a disciplined tide: ten thousand Moukopl infantry, ranks bristling with pikes and oval shields lacquered black. Supply wagons creak, camel bells jangle.

Dukar reins his roan gelding beside the prince. "Your city looks… unconcerned," he observes. Beyond the dry riverbed and oasis, Qixi-Lo sprawls without walls—white-plastered villas, slanted turquoise tiles, pagodas rising like petrified prayer wheels. Evening lamps wink on one by one, as if greeting honoured guests rather than an army.

Puripal smiles, shark-bright. "We built no walls because walls imply fear. A Khan who needs stone to hide behind is already dead." He sweeps a hand toward the horizon. "Third Brother might wet himself at first trumpet. Father will listen—he always does. The real foe is Second Brother, once he's back."

Behind them Ta lounges on a baggage yak, chewing dried dates with noisy relish. "Lovely plan," he calls, voice muffled, "but I spy dust plumes east and west. Scouts on both flanks. Odds they carry polite invitations?"

A vanguard rider spurs uphill, sand spraying. "Prince Puripal! Enemy outriders sighted in twos and fours. Their horses wear northern cut. Shadowing us since midday."

Puripal barely glances. "Let them watch," he says. "Their eyes tell the city a storm comes, and the only safe harbour is me."

Jinhuang sidles her shaggy desert pony beside Dukar's gelding, cheeks aflame with newly-won freedom. She gazes at Qixi-Lo's pastel skyline, equal parts awe and contempt. "No walls, colourful houses," she whispers. "I didn't expect it to look so inviting."

"Stay near me when we walk the streets," Dukar replies.

Jinhuang manages a thin smile, then fixates on Dukar. "Uncle… do you think taking the city will be easy?"

He hesitates. "Taking it is easy," he answers at last, voice hoarse. "Keeping it is the difficult part."

...

Smoke from birch-wood fires spirals through the high bowl of the Tengr camp. A victory feast swells beneath the shattered ridgelines: barrels of fermented mare's milk are uncorked with ribald cheers; racks of spit-turned venison drip fat that spits and hisses in the embers. Late afternoon light glints off a hundred battered helmets stacked like offering bowls around the main fire, their owners free to eat, laugh, and remember that life still holds flavours richer than iron and blood.

Naci sprawls on a felt rug beside the largest blaze, cheek sticky with grease she has not bothered to wipe away. Her laugh rolls across the clearing, big as drum thunder. In one hand she brandishes a ladle of stew; the other steadies Uamopak—perching on her knee long enough to steal a strip of liver. Each time the bird's beak darts, Naci tilts her head the opposite direction, as if posing for some mischievous court painter. "Did you see him dive, Pomogr? The Sky himself gasped!"

Across from her, Pomogr puffs his chest like an inflated wineskin, his grin incandescent. "My net, Great Khan—perfect trajectory. Even a dormouse could have felled your foe after such entanglement."

A low growl rumbles ten paces off—Khanai, the white tigress, is busy crushing marrow bones between molars thick as thumb-hammers. Horohan kneels at her flank, fingers moving with almost maternal precision as she searches the striped pelt for new arrow scratches. Each shallow cut earns the tiger a murmured apology and a strip of jerky. Khatan roosts upon a tripod of spears, cropping morsels from Pomogr's offered palm.

Laughter, smoke, the squeal of fiddles coaxed from travel-scarred strings—joy floods the camp like spring meltwater. Then hoofbeats clatter beyond the torches.

Two riders break the treeline, snow geysering beneath their same mount. Lanau sits tall on the lead grey, windswept and mud-plastered; behind her Meicong clings. The entire feast stills—bows half-raised in toast freeze mid-air, mouths halt on the rim of cups.

Naci is first on her feet. She looses a roar that is half-cheer, half-wolf-howl, races forward and catches Lanau's boot while the mare is still lathered. "You did it!" she bellows. "You made it back, Lanau! Tell me, tell me! How did it go?"

Lanau laughs—short, stunned by the welcome—and nearly topples from the saddle. "It was difficult, Naci. But I did it."

Before she can swing down, Konir materialises at her elbow. He wobbles like a reed in flood-water, spreading his arms. "Yes, yes, bestow laurels upon the true architect—"

Lanau plants her palm lightly on his chest. A nudge. That is all. Konir collapses flat, groaning, the act of folding seeming to snap every ache and bruise awake at once.

Meicong howls with laughter so loud even Khanai lifts her snowy head in curiosity. "What an idiot! He looks so funny!"

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Konir peers up, indignant, but the effort costs him; he opts to remain horizontal. "Merely… strategic rest," he wheezes, snowflakes dusting his lashes.

The warriors roar approval. Liquor splashes; someone upends a sack of dried berries over Lanau's shoulders like confetti. The feast resumes with redoubled fervour—horn pipes squeal, raw throats rise in harmony.

Dusk deepens. Flames whip higher, reflecting in every drinking bowl. Then—a horn-blast rolls across the plateau: low, foreign, an iron bull bellowing doom. Conversation gutters. Shadows shift as hundreds turn eastward to the throat of the valley.

Torch-poles glitter along the distant ridge: a serpentine column, armour winking bronze. Moukopl banners—sun-disk on black—ripple in the last light.

Naci hurls her cup into the fire; fermented milk hisses into steam. She slides two fingers to her lips and whistles. Her mare, Liara, answers with a piercing neigh. "Mount!"

Horohan vaults onto Kafem, Pomogr clambers after with more enthusiasm than grace, and a knot of selected riders swing up behind. In under a hundred heartbeats the small honour party is pounding downslope, banners snapping like thunderclaps.

At spear-length distance the two forces halt, the breath of horses pluming against starlight just beginning to kindle. A Moukopl general—his lamellar lacquered black, helm crested with white yak-hair—rides forward, a standard-bearer at his flank.

He bows stiffly from the saddle. "I greet Khan Naci of Tepr."

Horohan, at the column's forefront by dint of shorter reins, touches her chin, bemused. Naci erupts in laughter so hearty her mare sidesteps. "You mis-aim, commander. That is my wife." She jerks a thumb toward Horohan. "She is prettier, but I snarl louder."

The general's cheeks darken behind his beard. He bows again, deeper, armour creaking. "Apologies, Great Khan. Our scouts hoped to show courtesy." Behind him, a wagon rattles forward, escorted by medics in white sashes.

"We bring," the officer announces, "the man found beneath the circling eagle—as instructed by a letter borne by your own eagle-messenger." He gestures; canvas is lifted.

Temej lies swaddled in bandages, splinted arm bound across his chest. His skin holds the grey-white translucence of lives nearly spent. Beside him, Sartak crouches—wings mantled protectively—yet exhaustion drags the great bird's eyelids half-closed.

Horohan's breath catches—sharp, nearly a sob—but she reins it in, lips thinned to iron. She swings down, strides to the cart, and lays one shake-ridden hand against Temej's brow. "Still warm," she whispers. Relief flickers, fierce as pain.

Naci's amber gaze softens by a hair. She faces the general. "Your surgeons earn Tepr gratitude. And your spears—are they stout enough to march by night?"

"They are," he answers, pride glimmering. "Steel and discipline do not sleep."

"Good." Naci swings back onto Liara. "Pitch camp before the cracked hill—ten furlongs shy of Noga's encampment." A wicked grin splits her face. "Let the Prince wake to banners he cannot ignore."

The Moukopl commander inclines his head. "As the Khan commands." He signals; the column creaks forward, standards dipping in salute as they file past the Tepr party toward the valley floor.

...

No trumpets greet the Khanzadeh.

Noga swings down. Frost snaps where his boots bite. He is armour, shadow, and silence.

A captain musters courage enough to speak. "Great Khan, there has been—"

Noga's gaze turns on him—obsidian, depthless. The captain's tongue folds like wet parchment. Nothing more is said.

The inner yurt yawns open, lamplight wavering. Sarangerel lies on a low cot, her face a moon bruised purple, gauze binding the shattered bridge of her nose. Dolma squats beside her, fingers daubing a tarry salve. She looks up, the old fury banked to embers. "She sleeps. The worst is set straight," she mutters.

Noga nods once. Words snag in his throat, unspoken. He kneels, strokes Sarangerel's braid—one trembling pass, almost timid—then rises, stalking deeper.

Two bodies wait on cedar boards: Bora and Altantsetseg swaddled in wolf-hide, faces cleansed, lips painted with vermilion to ward the long dark. Night-censors burn juniper; smoke curls round the prince like questioning spirits.

He sinks to one knee. Steel gauntlet trembles against Bora's still fingers.

"I failed." The admission is a breath, but it scorches. "Wait for me beyond the River; I will pay the Sky man in skulls."

No tears. His grief is iron too molten for weeping.

Yohazatz rite demands the honored dead travel home. So warriors strip pine poles, lash them into sled-biers, pad them with felt taken from command tents. Bora's spear and Altantsetseg's silver pipa are laid beside the bodies—grave gifts for the other steppe.

Throat-singers begin the Long Song of the Returning Sun, voices raw from hunger but steady. Oil lamps glitter across a hundred snow-dark faces.

Noga sits cross-legged before the central fire, helm at his feet, eyes fixed on flame. Hours pass. Wind moans through spruce. The chorus fades to whispers; embers pop.

Abruptly he stands.

A young warrior, slack with exhaustion, kneels nearby. Noga's hand closes on the man's throat before thought catches up. The prince lifts him—one-armed—like a mislaid shield and hurls him bodily into the firepit. Sparks explode in a shrieking fountain; flesh sears; the man's screams slice the night.

Before horror can settle, Noga whips round, snatches another warrior by his wolf-collar. "A single woman," he growls, voice deep as avalanche, "walks into my camp. Two wives die, and you? What did you do?!" He twists. Bone cracks like dry kindling; the corpse crumples, limbs at wrong angles. Blood patters on packed snow.

Silence freezes solid. Men gape—statues caught between worship and terror.

Noga's roar rips the stillness wide open. "What value are ten thousand blades if one fox slips the ring? If fear claws your bellies, carve it out!" He kicks the dead man aside. "WHO WATCHED?!"

No answer. Armour clinks as some avert their gaze. Hunger has been chewing morale raw; supplies dwindled, blizzard wounds unhealed, Moukopl banners now rumoured on the horizon. The myth of Noga's invincibility—cracked.

A veteran lieutenant, who survived the morning raid, steps forward. "Khanzadeh, we bled at the mountain, we starve on scorched earth. The men—"

"—are alive by my leave," Noga interrupts, death-quiet.

Murmurs rustle like rats in grain. A soldier at the ring's edge spits and mutters, "Didn't sign up to defend women and freeze guts."

Noga hears. He pivots, predatory, but the circle edges backward. Spears lift—not in salute, this time angled toward their own commander. Fear tips, becomes something uglier.

"Lower those," barks another captain. "Show fealty!"

One spear sags, another wavers—then a gaunt conscript snarls, "Fealty died in the snow with my brother." He jabs.

A spark meets tinder. The captain backhands the mutineer; comrades shoulder forward. Steel scrapes. The ring collapses inward—shouts, curses, the shrill clatter of blades half-drawn.

Noga strides through the swirl, firelight carving red runes across his lamellar. "Stand down," he orders, voice a blade itself. Some obey by reflex; others, neck-deep in fatigue and rage, do not.

A veteran archer nocks an arrow—hunger hollows his cheeks, desperation shines in his whites. "We are sick of this place! Let us go home!"

He looses.

Noga's hand snaps up; the shaft glances off an iron pauldron, gouging flesh. Blood trickles black. His eyes rise, twin furnaces. "Treason," he says, almost softly. He steps—once—and the archer topples, throat opened by a motion too swift to track. The Khanzadeh's sword hisses free, wet.

What follows is chaos blooming. A knot of disillusioned footmen surge; loyal Tigers crash into them. Firelight whirls across blades. Someone shouts for order, someone else screams for Noga's head.

Dolma drags Sarangerel's stretcher toward a supply wagon, shadowing the melee with grim resolve. "Even mourning burns in this land," she mutters.

Within that maelstrom Noga is storm-eye and lightning both—his black blade arcs, carving red script upon mutineers' chests. Yet numbers press, hunger lending courage to the hopeless. Spears jab. One catches his thigh; he grunts, rips it free, brains its wielder with the butt.

Another captain rallies loyalists, roaring oaths; his hammer clubs dissenters flat until an arrow transfixes his throat. He gurgles, slumps, blood steaming in the snow. Warriors falter, seeing their captain fall.

Noga's gaze flickers to his corpse, to the bleeding gash on his own arm, to the ring of broken spears encroaching. Fury shudders through him, too vast for words. He plants his feet beside Bora's bier, stance wide—the mountain's son guarding his dead.

"Come," he rasps, low as an earthquake. "Feed the snow."

Mutineers glance at each other. Some see a man; others, death wearing a man's face. Courage withers under that stare. They step back, shuffling. Doubt ripples outward, breaks formation.

Then—a horn blares beyond the ridge: moaning, unfamiliar, Moukopl brass. Every head swivels. On the horizon, torches blossom—a crawling nimbus of green banners.

Dread greater than any prince settles on the camp. Mutineers forget rebellion; Tigers forget loyalty; all feel the vise tighten: starved army before, fresh legions behind.

Noga alone does not look away from his men. His voice, ragged yet resonant, cuts the hush. "Choose. Die beneath Tepr snow tonight, or live to go home tomorrow. But choose now."

Steel hits frost as unhappy soldiers kneel—some in renewed fealty, others in fear of the greater storm. A few slip away into forest shadow, betting on lone survival.

...

By full night the combined camps spark twin constellations: Tepr fires bright and raucous on one ridge, Moukopl on the other—ordered rows, drums measuring tent-stakes into frozen earth. Between them lies a hush like held breath.

In the healer's yurt, Horohan sits vigil, Temej's good hand clasped in hers, whispering stories of eagles and thawing springs. Sartak sleeps with his head against Temej's hip, one eye half-open, ever wary.

Outside, feast calls continue—muted now, respectful. Lanau and Meicong circulate, bowls in hand, retelling their escape in ever-more-absurd embellishments to any who will listen. Konir slouches against a woodpile, wrapped to the nose in a horse blanket, pretending not to laugh when Meicong mimes him collapsing.

Naci steps from fire to fire, pouring drink, clapping shoulders. Yet each time torches gutter she pauses to scan the dark east, where Noga's camp sleeps—or does not—beyond the ridge. A hum coiled beneath her ribcage tells her the board is set, the pieces placed. Tomorrow, dawn will crack—and in that cold light, empires will test their weight.

Naci lifts a horn cup, voice rolling across the valley to reach even the silent banners below. "Sleep if you can, warriors of every banner. Tomorrow the tiger and the dragon howl at one gate. May the whole world hear it."

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