PART 4

The air in the Yohazatz camp hangs thick, not with the usual miasma of unwashed bodies and forge-smoke, but with a taut, gnawing anxiety. Frost still glitters on the trampled snow, but the sun, climbing higher, offers no warmth. Empty stew pots sit cold beside fire pits where flames burn low, conserving precious fuel. Men polish already gleaming blades with a fervor born of restless hunger, their stomachs a low, discordant counterpoint to the rhythmic clang-clang from the armourers. Prince Noga stands atop a makeshift observation platform cobbled from dismantled Tepr yurt frames, surveying his conquered, worthless steppe. His breath plumes in the crisp air, each exhalation a silent curse.

Below, General Ahal approaches, his face the colour and texture of old saddle leather, etched with deeper lines than yesterday. He mounts the rough-hewn steps, each bootfall heavy with unspoken frustration. "Prince," he grunts, the title lacking its usual clipped deference. He follows Noga's gaze across the vast, empty expanse. "The land is ours. The wind whistles through it quite fetchingly. Yet men whistle through their teeth for lack of supper."

Noga doesn't turn. His eyes trace the distant, hazy line of the Tengr foothills where his scouts vanish like ants into the folds of the earth. "Patience, Ahal. A virtue, I hear, best cultivated on an empty stomach. Sharpens the mind. Or the temper. Whichever breaks first." He taps a finger against the frozen wood railing. "The supply creeps through the desert like a pregnant yak crossing a glacier. Blame the snows. Blame the incompetents driving it. Blame the spirits for their pettiness. It matters little. We are victorious."

"Victory tastes remarkably like yesterday's boiled boot leather, Prince," Ahal retorts, his voice gravelly. He gestures towards the camp perimeter where soldiers huddle, casting suspicious glances at the stripped-bare landscape. "They see ghosts in every snowdrift. Whispers of poisoned streams, cursed game... The witch's tiger stalking the edges. Morale isn't sharpened; it's fraying. Like a cheap bowstring in a blizzard."

Noga finally turns, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips, cold as the mountain air. "Then we must give them a spectacle." He leans closer, his voice dropping, carrying nonetheless on the thin air. "The scouts will find their bolt-hole in the mountains. And when they do..." He makes a small, precise gesture, like wringing a bird's neck. "We will boil them alive."

Ahal shifts, unconvinced. "Respectfully, Prince, spectacles require energy."

Before Noga can deliver another cutting retort, a commotion erupts near the camp's southern gate. A single rider, lathered in sweat despite the cold, his horse staggering, bursts through the loose perimeter. He's not Yohazatz; his furs are Nedai-patterned, his face a mask of terror and exhaustion. He tumbles from the saddle before the horse fully stops, scrambling towards the platform, babbling in a guttural dialect.

Guards intercept him, rough hands hauling him upright. He points frantically south-east, towards the distant, rolling hills where the Nedai grazing lands lie. His words, translated by a grim-faced border captain, slice through the camp's low hum: "Riders! Many! Like demons! Burning the ger! Slaughtering the herds! The children... the elders trapped!"

A sudden, brittle silence descends. The armourers' hammers stop mid-strike. The restless polishing ceases. Every eye turns to the platform, to the ragged messenger, to Prince Noga.

Noga's expression doesn't change. No fury, no surprise. Only a slow, chilling intensification of focus, like ice thickening on a pond. He descends the steps. The platform groans in relief. He stops before the gasping messenger, looking down at him as one might examine an interesting, but ultimately insignificant, insect. "Demons, you say?" His voice is calm, almost conversational.

The messenger trembles, words failing him. He just points again, south-east, a strangled sob escaping his lips.

Noga turns to Ahal. The ghost-smile is gone, replaced by something infinitely colder, sharper. "It seems, General, our passive art period is over. The Tepr wolves grow bold. Or desperate." He scans the suddenly alert faces of his Tiger Guard, already forming up nearby, their earlier lethargy vanished, replaced by a hungry anticipation. "Ahal. Hold this frozen patch of glory." He draws his sword, the newly-tied luck-braid stark against the polished steel. The rasp of metal is the only sound. "I," he announces, his voice carrying effortlessly, clear and deadly as a mountain stream, "require a brisk ride. It seems some vermin need stamping out before lunch."

He doesn't wait for acknowledgment. He strides towards his midnight stallion, already being led forward, its eyes rolling with excitement, sensing the change. The Tiger Guard falls in behind him, a ripple of crimson and obsidian, their earlier listlessness transformed into predatory eagerness. Swords are drawn, bows strung. Noga swings into the saddle with fluid grace.

"Forty riders," he commands, his gaze fixed on the smoke-hazed horizon to the south-east. "The rest conserve their valuable energy for you, Ahal. Guard the boiled boots." He spurs the stallion forward, not looking back. "Try not to eat them all before I return. I may yet require a demonstration of your famed patience."

The stallion leaps forward, a black arrow shot across the white plain. The Tiger Guard thunders after him, a compact, lethal hammer aimed at the distant smoke. They leave behind a camp plunged into a different kind of silence – not anxious, but stunned, watching their prince ride towards violence with the casual air of a man attending an inconvenient, but necessary, errand. Ahal watches the plume of snow rise in their wake, his jaw clenched tight enough to crack a walnut. He turns, bellowing at the nearest group of idle soldiers, his voice thick with impotent rage, "Well? You heard the Prince! And someone put that damned messenger's horse out of its misery!"

The stallion's hooves churn the last pristine snow into filthy slurry as Noga crests the low rise. Below, nestled in a shallow valley usually cradled by whispering pines, lies what remains of the Nedai winter settlement. Or rather, smoulders. The acrid tang of charred wood, roasted meat of a less palatable kind, and something sickly-sweet—like burnt honey mixed with despair—hits Noga's nostrils even before the full horror unfolds. He reins in sharply, the Tiger Guard a silent, crimson-and-obsidian wave freezing behind him.

"Was it always this close?" Noga murmurs, more to himself than anyone. The journey felt swift, almost too swift. His gaze sweeps the scene, not with horror, but with the cold precision of a butcher assessing a carcass. Smoke coils lazily from blackened skeletal frames that were once sturdy yurt, their felt coverings ash, their lattice ribs jutting skyward like the broken fingers of supplicants. Scattered amongst the ruins are darker mounds, indistinct shapes beneath a dusting of grey snow. Piles. Too many piles. The air thrums with a low, terrible drone – not insects, but the keening of a dozen women huddled near the largest pyre of corpses, their voices raw, broken instruments playing a symphony of loss.

Noga's eyes narrow, scanning the treeline, the scorched earth around the settlement perimeter, the trampled snow revealing chaotic patterns. Too clean. Too fast. His instincts scream ambush, a lure into a valley perfect for archers. He raises a gauntleted hand, the gesture slicing through the cold air. "Hold. Eyes sharp. Throats tighter." His voice is low, carrying effortlessly to his forty riders.

He dismounts smoothly, the crunch of ash-laden snow loud in the sudden, watchful silence. The stallion snorts, tossing its head as if offended by the stench. Noga strides towards the weeping women, his boots kicking up puffs of grey soot. He moves not with compassion, but with the focused intensity of a predator inspecting a trap. The women flinch as his shadow falls over them, their wails momentarily stifled by pure terror. One, older, her face streaked with soot and tears, clutches the frozen, blackened arm protruding from the pyre.

Noga stops a few paces away, his expression unreadable. "What happened here?" His question is calm, almost conversational, absurdly mundane against the backdrop of annihilation. "Where is your chieftain? Where are your warriors?"

The older woman lifts her ravaged face. "Gone! All gone!" Her voice is a ragged scrape. "Riders... like shadows in the dawn! No warning! They cut down the men at the herds... stormed the ger... took the strong ones... tied them like cattle!" She gestures wildly towards the corpses. "The rest... they burned them! Alive! In their homes! My son... my husband..." Her words dissolve into incoherent sobs.

"Taken? Or killed?" Noga presses, his gaze sweeping over the pyre. The sheer number suggests both. Efficiency, again. Brutal, but efficient.

"Taken!" another woman shrieks, younger, clutching a bloodied shawl around her shoulders. Her eyes are wide, vacant with shock. "Chieftain Batu... they dragged him! Warriors too! It was... instant!" She collapses back into wailing.

Instant. The word hangs in the foul air. Too fast for scouts to warn him? Too fast for his scouts to notice movement? Noga's jaw tightens. He steps closer to the younger woman, ignoring her flinch. His movements are clinical, detached. He reaches out, not to comfort, but to push aside the blood-soaked shawl at her shoulder. Beneath the rough wool, a deep, jagged gash glistens, the flesh around it already purpling. A sword wound. Clean. Professional. Not the hacking blow of a raider in frenzy. Interesting.

"Tiger Guard," Noga commands, his voice cutting through the lamentations. He doesn't look back. "Dismount. Assist these... survivors." The word tastes faintly alien on his tongue. "Get them mounted."

The hardened warriors exchange glances, their usual expressions of predatory eagerness momentarily replaced by profound discomfort. This wasn't the 'stamping out vermin' they'd anticipated. One guard, a veteran scarred from brow to jaw, shifts his weight, looking profoundly miserable, like a wolf ordered to nanny kittens. Another sighs, the plume of his breath a visible expression of resignation, as he fumbles for a waterskin.

Noga turns his attention back to the women, his gaze resting on the older one. His voice, when he speaks again, is lower, stripped of its usual cutting edge, warm. "Your tears water only ash, mother." He pauses, his eyes scanning the smouldering ruins, then flickering towards the distant peaks where his scouts search in vain. "The ones taken? They are not beyond reach. Yet." He meets her tear-blurred eyes, his own like chips of flint. "You will be saved. Or avenged. The outcome," he adds, a smile touching his lips, "depends entirely on how swiftly your ghosts choose to lead us."

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He turns abruptly, signalling the guards to hurry.

The plume of snow heralding Noga's return billows over the camp's southern berm far sooner than General Ahal anticipated. He's been pacing near the command tent, mentally composing increasingly scathing reports about supply delays, when the rhythmic thunder of hooves cuts through the camp's lethargy. The forty-one riders materialize from the icy haze, Noga at their head. Behind them, incongruous burdens slump in the saddles of the Tiger Guard: ragged, ash-streaked Nedai women, their faces hollowed by shock, their sobs a discordant counterpoint to the warriors' grim silence.

Ahal's bushy eyebrows climb towards his hairline. "Back already, Prince?" he calls, striding forward, his voice thick with disbelief. "Find the raiders taking an early nap, did we? Or perhaps they surrendered, overwhelmed?"

Noga swings down from the stallion with the lethal grace of a falling axe. The impact of his boots on the frozen earth seems to echo. He ignores Ahal's jibe, his gaze sweeping the camp with unnerving intensity. "Water," he commands, the single word sharp and cold. "Now." He doesn't look at the women shivering behind him; his focus is already elsewhere.

Ahal blinks, momentarily wrong-footed. He recovers, turning to a nearby lieutenant. "You heard the Prince! Water!" The lieutenant scurries off, radiating profound confusion. The Tiger Guard dismount. They accept waterskins with curt nods, their eyes avoiding the weeping women they've deposited like unwanted baggage.

Noga gestures curtly towards the Nedai survivors. "With me." He leads the small, traumatized group through the camp, past the staring soldiers. He stops before his own command tent. He pulls aside the heavy entrance flap.

Warmth, light, and the incongruous scent of spiced wine and honey cakes waft out. Inside, Bora looks up from mending a banner, her needle poised like a tiny dagger. Sarangerel pauses mid-bite into a dumpling, her cheeks bulging comically. Altantsetseg, polishing a dagger, freezes, her wide eyes darting from Noga to the bedraggled figures behind him.

"My dear wives," Noga begins, his voice losing its battlefield edge, adopting a tone that is, for him, almost gentle. It's the voice of a man requesting a favor that is both trivial and deeply inconvenient. "These women have suffered... indignities." He gestures vaguely at the ash-stained, weeping Nedai. "Wounds. Would you be so kind?" He phrases it as a question, but the expectation hangs heavy in the perfumed air.

Bora's sharp eyes rake over the newcomers, taking in the bloodied shawl, the vacant stares, the raw grief. She sets aside her mending with a sigh that speaks volumes about the inconvenience of compassion. "Indignities? Understatement of the season, husband." She rises, her movements brisk. "Sarán, put down the dumpling. Altán, fetch the clean linens and the wound salve. The strong one." She steps forward, her usual acerbity softened by a pragmatic kindliness. "Come inside, out of the cold. You look like you've wrestled a badger through a bonfire."

Sarangerel swallows her mouthful, her eyes wide with horrified fascination. "Oh! Poor things! Are you hungry? We have dumplings! Well... had." She glances guiltily at the half-empty platter. "But we can make more! Bora, can we—?"

"Later, Sarán," Bora cuts in, herding the stunned Nedai women inside with surprising efficiency. "Linens first. Dumplings later. Probably." Altantsetseg darts away, returning moments later with an armful of soft wool and a clay pot of pungent salve, her expression one of earnest concern.

Noga watches for a moment as his wives envelop the survivors – Bora issuing calm orders, Sarangerel offering hesitant pats on the shoulder, Altantsetseg carefully peeling back a bloodied shawl to inspect a wound. He lets the flap fall closed, sealing away the burgeoning sanctuary of feminine care. His face, as he turns, is once again the impassive mask of the Khanzadeh.

He finds Ahal hovering nearby, radiating barely contained questions. "The messenger," Noga states, his voice back to its flinty edge. "Where is he?"

Ahal leads him past smoldering cook-fires to a huddle of supply sledges. There, perched on a sack of millet, shivering despite a borrowed Yohazatz cloak two sizes too large, sits the Nedai rider. He clutches a wooden bowl containing a thin, grey gruel – the camp's current interpretation of soup. He slurps it with the desperate haste of a man who hasn't eaten in days, or perhaps one trying to avoid conversation.

Noga stops before him, blocking the weak sunlight. The messenger flinches, nearly dropping his bowl. "You," Noga says, his voice deceptively quiet. "Look at me."

The man raises fearful eyes. Traces of his earlier terror still linger, mixed now with exhaustion and the dull ache of cold.

"Describe the riders again," Noga commands. "Not ghosts. Not demons. Men. What did you see? Numbers. Weapons. Horses. Marks. Anything." He leans in slightly, his shadow engulfing the messenger. "Details are the currency of survival here. Spend them wisely."

The messenger gulps, setting the bowl down with trembling hands. "M-many, Khanzadeh! Like... like a storm cloud on the ground! Fast! So fast! Armor... dark, maybe? Not shiny like yours. Swords...? I... I couldn't see!" He shakes his head, tears welling. "Smoke... fire... screaming... the horses... they screamed too..." He descends into babbling incoherence, covering his face.

Ahal shifts impatiently. "Useless. Shock, or stupidity. Or both."

Noga remains still, his gaze fixed on the shuddering man. The vagueness is profound. Dark armor? Could be Tepr raiders improvising. Could be bandits. His eyes flick to the man's borrowed cloak, too large, hiding his frame. He remembers the clean sword wound on the young Nedai woman. Professional.

He straightens. The suspicion is a cold coil in his gut – the women's instant victimhood, the messenger's convenient vagueness, the sheer, insulting speed and efficiency of the raid so close to his own camp. Was the Nedai settlement always this close?? It stinks of a trap within a tragedy. Yet... the raw terror in the women's eyes felt real. The sheer scale of the slaughter argued against an elaborate deception.

"See he gets another bowl of... sustenance," Noga tells Ahal, his tone flat. "And keep him warm. Separate from the women." He turns away, his mind churning. He gives them the benefit of the doubt, for now. Not out of compassion, but strategy. Underestimating the enemy had already cost him a lot. The Tepr coalition, led by that elusive Khatun and her shadowy advisor, had proven capable of ruthless, unexpected strokes – the scorched earth was testament enough. This brutal raid, whoever orchestrated it, was another reminder. A grim smile touches his lips, devoid of humor. The hunt had indeed begun, and the prey was proving far more cunning, and far more vicious, than he had initially credited. He wouldn't make that mistake again.

The air inside the captured yurt hangs thick with the sour stench of fear, stale sweat, and defeat. Flickering lamplight casts grotesque, dancing shadows on the felt walls, illuminating the grim tableau. Batu, Chieftain of the Nedai, sits slumped against a support pole, his fine woolen deel torn, his face a mask of bruised disbelief and burgeoning terror. Opposite him, bound hand and foot with coarse rope that bites into his wrists, Akun strains against his restraints like a rabid wolf caught in a snare. His Alinkar braids are matted with dirt and blood. The vibrant threads woven into them seem garish now, symbols of allegiance turned shameful.

Four Tepr warriors stand guard, silent. They lean on their spears, expressions unreadable beneath the rims of their fur-trimmed helmets. Their stillness is more menacing than any shout. Every shift of the captives, every ragged breath, is met with the subtle scrape of boot on earth or the quiet shink of a blade eased fractionally in its scabbard.

"Horohan!" Akun roars suddenly, the sound raw and grating in the confined space. He thrashes, making the yurt frame shudder. "You cowardly witch! Show your face! Hiding behind your beast and your shadows? Face me! Let the Skyfather judge which of us betrayed our blood!" Spittle flies from his lips, glistening in the lamplight. "Or is the mighty Khatun too busy licking her wounds after Noga made her flee like a startled doe?"

Batu flinches, his voice a reedy whisper. "Peace, Akun... Naci... Naci Khan would not permit this. Her father, Chieftain Tseren... he shared salt and stories with me by the fire! We were friends! She wouldn't let them treat a friend of her family like... like this!" His plea is directed at the impassive guards, who might as well be statues for all the reaction they show.

The yurt flap parts, not with the expected forceful sweep of a warrior or the silent glide of Horohan, but with a theatrical flourish. Kuan slips inside, a silhouette against the grey daylight for a heartbeat before the flap falls closed. He's shed the crow-feather cloak, wearing simpler, dark travelling clothes that somehow make his sharp features and vulpine grin seem even more pronounced. He beams, clapping his hands together with a sound like dry bones rattling.

"Bravo! Truly, a performance worthy of the Mong court tragedians!" Kuan chirps, his voice dripping with amused malice. He strolls towards the captives as if entering a pleasant tea house, ignoring the warriors who dip their heads minutely in acknowledgment. "The righteous fury! The wounded nobility! The utterly misplaced sense of grievance! Exquisite. Almost makes me wish I'd brought snacks." He stops before Batu, tilting his head. "Sir Tseren, you say? Shared salt? Touching. Truly. Did you share salt with Prince Noga too, Chieftain? Or was it just the location of your winter pastures and the loyalty of your warriors you traded for his... what? Promises? Shiny beads?"

Batu pales. "We... we sought protection! Survival! The winds change, Konir! The Yohazatz storm is—"

Kuan interrupts, his smile never faltering, though his eyes turn cold as glacier ice. "You stopped being friends, dear Batu, the moment you decided survival meant betraying the very people whose ancestors are your ancestors. All for the fleeting favor of some exotic prince playing conqueror." He taps Batu's forehead lightly with a finger. "Bad bargain."

Akun lets out a harsh, grating laugh. "Betrayal? Look around you, fool! Your precious coalition flees before Noga's shadow! You hide in holes and burn your own land! The Yohazatz are the storm! Tepr will be ground beneath their heels, and your Khatun and her pet tiger will be nothing more than rugs in Noga's hall! You're finished!"

Kuan turns his predatory grin on Akun. He crouches down until they are eye-to-eye, ignoring the bound man's furious thrashing. "Finished? Oh, little turncoat, you mistake the opening act for the finale." His voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper, yet carries clearly in the tense silence. "Your exotic prince? The mighty Noga, scourge of the steppes?" Kuan leans closer, his breath ghosting over Akun's ear. "He has already lost."

Akun snarls, trying to headbutt him. Kuan dances back with effortless grace, chuckling. "Lost? He rides at the head of an army that owns this land!"

"Does he?" Kuan asks, straightening up, his expression shifting to one of profound, almost poetic melancholy. "He rides towards smoke and mirrors, Akun. He chases phantoms we painted just for him. He gazes upon desolation we crafted, thinking it victory, while the true heart of Tepr... beats on." He sighs dramatically, a master thespian delivering the final line. "He mistakes the echo of his own ambition for the drumbeat of destiny. A tragic flaw, really. Common among tyrants." He gives a mock bow. "Enjoy the hospitality, gentlemen. Do try the gruel; I hear it's particularly despairing today."

With that, Kuan turns and slips back out through the yurt flap, leaving the captives in stunned, furious silence, the guards as impassive as ever.

Outside, the wind catches Kuan's hair, whipping it around his face. He takes a deep breath, the clean, cold air a relief after the yurt's stifling atmosphere of fear and failure. He walks a few paces up a gentle, snow-dusted rise, the camp of the real Tepr coalition spread out below him, hidden in a fold of the land just a few hills away from the stage-set ruin Noga had visited.

Before him unfolds the true Nedai settlement. Not a charnel house, but a living, breathing village. Sturdy gers, their smoke holes puffing cheerful plumes into the crisp air, dot the sheltered valley. Herds of shaggy horses and fat-tailed sheep graze peacefully under the watchful eyes of Nedai herders. Children shriek with laughter, chasing each other between the tents. Women haul water, their voices carrying snatches of song on the breeze. The smell is of woodsmoke, dung fires, roasting meat, and life.

Kuan surveys it, a slow, genuine smile spreading across his face, devoid of mockery this time. It's the smile of a fox who has not only raided the henhouse but convinced the farmer he never had hens to begin with. He watches a group of warriors – Nedai, Orogol, Jabliu – practicing archery near the tree line, their focused intensity a counterpoint to the children's play. Horohan's strategy, his own cruel theatre, had worked. Noga was chasing ghosts in the wrong valley, his army slowly starving, while the heart of the resistance thrived, unseen, just over the hill.

"Lost, indeed," Kuan murmurs to himself, the wind carrying his words away. He adjusts his sleeves, the mischievous glint back in his eyes. "Now, where did I put that flask? Celebratory thievery requires hydration."

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