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The White Snowfield was a realm so warped that calling Hell kinder did not feel like a joke. In a land like that, the thought arose of how the barbarians had endured long enough to be called a people rather than a memory. Ketal answered without ornament.
“Barbarians are stubbornly resilient,” he said. “Ordinary wounds don’t claim us, and even deep ones heal faster than they should.”
“I know that much,” the Tower Master replied. He had studied the barbarians’ regenerative power with a scholar’s relentless curiosity. “I’ve seen one survive with a pierced heart, with limbs hanging by threads, even with a body torn from shoulder to hip—and not just survive, but heal.”
He paused and rubbed at his jaw.
“No, heal is not the right word. It is less regeneration than reversal. It is not a common strength,” the Tower Master continued.
Ketal shrugged, as if to say there were worse things to argue about.
“It’s a mix of things,” he said. “The short of it is that we do not die easily.”
Helia listened with the stillness of a priest at a bedside.
“According to what I have heard from the Tower Master,” she said, choosing her words with care, “the barbarians of the White Snowfield think in a way that is very… direct.”
“You can say ignorant,” Ketal answered, and his smile did not reach his eyes. “As you say, even those stubborn ones drop like flies inside the White Snowfield.”
The contradiction was plain. A human child spent years learning to walk without falling, and longer still learning to fight. For a soldier to be deemed worthy of the line, twenty years was a modest span. No matter...
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