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“Go,” Ketal said. “Run, you lot.”
The barbarians who had been holding themselves back for his word laughed with a joy that broke like ice under the boot.
“Hahaha!”
“This time we kill it!”
They surged toward the Empire’s capital in a gray tide. Ketal turned to Helia, who remained at his side with a hard expression and a gathered company at her back.
“You and yours will handle the apostles that escape the line. Those that my people do not catch, you will break. You can do it.”
“I understand,” Helia said. The answer came steady despite the coil of worry within her. Behind her stood several dozen men and women who had answered her summons at a word, hardened fighters and mages whose names meant something wherever maps held writing.
“Ketal,” she added, and the small formality felt like a prayer. “Please return in victory.”
“Do not worry.” He smiled, and the warmth in it sat alongside iron. “I will finish this and come back. I am ready now.”
***
The capital creaked around its own heart. Deep within its stone, the Twisted gathered itself. It smoothed the raggedness from its edges, arranged its limbs and ideas, and became more purely itself with each pulse. It knit, it settled, it shaped the world under its hands into a tighter loop that fed itself.
At that moment, it noticed what moved toward it. It flung its sense outward like a net thrown over the sea and felt what ran across the snow. It understood them the instant their weight touched its notice.
Barbarians of the White Snowfield, it thought, and the notion tasted like a curse. He went back to fetch the...
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