Sunday passed without taking Averik west. By Monday before first light, he was done waiting. He left home with Roderic’s heavy revolver at his thigh and only the ammunition he meant to carry.
The long-range crawler was already humming in Unit 1’s yard when he arrived with Evelyn and Snow.
It had two tracked sections joined by a reinforced articulation, a scarred drift blade at the nose, and an ugly working rear crowded with a winch, tow points, rope, field tools, food, water, a spare power pack, and sealed boxes for anything that came back carrying blue Corruption where clean hands shouldn’t touch it. Heat traced black seams through the frost around the joint while the electric drive held a low, steady note.
Garran stood beside the front track with a steaming metal mug. His gaze went from Averik to Evelyn, down to Snow, then stopped on the revolver.
"So the old cannon finally gets a walk."
Averik rested a hand near the holster. "If it earns the weight."
Garran took a drink. "Try not to find out with your hand missing."
Averik left the advice there and looked over the people going west with him.
Caedren had a folded route sheet against the crawler’s flank. His straight sword rode at his hip. Beside him stood a broad man with a short dark beard, a broad-headed axe across his back, and heat wavering above one glove. The other senior was heavier and carried a long-handled axe.
"Tovan drives," Garran said, catching Averik’s look. "Caedren owns the route. Bram, if you melt anything that belongs to me, I’m charging you twice this time."
Bram rubbed at his short beard. "You say that like the second heater was my fault."
Garran raised two fingers. "It was already dying."
Tovan laughed under his breath. "Keep telling yourself that."
Two younger Awakened waited beside them. Averik remembered both faces from the examination hall. The Young man with the heavy one-handed axe was easy to place. Breaker. One of the idiots who had laughed when Tamer appeared on Averik’s result.
Another young woman from Averik’s intake stood beside him with a straight sword. He remembered her face from the room. She kept studying the crawler’s tracks, the packed yard, then the road beyond the gate as if the ground mattered more to her than the people talking.
The Breaker noticed Averik watching him. His jaw tightened. He checked his axe strap instead of saying anything.
Better than an apology.
Evelyn angled her spear aside and took the place at his right, leaving barely a handspan between them. Her silver hair was bound back for the field, the red at its ends tucked away from the refitted spear. She swept the group once with silver-gray eyes before settling them on him.
"Would you like me close to you today," she asked softly, "or covering the younger two until we know what we’re walking into?"
"Stay with me. Watch the gap if I move."
A little warmth touched her expression. "Yes Averik. If your side opens, I’ll take it."
Garran knocked his mug against the crawler rail. The yard quieted.
"Yesterday’s recheck found more sign beyond the first camp. Nothing came back toward the marker line." He pointed at Caedren. "You follow his route. If he says the road is wrong, it’s wrong."
Garran looked to the two rookies.
"You’ve trained. This isn’t training. A senior tells you to move, you move. Be pissed about it after you’re alive."
The Breaker flexed his hand around the axe haft. The young woman gave Garran a short nod.
"Board."
Snow jumped into the rear section. Evelyn climbed after her with the spear turned flat so the head cleared the rail. Tovan took the controls. Averik sat where the forward partition left him a clean view of the road.
The primary gate opened before dawn did.
Cold came through the passage in a dry rush. Nobody folded around it. Essence sat beneath winter layers and kept the temperature where it belonged, outside the body. Gloves still mattered for steel, and snow could still blind anyone stupid enough to stop respecting weather, but ordinary winter wasn’t much of an enemy anymore.
The crawler rolled west.
Vardel’s wall receded into the dark behind them. Black stone gave way to open white ground broken by route poles, exposed ribs of old pavement, and drifts carved hard by wind. The front blade shoved loose powder aside. Both tracked sections flexed separately over buried ridges, the joint taking angles that would’ve snapped a rigid vehicle.
For the first stretch, Snow rode with them.
The Breaker watched her across the rear section. "Your wolf always that big?"
Averik glanced at him. "You think?"
The man’s mouth twitched as if he couldn’t decide whether that deserved a laugh. He chose not to spend one.
Caedren stayed near the front opening with one hand on the rail. Twice he steered Tovan away from ground that looked easier. On the second turn, the Breaker leaned far enough to look back at the smooth drift they’d avoided.
"That was the better road."
"No," Caedren said.
The Breaker waited.
Caedren pointed behind them. "That was a hole wearing snow. We’d put the rear section in it and spend the morning digging."
Tovan didn’t look away from the controls. "And Garran would make us explain it. Slowly."
Bram grunted. "Cruel bastard."
The young woman with the sword hid a smile behind her glove.
By the time the eastern sky turned gray, the first forward camp appeared ahead. A shelter behind a packed-wall. Black route poles ran east toward Vardel and west into emptier country.
Tovan brought the crawler in and stopped.
A watchman stepped out while pulling on one glove. Frost silvered his hood.
"Still ugly past the cut," he told Caedren. "More tracks since yesterday. Nothing crossed the camp line coming back."
Caedren looked west. "Wind?"
"Turning. Nothing I’d call a wall yet."
The stop stayed short. Tovan checked the crawler’s joint and track while Caedren spoke to the watchman. Nobody unloaded. Nobody found an excuse to get comfortable.
Averik dropped to the snow with Snow. She circled the western marker line once, nose low, then raised her head toward the road beyond it.
Caedren noticed. "Same direction?"
"She’s not interested in Vardel."
"Works for me."
When the crawler moved again, Snow stayed outside. She ran in a loose lead off its flank, sometimes nearly disappearing against the plain until shadow cut under her body. Morning brightened while the camp shrank behind them, and the crawler kept west.
Farther out, maintained road became old repair, then old repair became whatever Rhevora had failed to bury. Broken pavement surfaced for a few dozen paces and vanished beneath packed snow. One shoulder dropped away into a white ditch. Farther on, exposed stone forced the crawler into a narrower line.
Snow’s pace changed first.
Her head lowered. Ears turned forward.
At almost the same time, Caedren straightened near the front opening. "Ease it down."
Tovan reduced power.
Blue-black stains showed through the snow ahead. Fresh enough that the wind hadn’t covered them. Human-shaped impressions crossed paw prints and deep gouges left by something heavier.
Then the old road cut opened between an exposed stone shoulder on the left and a wind-packed bank on the right.
Averik saw the carcasses from the crawler.
Three ordinary herd beasts lay ripped open across the road. Dark blood had frozen beneath them. Blue-cyan fluid streaked the churned snow around the things feeding there.
Frost Zombies lifted their heads.
Frost Beasts turned with them.
Eleven human shapes. Four lean, long-footed Rimejackals. Three heavier Sleetusks with tusked heads and shoulders crusted in rime.
One Zombie rose so fast the meat hanging from its mouth hit the ground after its hands were already clear of the carcass.
Snow growled beside the moving crawler.
Tovan braked hard but clean, stopping up-route before the feeding ground. The crawler settled on its tracks.
Doors and rails moved at once.
They were down within moments. Tovan took his long axe, and joined them. Snow already held the lead edge. Caedren moved left far enough to see around the exposed stone. Evelyn settled just off Averik’s shoulder. Bram came down with his broad axe. The two rookies took the cleaner rear-side lane until the formation widened.
Cold wasn’t what reached Averik first when the wind shifted.
Blood was.
Then Corruption, sharp beneath it.
The Frost threats finished turning toward them.
Caedren drew his sword. His mouth pulled into a grin that looked almost indecently pleased.
"Allright Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s fucking go!!!"
Bram barked a laugh and ripped his axe free.
The grin left Caedren just as fast. He pointed with the sword. "Stone side open. Don’t let the tusks fold us into the bank."
The first Rimejackal launched.
Its body crossed the road faster than a mundane eye would’ve followed cleanly. Averik saw the shoulder dip, the hind legs unload, the jaws choose his lower line.
His own body answered before the thought finished. Frost flashed beneath his pivot foot and skinned over his forearm, a thin brace and contact shell forming together as he stepped inside the charge. His arm met the side of the Rimejackal’s neck through that frozen layer. He turned with its momentum and drove it into the exposed stone.
KRAK!
The wall split, and the Frost Beast’s shoulder folded with it.
It twisted out of the debris before the last fragments landed. Bone dragged itself toward alignment under blue-gray flesh. Corruption raced through the damage and the ruined leg started taking weight again.
’That’s more like it.’
The familiar shape of Beast Tamer waited at the edge of his awareness. Today he wanted to know what fighting one felt like.
Darkness folded across the Rimejackal’s eyes and the narrow strip of road it was trying to read. The Frost Beast sprang anyway. Instinct corrected the first mistake, but Averik had already shifted the second line. He slipped off it and drove an Essence-backed elbow behind its skull. The impact buried its muzzle into frozen ground. The Rimejackal tore itself up again.
To his right, the fight detonated all at once.
Bram’s axe burned orange along the edge. A second Rimejackal hit his line, and the collision should have driven both of them backward. Instead, the force seemed to catch, twist, and spill sideways through Bram’s stance. Fire went with it. The Frost Beast left the exchange at the wrong angle and Tovan’s axe met it before it could recover.
A transparent ward flashed across the rookie lane. A Frost Zombie struck it hard enough to bow the surface and blast snow away from Tovan’s boots. He held. His long axe came over the top and crushed the Zombie’s skull, but the body kept reaching.
"Still up," Tovan snapped.
His second blow took the neck. Essence cracked through the impact. The Zombie staggered rather than falling cleanly, fingers still clawing at the ward until Bram’s fire caught it from the side.
Evelyn had no time to watch them.
A Rimejackal came for Averik’s open flank. Her spear crossed between them before its jaws did. Holy light flashed along the blade. The refitted forward section flexed under the impact and held.
She turned the shaft, redirected the Frost Beast away from him, and stepped after it instead of waiting for the next charge.
A Zombie cut toward her from the bank. The air hardened between them, and its claws stopped short of her coat against a ward that appeared between one heartbeat and the next. Evelyn drove the butt of her spear into its knee, folded the leg sideways, then put the blade through its throat.
The wound began closing around the steel.
Evelyn’s gaze sharpened.
She ripped the spear free and fed more Holy through the second thrust. Snow hit the Zombie from the side at the same time, jaws crushing into the opened line before corrupted flesh could finish knitting.
The Breaker rookie shouted somewhere behind them.
A pale fracture tore across a Rimejackal’s shoulder under his axe. The effect was vicious. So was the way he stared at it for one heartbeat too long. The Rimejackal spun through the damage and cut for his chest.
Tovan’s ward slammed into existence before claw met cloth.
BAM!
Blue fluid and white rime burst across the barrier and sprayed into already-ruined snow outside the human lane. The Breaker jerked backward, intact.
Tovan tracked the Rimejackal instead. "Move first. Admire yourself later."
This time the rookie moved. The Rimejackal rebounded from the ward, and his axe caught it again, fracture biting deeper, while Tovan stepped through the opening and drove the long axe down hard enough to crater the road beneath the Frost Beast’s ribs. Its body tried to pull together. The Breaker saw it, reset, and struck again instead of staring.
A Sleetusk thundered through the center. Each hoof punched through crust to old pavement, throwing slabs of snow behind it.
Caedren’s sword flicked toward a narrow opening. "Left lane!"
The young woman moved before the tusks reached her. She planted one boot, thrust her free hand toward a broken strip of roadside stone, and the lip buckled upward into a crooked ridge directly under the committed charge. The Sleetusk hit it.
Its front half climbed. Snow swept Frost across the landing patch. One hoof found hard slick ice where it expected bite.
The Frost Beast didn’t simply fall. It was too strong for that. It corrected violently, shoulder twisting, tusks carving a new line through the air.
Evelyn was already there. A ward took the first mass of the collision. Her boots drove trenches through the snow. She gave ground without breaking, spear angled across the Sleetusk’s neck while Snow tore at its flank.
Bram came in on the broken vector, Fire running down his axe. The remaining force of the charge seemed to gather around him for a fraction of a second, then reverse with his swing.
BOOM!
Axe, Fire, Essence, and the Sleetusk’s own momentum drove it shoulder-first into stone. The road cut shook; cracks webbed through the wall. The Sleetusk shoved itself out anyway.
Its crushed shoulder tightened under bright blue veins. Flesh pulled toward function.
Averik reached into that hostile current with Corruption Authority.
Resistance met him, ugly and immediate. It pushed back, but not enough. He forced through it and twisted the recovery out of rhythm.
The blue veins flared, stuttered, and left the shoulder jerking halfway through its recovery. Bram saw the opening and hit it again without needing an explanation.
The Sleetusk went down under the next fire-bearing impact and didn’t get the chance to stand a third time.
A Frost Zombie crossed ten paces before snow from its first step finished falling. Caedren moved with it. Space tightened faintly along his line; he cut across before the Zombie finished committing and opened the side of its neck. Tovan’s axe crashed into the staggered body. The Zombie’s hand still scraped three furrows through the snow after it hit.
Another came for Averik, blue vapor rolling between broken teeth. He hit the soul beneath the body. Nothing flashed for the others to see, but resistance struck back against his concentration, harder than flesh or bone. Averik felt the corrupted existence push against his Soul Affinity and smiled without warmth.
’There you are.’
He drove Soul pressure deeper. The Zombie’s next step landed wrong, body and spirit slipping half a beat out of agreement. Averik was already inside it. Frost cased his fist and forearm before the impact; Essence behind the punch caved the sternum without letting corrupted flesh close over his sleeve. Corruption Authority crushed down on the recovery. The hostile current bucked against him, then lost cadence, and he kicked the Zombie backward. Evelyn’s spear entered through its eye before it could stand.
"Averik, please duck!"
He dropped instantly, and a Rimejackal passed over his shoulder.
Snow hit it in the ribs before it landed. White fur and frost-armored blue-gray flesh rolled once across the road. Corrupted jaws snapped for her neck.
Averik flicked two fingers away. "Off." Snow broke contact at once.
Evelyn’s spear took the opening. A ward caught the Rimejackal’s claw before it touched her coat, and the blade punched through the chest. The wound began knitting around the steel.
Snow froze the Frost Beast’s rear footing. Evelyn twisted the spear, tore the opening wider, and drove Holy and Essence through it again.
The Rimejackal shuddered as Averik pressed Soul against the damaged existence at close range. The Frost Beast fought him even while its body failed. Its soul resisted hard enough to jar his concentration. He forced that resistance out of rhythm, and Corruption Authority made the body’s attempt to rebuild stumble with it.
Evelyn finished the Frost Beast. No one had room to celebrate; a Sleetusk broke the center line before the body finished settling.
Tovan’s protection caught the first impact and slid him backward through the snow. The Breaker and the young woman were behind that lane. Evelyn shifted to reinforce him.
Averik saw where the charge would go.
He wouldn’t waste a cartridge on the Breaker. Losing the line was different. If it collapsed, the Sleetusk came through Evelyn and Snow next, with the crawler sitting behind them.
His revolver cleared leather, and the hammer came back under his thumb.
BANG!
Raw metal left the muzzle first. Frost snapped around the round the instant it cleared the barrel, a narrow pale sheath forming over the nose. It was rougher than he wanted, but it only had to survive the flight. Averik drove Soul through the Frost wrapped around it.
The shot struck high in the Sleetusk’s chest.
The bullet alone wouldn’t have been enough. The Frost sheath punched deeper, and the Soul pressure went with it, striking past flesh into the Sleetusk’s soul.
The Frost Beast screamed without dying. Its charge broke as body and soul lost the same rhythm for one violent instant. A foreleg landed late. The Sleetusk twisted broadside and plowed a trench through the road.
Bram stepped into the wrecked vector, caught something in the incoming force, and threw it back through his axe. Fire burst down the cut with the impact.
WHUMP!
The young woman thrust a hand toward the road. Broken stone curled upward beneath the Sleetusk’s rolling ribs, stopping the body from crushing back toward the rookie lane. Her face tightened with the effort. The shape was ugly, uneven, and enough.
Bram buried his axe into the wound.
Tovan hit the exposed neck from the other side.
The Sleetusk’s recovery flared once, failed to settle, and went still.
Averik lowered the revolver. One round spent.
’Worth the weight.’
He holstered it and went back in with both hands free.
After that, the fight stopped having clean edges.
Rimejackals crossed lanes fast enough to leave the eye chasing old positions. Frost Zombies kept moving through damage that would have dropped ordinary men in place. A severed arm changed one Zombie’s balance and it used the loss to turn faster. Bram burned half a Frost Beast’s flank away and it still charged. Caedren’s sword opened a line, Tovan’s protection kept that line from folding, and the rookies had to find their timing while the threats kept moving.
Snow never waited to become an order with fur.
She read movement before voices caught up, froze footing where a committed charge made slick ground dangerous, and abandoned one kill to drive another Frost Beast across Evelyn’s spear lane. When Averik changed her direction, she obeyed instantly. When he didn’t, she chose.
The young woman with the sword found her own rhythm by degrees. A narrow strip of packed road rose under a Zombie’s crossing step, too little to trap it but enough to change the angle. Bram’s axe met the new line in a burst of Fire.
The Breaker split another Zombie from hip to ribs and almost overcommitted again. He caught himself this time, pulled out before the hands closed on him, and let Tovan’s ward take the return swipe.
"Better," Tovan said, already turning toward the next threat.
The rookie laughed once, breathless and disbelieving. "That’s all I get?"
"Live through the morning. I’ll consider praise."
Then the next Rimejackal hit their lane and neither had breath for conversation.
Averik took another Zombie apart at close range, spoiled a Rimejackal’s vision with Darkness, and found Soul resistance different enough from body resistance that every contact taught him something useful. Frost, Darkness, Soul, and Corruption all answered when he reached for them. Making them answer at the right instant against something that wanted him dead was another matter entirely.
The difference pleased him more than effortless success would have.
The last Frost Zombie came over the torn herd carcasses with one side of its chest burned black and an arm missing below the elbow.
It still crossed the road like a launched weapon.
The young woman warped a broken road edge into its step. The Zombie adjusted. Caedren cut off the better route. Bram forced it toward Averik with a sweep of Fire.
The remaining hand came for Averik’s throat.
He caught the wrist, turned under it, and drove the body down onto the raised stone.
Ribs burst through blue-gray flesh and the body kept moving. Averik hit the soul. The Zombie spasmed. Corruption surged to rebuild the ruined body. He strangled the rhythm with Corruption Authority enough for Evelyn’s spear to pass beside his shoulder and punch through the skull.
The fingers stopped clawing, but silence didn’t arrive at once.
There were dying impacts first. A last crack of steel. Fire hissing into snow. Frost settling from the air. One Rimejackal convulsed against shattered stone until Snow and Evelyn put it down together. A Sleetusk tried to rise on a ruined foreleg and Bram drove it back into the road with another burning strike.
Then nothing in the feeding ground stood up again.
Averik didn’t relax.
The bodies were down. Corruption still crawled through the place.
He spread Soul pressure over the ruined ground instead of probing corpse by corpse. Corruption Authority moved with it through the downed Frost threats. Something in the field pushed back in uneven fragments, trying to gather through bodies that could no longer stand.
Averik pinned that movement where it was until the others reached clean snow. The pressure wasn’t precise and it dragged harder at his focus than striking one soul, but it lasted long enough to matter.
Caedren pointed his sword up-route. "Clean edge. Move."
Nobody needed a second invitation. They withdrew along the lane they’d entered, keeping blue blood, broken bodies, and contaminated snow behind them. The corpses stayed where they had fallen, and the crawler’s sealed boxes stayed shut.
At cleaner ground, the group slowed. The Breaker ran a hand over the front of his coat where the claw had nearly reached him. Intact. A glance around found the same elsewhere: no torn layers, no blue on exposed skin. Only the weapons were dirty, and those edges stayed clear of the crawler’s clean interior.
The Breaker looked at Tovan. "That thing was close."
Tovan rested the long axe against one shoulder. "Closer than your face says you enjoyed."
"I had the fracture."
"You had the fracture," Tovan agreed. "The Frost Beast had the rest of you."
The rookie opened his mouth, thought better of it, and looked away.
Evelyn came to Averik. Her gaze moved over him once, quick and practiced.
"I didn’t feel anything reach you," she said softly. "Would you let me look at your side anyway? Just for a second."
Averik turned enough to give her the angle. "Look."
Her gloved fingers checked the outer fabric where the nearest Rimejackal had passed. Nothing. She relaxed almost imperceptibly.
"Clean. Thank you."
His eyes dropped to her coat. Intact. The spear in her hand was streaked blue along the blade, but the refitted section remained straight and responsive. "You?"
"Nothing touched me through the wards." Her mouth softened. "And the spear behaved much better this time."
"Keep it ready."
"I will. I won’t put it away yet."
Bram rolled one shoulder, breathed out through his teeth, and stood straight again. Fire had cost him something, but his grip remained steady. Around him, ragged breathing eased with unnatural speed and bruising pressure faded while weapons came back up. Nobody favored a limb.
Caedren looked back toward the feeding ground. "I’m not calling the road clear. Too much fresh sign, too many in one place. We mark it and fall back through the camp."
No one argued. Averik turned toward the return route.
Vardel itself was too far away to see from the road cut, but Averik knew the direction. The sky behind them had gone wrong.
Gray-black cloud spread low over the horizon toward the fortress, denser than anything they’d driven beneath on the way out. It dirtied the light across the snow and kept thickening while he watched.
Bram frowned. "That wasn’t there this morning."
Caedren stared for another second. "No."
Tovan looked from the cloud front to the road. "Storm?"
"Maybe." Caedren didn’t sound convinced enough to sell it. "We don’t know yet."
Averik left it unanswered.
Snow came close to his leg. He ran one hand down the dense fur along her neck, and she leaned into it once before going rigid. Her ears snapped front-right. A growl rolled low through her chest, sharp enough to kill the remaining conversation.
Averik’s hand left her head as he followed her stare away from the darkening return sky.
At first, the shape beyond the broken road markers looked like a dirty rise under the snow.
It lifted its head. The dirty rise resolved into a bear-shaped Frost Beast several dozen meters away, far larger than any ordinary bear Averik had seen, its shoulders grotesquely high even on all fours. Frost armored its coat in thick ridges over the back and forelimbs. Blue showed through torn flesh around the muzzle and chest. Its bulk looked close to twice that of a large grizzly.
Averik felt his mouth pull at one corner. "Frost Beast."
Tovan turned fully toward it. "Shit. Another one?"
His stare climbed over the shoulders, the forelimbs, the sheer mass. "Wait... that’s fucking enormous."
A few steps away, the young Breaker went still. "Oh, shit."
Averik looked at him just as the giant Frost Beast dropped forward and launched.
Its first stride detonated crusted snow behind it. The second found hard Frost beneath its paws, rime flashing into traction instead of letting that enormous body sink.
THOOM!
One forepaw split the old road and threw stone and ice backward. Several dozen meters became seconds. The young Breaker’s face emptied.
"Shit, fuck...SHIT!!!"