The dawn sirens of Mega-City 07 began their wailing crescendo at zero five hundred hours, shrieking through the freezing sulfur mist that blanketed Slum Ward 9.
Arthur Vance stood before the cracked shaving mirror in the boiler annex, tying the leather cords of his high-collar military undershirt. His glow showed pale skin, sharp cheekbones, and dark, calm eyes that had not blinked in the face of death across two lifetimes. Over his shirt went his dark canvas field tunic, its left breast now bearing the solid bronze medallion of the Vanguard Cadet Corps.
On the long wooden drafting table, his field kit lay neatly organized in accordance with military trauma protocols:
The ARC-7 Transfixer Platform had been stripped down to its receiver, thoroughly degreased with kerosene, and reassembled with molybdenum disulfide lubricant. Its twelve-round rotary magazine was loaded with non-lethal ice-cold neural-inhibitor darts alongside six armor-piercing heavy dark metal sabots. Beside the carbine rested his oiled leather surgeon’s roll. Twenty-four razor-sharp scalpels, two bone chisels, bone-reduction clamps, silver-steel stitch wire, and six ampoules of cold-processed sulfur-zinc catalytic broth.
Toby Mallow was wildly bustling around the room, cinching down the straps on two heavy canvas rucksacks.
“We have thirty-six tins of pressed pemmican,” Toby reported. His voice shook with nervous energy as he checked items off his pocket notepad. “Twelve rolls of sterile linen, four liters of filtered water, the spare firing pins for the carbine. The deed scroll inside the fireproof lead metal tube. Arthur, are you sure we don’t need to hire a handcart? The road up to the High Terrace is four miles uphill through the coal ash.”
“A handcart is a target in the Lower Ring,” Arthur replied, checking the action of the ARC-7 with a sharp, metal click before slinging the weapon across his back. “If you can’t carry your gear on your shoulders, you can’t survive a trench deployment. Adjust the load straps across your collar bones, Toby. Let the weight rest on your pelvis, not your spine.”
Grimm stood by the iron door. It shook his pelt with a low, satisfying clatter of his dense bone plates.
The overnight molt had completed his physical maturation into an apex hunting beast. Standing forty-two inches at the shoulder and weighing nearly one hundred and fifty pounds of solid, corded muscle, the jet-black hound was an intimidating presence. His black fur absorbed the surrounding light. He cast no reflections, and his single intact ear stood erect. He listened to the rumbling steam trucks moving along the surface avenue.
Arthur walked over to the boiler fire, ensuring the emergency damper was securely locked down. He fastened the newly issued brass padlock to the entrance hatch. He pressed the lead seal of the Central Military Governor into the wax anchor.
The plaque on the iron door now read:
> PROPERTY OF THE SEVENTH VANGUARD DIVISION > Safe hall REGISTER 904-OMEGA — Secret ENTRY PUNISHABLE BY FRONTIER LAW
“Nobody touches this clinic while we’re away,” Arthur said. He tested the lock with a firm yank.
As they emerged onto the muddy surface alley, the slum was already coughing itself awake.
Smokestacks from the munitions factories belched thick, oily black plumes into the overcast sky. Groups of shivering miners in ragged canvas jackets were shuffling toward the rail terminals, their boots crunching on the frozen slush.
Arthur and Toby turned onto the main avenue of Ward Nine. Then, several slum dwellers stepped out from the doorways of their corrugated tin shanties. Word of the last day’s Crucible match had spread like wildfire through the apartments. The orphan mechanic had broken House Vance’s prized pureblood dragon, ruined Senior Teacher Gregory Vance. Then he secured a military safe hall charter for their ward.
An elderly man with missing fingers and a hacking cough hobbled forward, leading a starved pack-mule whose left hock was swollen to the size of a melon.
“Master Vance,” the old man rasped, bowing his head with deep, trembling respect. “The court guards... They said you were leaving for the High Academy. My old beast... His hock locked up three days ago. If he can’t pull the coal cart today, the overseer will send him to the boiling vats.”
Toby glanced nervously at his pocket watch. “Arthur, entry roll call is at zero seven hundred. If we’re late through the main gate, Dean Pendelton can fine us five hundred credits on office grounds.”
Arthur didn’t look at his watch. He knelt into the dirty slush beside the mule’s leg, unrolling his razor-sharp kit on his knee.
“Hold the halter, Toby,” Arthur instructed calmly. “Old man, keep his head facing the sun.”
Arthur’s callused fingers checked the mule’s swollen joint with cold and exact swiftness. He felt the severe lateral popped joint of the calcaneus and the deep pocket of trapped joint fluid.
“Closed reduction,” Arthur murmured. “No joint padding tear. Just a displaced joint capsule.”
Arthur set his thumbs against the base of the lateral malleolus. With a sudden, explosive exertional twist—leveraging his forearm muscles and forty percent of his transmigrated core torque—he snapped the displaced bone back into its body groove.
CLACK.
The joint popped back into posture with a hollow, ringing crack. The old mule let out a long, shuddering snort of relief, right away putting its full weight down on the hoof without flinching.
Arthur pulled out an ampoule of dark sulfur-herbal liniment from his belt, smearing the thick, cooling paste across the joint capsule, then rapidly wrapped the hock in two layers of tight linen binding.
“Keep the wrap dry for forty-eight hours,” Arthur said. He rose to his feet and wiping his hands on an oilcloth rag. “Don’t overload the cart past eight hundred pounds this week. He’ll pull for another five years.”
The old laborer fell to his knees in the mud, tears spilling down his soot-stained wrinkles. “Bless you, Master Vance... Bless you and your hound! I have no silver to pay you—”
“I don’t need silver from Ward Nine,” Arthur said, stepping past him into the alley. “Keep the clinic steps clear of snow while I’m away. That’s your fee.”
A dozen miners along the alley cheered, banging their tin lunch pails against the lampposts in a rhythmic, clattering salute that echoed down the narrow brick canyon.
Grimm trotted at Arthur’s side. He held his head high, his amber eyes scanning the rooftops with calm alertness.
Twenty minutes later, they crossed the rusted iron bridge spanning the Grand Heavy-duty Canal. That left the squalor of the lower slums behind as they climbed the snake-like switchbacks leading toward the High Terrace.
The air grew steadily colder and thinner. But the heavy sulfur smog of the lower wards began to clear, replaced by the clean, sharp bite of alpine wind and the hum of massive military aether-generators.
At the summit of the terrace rose the massive stone outer edge of Ironfang Vanguard Academy.
The academy was not a place of manicured lawns or delicate marble rows of stone pillars. It was a huge military castle. Built from blocks of pitch-black dark rock quarried from the rift trenches, its outer walls stood sixty feet high, bristling with self-running radar dishes, heavy moving anti-aircraft batteries, and barbed high-voltage wire. Massive searchlight towers cast sweeping cones of pale white glare across the cobblestone parade grounds fronting the main gates.
Standing before the gates were hundreds of newly matriculating cadets.
The contrast between the social castes was stark and gut-deep:
On the eastern terrace gathered the scions of the Great Clans—House Vance, House Valerius, House Frostholme. They wore tailored wool greatcoats trimmed with silver fox fur, their boots made of polished dragon-leather. They were flanked by their pureblood combat familiars. Massive armored direwolves with white-gold crests, razor-winged storm falcons, and muscular fire-maned manticores wearing gold-leafed harness plates. Their servants carried their luggage in polished brass-bound trunks.
On the western terrace stood the commoner conscripts and frontier scholarship cadets. Rough-faced youths in coarse gray coats, their beasts scarred, practical work-hounds, mountain lynxes, and heavy draft-beasts with notched ears.
As Arthur, Toby, and Grimm walked up the central stone avenue, a sudden hush fell over the assembled crowd.
Cadets on both sides turned their heads. Whispers rippled through the ranks like wind through dry autumn grass:
“That’s him... Arthur Vance.”
“The slum mechanic who broke Julian Vance’s Frost Drake in three seconds...”
“Look at that hound... What breed is that? That isn’t an ashen stray... Look at the bone plates along his spine!”
On the raised marble balcony overlooking the main gates stood a group of academy faculty in gold-braided black uniforms.
At the center of the balcony stood Dean Horatio Pendelton.
The corpulent administrator was dressed in his formal maroon velvet robes, his solid-gold seal of office hanging heavily against his chest. His pudgy face was pale with contained fury. His hands gripped the stone railing so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Beside him stood several senior clan representatives, their eyes narrowed in poisonous scrutiny.
Arthur stopped twenty paces from the iron drop-gate. He didn’t look up at the balcony with fear, nor did he puff out his chest in empty, boastful arrogance.
He stood with the relaxed, balanced stance of a surgeon stepping up to a running table.
Grimm sat firmly beside his left boot. The hound gave a slow, deep rumble from his chest, his black glass claws digging into the frost-crusted granite, his amber eyes locking directly onto Dean Pendelton’s balcony.
At exactly zero seven hundred hours, the great steam horns of Ironfang Academy roared across the city.
With a thunderous groan of balance weights and clanking iron chains, the fifty-ton steel drop-gate began to rise. It showed the dark, cavernous entrance to the central muster hall.
Arthur reached down, resting his hand on the dense, warm bone crest between Grimm’s ears.
“Come on, Grimm,” Arthur murmured, stepping forward onto the threshold of the castle. “Let’s see what they’re teaching in their classrooms.”
The hound stepped forward into the shadow of the gate, matching Arthur stride for stride, as the first season of their struggle closed and the long war for the frontier began.