The northern horizon was no longer white. It had turned into a moving wall of blue-grey muscle, bristling iron tusks, and swirling snow.
Standing atop the watching platform of Bastion Alpha, Giles Croft adjusted the brass focus ring of his thirty-power sighting scope. He tracked the huge assault formation advancing across the ice-slow plain.
Beside him, Toby Karr crouched against the stone low roof wall, a roll of drafting thick parchment pinned flat by four heavy iron weights.
With a rapid graphite pencil, Toby plotted map point ranges as Giles called out the readings from the fine-scale.
“Lead element: forty War-Mammoths arrayed in an inverted wedge formation,” Giles recited, his voice steady as a metronome.
“Balance point: Chieftain Ymir-Krag marching on foot behind the third mammoth rank.
Lateral flanks: five hundred frost-trolls advancing in loose skirmish order across the scree.”
Toby noted the numbers in his survey grid. “Range to vanguard, Lord Giles?”
