The silence that fell over the northern plains was not the silence of peace.
It was the terrifying, choking empty pocket left behind when ten thousand men and horses collectively forgot to draw breath.
Two miles to the north, perched atop the snow-covered ridge of the Wolf-Tooth Glade, stood the royal command yurt of the Steppe Blood Horde. Outside the heavy felt pavilion, thirty giant mammoth-bone standards flew in the freezing Arctic air, their black horsehair banners stiff as iron sheets in the thirty-five-below cold.
Shaman-King Helan Sha stood on the raised timber watching platform. He held an ivory looking-glass rimmed with carved bronze runes to his single, unclouded left eye.
His face, painted with white bone-ash war pigment, was frozen in rigid, blank shock.
Inside the circle of the brass-mounted lens, the map points of Trench Line Two were crystal clear under the copper light of the lunar eclipse: - To the left: Mountain-Crusher Tie Le lay facedown in the mud, his four-hundred-pound bulk drained of blood, his twin eighty-jin cleavers embedded two feet deep into the frozen ground. - To the right: Shadow-Blade Aguda’s headless torso knelt in the shattered stone retaining wall, his cut head resting beside an iron fire bowl ten paces away. - In the center: Iron-Skull Ba Tu—the champion who had broken the gates of seven northern cities, the warrior whose skull had reflected giant crossbow bolts—hung suspended four inches above the snow, his neck pinned to an eight-inch oak wooden wall post by…
