The iron horn sounded from the lower switchbacks three minutes before the dust cloud crested the ridge.
It was a low, deep-throated blast—the war-horn of the Obsidian Legion, sounded on a curled ox-horn wrapped in brass wire. The note echoed off the black dark rock cliffs of Fort Karst. It sent a ripple of sheer, pure panic through the refugee encampment in the dry moat.
Women shrieked, snatching wrapped infants from straw pallets. Men shouted curses, wildly dragging handcarts and bundles of salvaged timber toward the narrow back gate. In the chaotic scramble, pots of thin barley gruel were kicked into the mud. The dry, freezing air filled with the stench of terror and burning horse dung.
“Cavalry!” a lookout screamed from the western hoarding. “Heavy scouts on the lower trace! Twenty lances!”
Ren stood atop the outer curtain wall, his knuckles white against the rough stone of the low roof wall. Beside him, Mira leaned forward, her charcoal shawl whipping in the rising wind, her clear grey eyes tracing the black line of riders pounding up the frozen gravel road.
They rode towering royal destriers, their flanks sheathed in boiled leather bards, their riders clad head-to-toe in lacquered black plate. Crimson pennons fluttered from eight-foot ash lances tipped with leaf-shaped steel heads. They rode in a tight, wedge-shaped skirmish line, not slowing for the grade, their iron-shod hooves throwing frozen turf and gravel forty feet into the air.
