The ascent up the frozen switchbacks of Fort Karst was a grueling procession of iron, soot, and ragged breathing.
Thomas Miller and two burly draymen carried General Varek Brand slung between two ash-wood pikes wrapped in coarse sacking. The royal legate’s shattered shins dangled limply with every heave of their boots, the splints of fractured shin bone grinding against torn tendon beneath his blackened dragon-scale shin guards. Dark crimson dripped steadily from the corners of his broken mouth, tracing a steaming trail across the crushed limestone shale.
Behind them marched the twenty volunteers of the sortie, their pike-points angled outward to ward against any sudden cavalry charge from the ravine. But down in the valley floor, no charge materialized.
Through the drifting sulfur fog that rolled off the smoking carcass of the Giant statue, Ren looked down across the gravel flats of the riverbed.
The leftovers of the Obsidian Legion—nearly two thousand five hundred heavy legionaries and light skirmishers—had formed tight, defensive caracoles around their supply wagons. Tribune Harl, a sour-faced officer in a brass cuirass with a tarnished horsehair crest, was shouting furious orders from horseback. He waved his short sword to halt the retreat. But the discipline of the royal vanguard had snapped like dry kindling.
