Five miles south of Iron-Gate Pass, the freezing blizzard of the Southern Demon Steppes howled over a vast sea of gray fur and rusted iron spears.
Standing on top of a pile of frozen boulders, Wolf-Chief Cang Ya—a seven-foot-tall Rank 5 Peak Wolf-Kin warrior with silver-gray fur, a scarred snout, and two sharp wolf ears sticking through his iron helmet—raised his heavy Wolf-Tooth Greatblade toward the dark sky.
Below him stood two hundred and fifty thousand starving warriors of the Gray-Fang Wolf Tribe, shoulder to shoulder with two hundred and fifty thousand burly, tusked warriors of the allied Iron-Boar Tribe.
Every single warrior was shivering in the bitter wind. Because the freak autumn frost had killed the steppe grass three weeks early, their sheep had died, their winter grain had frozen in the mud, and for the past seven days the entire army had survived by boiling their own spare leather boots in snow-water.
Right now, in the front row, a young wolf captain named Ash-Ear was secretly gnawing on the strap of his leather shield just to give his teeth something to do.
“Warriors of the Southern Steppes!” Wolf-Chief Cang Ya roared, his voice echoing over the howling snowstorm as he tried to pump up his half-dead troops. “Look north at those black mountains! Behind Iron-Gate Pass lie the warm towns of the humans! The old human nobles are greedy and cruel—they hoard mountains of wheat and salt behind their narrow iron gates while our cubs freeze in the…
