The sound began not as a roar or a battle cry, but as a wet, dragging scrape of iron-shod soles against frozen river shale.
Outside the timber blockhouse of Outpost Seven, the grey fog had thickened rapidly. It rolled down from the high northern bluffs like a bank of choking wool. The four border scouts who had accompanied Lin Tao and Tie Shan pulled back into the narrow doorway of the stronghold, their knuckles bleeding as they white-knuckled their ash-wood spears. Their breath came in short, panicked gasps that puffed white against the darkening sky.
“Look to the ditch!” the lead scout shrieked, his voice cracking with terror. “Look at the outer breastwork! Heavenly Emperor save our souls... They’re climbing the stones!”
Lin Tao stepped out of the blockhouse onto the courtyard flags. His land-mapper metal pen was held loosely between the first two fingers of his right hand. Beside him, Tie Shan moved with calm, deliberate mass. He lowered his balance point until his boots rooted into the frozen mud like ancient oak trunks.
Emerging from the dense mist along the outer edge trench were dozens of human shapes.
They wore the tattered bronze-and-iron layered-scale coats of the Imperial Frontier Armies. But their postures were monstrously distorted. Their heads lolled slightly to the left, their spines arched backward at an unnatural ten-degree angle. Their arms hung loose at their sides. They swung in rigid exact timing with their footsteps. They didn’t carry their weapons with the relaxed grip of…
