A single realization haunted Aven every day since the Still Vigil: Sergrud was stronger than him. The speed the rebel leader had displayed in charging Etrani made that fact clear. Every day since, the sight of Sergrud’s fist clenched around Etrani’s throat gnawed at him. Mere moments after Aven had sworn so boldly to protect Etrani, he’d failed that oath, only spared the dishonour of failure by the executor’s own bravery.

  That was why Aven remained in the dark chambers of Hellfrost Keep, where Yvris had once tested Aven’s abilities, hours after releasing the other warriors of Hellfrost from their training.

  “Again,” Logash said, holding a massive, padded shield that covered the enormous snow ogre’s entire front.

  Sweat poured down Aven’s face — black-tinged when he drew too deep from the void. Threads of void shaped into the comfortable form of a longsword in his hands. The longsword was the first weapon Father had thrust into his hands as a child (though what qualified as a “longsword” to a child that young would have been scarcely more than a dagger to him now), and it was the weapon Aven trained with most. Countless hours spent mastering sword forms, breaking body and mind in hopes to rebuild them infused with vis power. The void could theoretically take any form Aven wished, but some forms came easier than others. For a baseline, the sword and the spear felt comfortable.

  Aven divided his thoughts, part carefully analyzing Logash’s stance, part shaping the void for his own purposes. Logash crouched, obscuring most of his body behind the shield. Tilted slightly more to cover his right side than his left. There was the opening.

  Aven pushed the void into his legs. Once, that dark power only emerged from his left arm. Now, body remade in the void, every inch of him could pulse the power of raw creation. The power exploded as Aven lunged, striking Logash head on. The ogre didn’t budge a step. Aven twisted the blade, and the voidmade sword shifted, blade turning to a scythe that curled around the Logash’s left protected left side-

  A bash to the head aborted that plan, sending Aven sprawling. His void-blade dissipated.

  “Not a bad plan,” Logash said. “But when you are too caught up in your plan, you ignore how your enemy responds.”

  Aven groaned, rubbing the side of his head. The Battle Mind should have seen the attack coming. He was too fixated on shaping the void. Even for a vis, thinking with two minds at once was a challenge. He’d tried three before; the headache just made it less effective than two.

  Licking wounds could wait. Aven hauled himself up and reformed the voidblade. He nodded the signal, and Logash charged at him. Slower than the ogre could have moved, Aven knew. Even without charged runes to burn for power, Logash’s vis-forged body could have shattered Aven’s bones if he struck with his full might.

  With the slower pace, Logash gave Aven a chance to practice his special trick. Aven split his mind again, dividing it full in two while the void split his body in two as well. Logash’s eyes flicked between the two forms, deciding which was false and which was real. In that second of hesitation, both struck. The mistformed body slashed a beat before the real one, and even a veteran’s instincts snapped to defend against the false attack. The second, real strike struck just as the first dissipated, curved blade slipping around the shield to land against Logash’s ribs.

  Aven leapt back and steeled himself for the coming backlash as the torn piece of his mind violently rejoined. Vertigo arrived. Nausea followed. Aven stayed on his feet, stance steady until the feeling passed.

  “A better plan,” Logash rumbled, nodding. “And you are improving that technique. The split is faster, and you do not leave messes for poor Tanya to clean up anymore.” A rumbling laugh that Aven shared. Just no longer vomiting from the division was a huge step forward. “But it still leaves you vulnerable.”

  Of course. Even if Aven didn’t empty his stomach in the aftermath anymore, the few precious seconds of dizziness were still too much to make it a regular technique in battle. If he used that maneuver, it needed to leave the foe dead. Logash rubbed the spot on his ribs where Aven’s blade had struck. Dulled for practice, the strike didn’t pierce skin. Aven wasn’t quite sure he could have actually cut through Logash’s skin even if he tried. Against Erdrak, Aven’s voidblade barely did more than scratch. Would the same be true for Sergrud?

  In the hours when Aven wasn’t leading voidhunts, training the vis of the Hellfrost Legion, attending meetings, or any of the dozen other minor duties demanded of a captain, Aven spent time on the other half of the Battle Mind’s abilities. Simulations, plotting through all the possible outcomes of a battle between himself and Sergrud. Blessed with a vivid imagination, Aven could conjure dozens of different scenarios. Unfortunately, Aven’s mind was also cursed with realism. In any realistic head-on scenario, Sergrud’s speed proved too much. And that didn’t take into account other domains the rebel captain might hold. A 3rd Circle never held just one trick.

  “Could you defeat Sergrud?” Aven asked as they finished the training and Logash put the massive training weapon to the side.

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  Logash took a long moment to ponder the question, “A difficult question. He is faster than me; I would need the Thunder to match him.” The thunder rune Logash used to create bursts of speed. He’d made new runes since the last had all been destroyed in the battle against Erdrak, working at them in every moment of spare time Aven had seen, sometimes helped by Tanya in what moments the minari housekeeper could spare from keeping Hellfrost fed. “I could perhaps withstand his strength with the Mountain...” Logash shook his head. “But just as with Erdrak, runes only give me seconds of power. It lets me reach to the height of 3rd Circle vis, but I cannot stand tall as they do.”

  Aven eyed the seven-and-a-half foot ogre, wondering how anyone could stand taller even in metaphor.

  “Haven’t your runes become stronger since Erdrak?” the ogre spent so much time on them Aven assumed they must grow more powerful.

  “Runes are a long, slow path to power,” Logash’s face fell. “And runes can only ever be as strong as the soul poured into their creation. Other paths are...faster. They are not worth the cost.”

  Logash had hinted such before. The vis brand on his chest showed two circles, just as Aven’s did on his back. However, Logash’s held more. A scarred outer edge, as if something more had been burned away.

  “You once were 3rd Circle, weren’t you?” Aven asked.

  “By your Empire’s reckoning, I was,” Logash’s reply came after a long moment of consideration.

  “And you...lost that power?” Curiosity overwhelmed Aven’s consideration for the ogre’s privacy. “Gave it up?”

  Logash’s jaw set. The snow ogre’s silence was more eloquent than words could ever be. That was a line that Logash did not wish to discuss. Aven respected that boundary and asked no further. Just as he had every time Logash made it clear he didn’t wish to discuss the past. The past was done; there was nothing to be gained from digging at Logash’s wounds. There was too much future to prepare for.

  That future came sooner than Aven hoped.

  “Captain!” Wally’s shrill voice reached Aven before the canin boy rounded the stairs. “We’re under attack! Vulgares at the west wall!”

  * * *

  From Hellfrost’s battlements, Aven could see down the mountain. From this distance, the figures swarming at the town’s west wall looked like crawling ants. Aven allowed himself a moment of relief; from Wally’s panic, he’d thought the Vulgares already had made it to the keep’s west wall rather than the town’s more distant one.

  “Can you see what’s going on from there?” Esharah’s voice echoed in. The dezar was with Etrani inside the keep, leaving Aven and the Hellfrost Legion to defend the keep’s walls and the reserve legion to defend the town.

  At this range, only torchlights gave any clarity to the night. Ten days since the full moon, the silver crescent and stars barely helped.

  “Can someone with good eyes tell me what the hells is going on?” Aven asked.

  Wally peered out into the night, “Looks like fifty or sixty Vulgares out there. Reserve legions are in position. They’ve got the numbers and the walls. Wait, there’s more Vulgares out in the woods, shooting arrows. Don’t have siege engines, though. They’ve got ladders.”

  Not all of the Vulgares’ forces then. Even Wally’s enhanced senses couldn’t pick out individuals in the darkness. No way to know if Sergrud was out there.

  “It’s a reckless, stupid attack,” Esharah relayed Etrani’s message.

  “Which means it’s a feint,” Aven said aloud. “But a feint for...what?”

  The lights in the distance pulled back towards the forest. Already retreating?

  “The legions are following them,” Wally said. “Captain Frostclaw’s leading them.”

  “A trap,” Logash said. “Feign an aggressive move, draw the legions out towards the trees. They’re going toward an ambush in the forest.”

  “They don’t know about my senses yet, right?” Wally asked, tail twitching excitedly. “I can spot ‘em in the dark!”

  “Then get down to Frostclaw and warn them,” Aven said. Maybe Wally could even turn the ambush on its head. “Quick!”

  Wally sprinted off.

  “Etrani thinks an ambush is one possibility,” Esharah relayed. “Another would be an attack from elsewhere while the legions are occupied with that token force.”

  Southward was protected by the river and open farmland; too easy to see coming. That left the northwest side, from the mountain paths leading out toward the quarries.

  A group of soldiers arrived from the town, Danys Akra leading the way. At this point, the sergeant was visibly heavy with child, her mail armor modified with wider side slits to give more room for her expanding stomach in the armor. Even though her leave had been approved “for as long as she could not fulfil her duties”, the sergeant still insisted on leading the guards over the quarries. Aven half-wondered if the idea of maternity leave had only ever been an excuse to thrust command on Aven.

  “Hells, sergeant, you’re on leave,” Aven said as the sergeant approached, breathing only a touch heavier than she normally might.

  Akra shot him a withering look, while rubbing her back as she climbed the stairs. “No one told the Vulgares, apparently. The reserve captains sent a message. Captain Frostclaw is engaging the enemy. Captain Breton remains in defense of the city. We need more to cover all fronts; I thought that the attack we had on the quarries might have been a scouting party preparing for an attack on the mountain path.”

  “We had the same thought,” Aven agreed. He gave the command to Logash, and the ogre took a group to cover that part, Katrin with them to detect any coming attacks with her spirits. The reserve soldiers could handle the rest of the town.

  What were they after, though? Harassing attacks, Aven could understand. A major push was senseless. Too many soldiers inside Hellfrost to take and hold the town. Just a statement, making it clear they could attack Hellfrost while the soldiers remained at home as well?

  “Aven, there’s something wrong,” Esharah’s voice came with a pulse of panic. “I feel new-”

  Her voice cut off.

  “Esharah?!”

  “-in the keep...I don’t...Etrani...”

  The words came in bursts as if Esharah was trying to speak around a hand muffling her mouth. Aven felt it then, a presence like a mental wall thrown up in his mind. Wordless, but stealing Esharah’s words as well. Even without words, Aven recognized the presence. The ogress mindspeaker.

  “Vulgares in the Keep!” Aven shouted, already sprinting down the stairs. “Akra, hold the walls. Janaya, Dashul, Iskir, with me!”

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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